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TechnoratiOur Kids as Mercenaries
The Pentagon doesn't talk much about it, but over half of America's presence in Iraq today is made up of mercenaries. That's how we keep down the number of actual troops. We now hire civilians to do for the soldiers many of the things they used to do for themselves. Everyone knows about Halliburton and Blackwater, and many have heard tell of scores of other companies that, at exorbitant rates, feed, house and supply our fighting men and women. There is even occasional note of the regiments of Bangladeshis slipped in to do the army's scut work.
But what about our heroic troops themselves? Surely, THEY'RE not in it for the money. Surely, they're not abandoned at the end of their tours like so many paid contractors. Surely, we nurture them for the rest of their lives like the heroes that they are. Sure.
I recently found a National Guard recruiting flier taped to a utility pole. It touted, "100% Tuition Free College," "Up to $20,000 Enlistment Bonus," and "$200/month of school G.I. Bill Kicker." Along the bottom were the usual tear-off strips with the recruiting sergeant's phone number, reiterating the $20,000 bonus. Forget "Uncle Sam Needs You!" At our annual local Oyster Festival, the Guard augments these enticements with T-shirts, caps, push-up contests, vehicle displays and a party atmosphere. No amputees on hand.
For 18-year-olds with no career focus, all this hype can convey much allure. Smartly paid ex-generals flood the airways intoning about duty, service, foreign evils, and victory. Meanwhile war skeptics and recorders of suffering, such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, are systematically excluded from mainstream programming. Thus despite the well-known harsh realities of warfare and occupation, other realities like money, recession and propaganda help to keep filling our relentless recruiting quotas.
They also help to fill our Veterans Administration hospitals. Though even at that, painfully large squadrons of vets have yet to find solace with the VA. Especially those with emotional distress. Suicides among soldiers and returnees have now exceeded battle deaths in Iraq, and stress disorders plague combatants and veterans alike in disturbing numbers. The Defense Department also admits, though it does not advertise, that an astonishing 25,000 of its members have deserted, many heading for Canada and the rest playing hide-and-seek here at home.
But the largest body of troops just do their job and do eventually come home. Then they enter on a prolonged struggle to find a job, to reintegrate with their family, to increase their education, and to plead for government help with their mental and physical wounds. Unfortunately, there are still no good numbers for casualties from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or on its destructive effect on home or work. Mostly it simply goes untreated. As does the recently recognized Gulf War Syndrome from our battles in Kuwait.
So too do other veterans' afflictions. Housing shortages and homelessness weigh heavily on former soldiers. Likewise the lack of rape treatment and counseling, or even any government admission that rape is a common military occurrence. And despite congressional inquiries and diligent investigative reporting, care for veterans remains spotty and unreliable. The White House and Pentagon hush it up, fearful that the truth might sour recruitment enthusiasm.
This unfortunately makes the whole war enterprise sound more and more like a mercenary world, which it is. Spend plenty of money on the front end with bonuses and improved salaries; scrimp on the back end when our warriors, patriots and heroes finally come home. That's when they learn how expendable they are.
And as a finishing touch of "fight for pay," Congress has now voted to speed up citizenship applications for those aliens who enlist. Offering such a lure to foreigners makes plain just where the United States plans to find the cannon fodder for its military adventures of the future.
30 Comments so far
Show AllI have nightmares about my grand kids crawling through the ditches in a guerrilla war on the farm where they and I and my parents grew up.
I would rather it happen to me than them.
Regardless of the quality of the carrot or size of the stick, one should never serve darkness. On the other hand, if there is love for killing inside you, the military gives you the perfect opportunity to express that sickness. One feels sorry for those who join in ignorance and/or desperation; they often don't understand the full ramifications of what they are doing until it's too late. And parents who glorify the military do not see the cause and effect relationship for their child being sent back from some foreign land in a box.
chessgames56,
"One should never serve darkness."
This was the year of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
For two weeks in August, 10,500 athletes from 205 countries participated in games to the enjoyment of billions of spectators.
Isn't this how humans are supposed to compete/ showcase our extraordinary talents? In this case, the beautiful pageantry of the ceremonies and the marvelous athleticism on display.
The year now concludes with more car bombs in Baghdad and the aerial bombardment of civilians in Gaza, and for that matter, Afghanistan.
I wonder what percentage of Bush's "Coalition of the Willing" are from Israel?
"Siouxrose December 27th, 2008 6:13 pm
Sioux Rose
HERBERT: ... Wouldn't you say this pattern goes back to the crusades where the Knights Templar financed this enterprise so the church could wage it?"
SURELY PRIOR TO THAT history, probably predating Christianity altogether; maybe with a little variation of the same sort of approach, instead of it needing to be absolutely identical, which is a condition I would not force upon the topic of the question posted by Sioux Rose.
SR:
"What is most poignant to me is the long history of religious movements using their alleged versions of God's will to deem hell and damnation on their fellow human beings."
THE ONLY place you find that in Christianity is with the "Christians" who make the non-canon text known as the Book of Revelations and which some if not many writing experts say was not written by apostle John, but by another John of the same period, well, the "Christians" who make this book the center of their faith, instead of the canon Gospels, which provide the quoted words of Jesus and describe his conduct while here on Earth. The true Christian must focus on the latter, and can totally ignore the Book of Rev., but if not doing that, then it must never be treated as having the weight of the Gospels.
People who properly understand the Book of Rev., however, can show that the text can be sanely read, which is without hatred of Jews, and without misinterpreting the text as if it is to mean that Christians are to hate Jews in any way or to any degree because they refuse to convert to Jesus; etcetera. Jesus [never] gave any such authority to anyone; to neither the apostles, nor the disciples, to simply NO ONE at all. He did not illustrate hatred, discourtousy, ... towards Jews or anyone else, and he was still friends with some Jews who liked him and just did not know if he was messiah, the "Anointed One". Any Christian who does differently than he illustrated and taught in this regard is NOT a true disciple!
SR:
"My recommendation, we learn to put down arms (weapons) and learn to join hands!"
TURNING swords into ploughshares is also a handy idea.
"Siouxrose December 27th, 2008 6:10 pm
...
... Just as when I learned that some churches blamed the Jews for Jesus' death, that tore me up, too."
EXCELLENT, but as for the very latter bit, it's not that the churches blamed the Jews; it's that they historically recorded that it was fanatical, extremist, ... pharisees who viciously persecuted Jesus to the point of pressuring Pontius Pilate enough that while he purportedly could find no criminal act by Jesus, he had to write to Rome to get the ruler's ruling on what to do, because the persecutory pharisees were relentless, and Rome figured to go with what seemed most state-wise convenient and had Jesus executed to please and thereby quiet these fanatically lunatic pharisees.
They remind me of the heinous, diabolically insane, psychopathic leaders of the Israeli govt and military today, and the extremist, heinous, ... settlers robbing life from Palestinians today. Those who persecuted Jesus are awfully like these present-day peers of theirs, imo. They are NOT true Biblical Jews at all!
I'm sick of this being referred to as Bush's WAR!!!!!! It's no more Bush's war as it is Scooby-Doo's!!!! Do all you sheep out there forget that Congress was impotent and spineless when it came to standing up to the lies and bullshit leading up to this fiasco!!! And then the media too didn't do anything but bang the drums of war!!!! And last but not least was the American people who could have done more but didn't.... But now it's too late because we have to Support the Troops..... Same thing happened to me in 1939.... On August 31st,1939 I was against the Nazis and their insane scheme of world domination but on Sept 1st, 1939 when the war started I was still against the Nazis but I had to Support the Troops........ We might not be worse than the Nazis but we sure aren't any better than they were.......
And finally let's get rid of that evil euphemism-"neo-cons" and call it like it is...... When someone refers to the neocons they are referring to the JEWS!!!!!!!!! The English language is a beautiful thing.... Let's not bastardise it. Have a nice day losers!!!!
If you start replacing the word "neo-con" with "JEWS" (all caps), where does it leave Naomi Klein and Dick Cheney, for instance?
That sort of attitude replaces analysis with cheap posturing and does nothing to clarify what is happening.
Joe
Bill
Those of us who call it Bush's war are those still laboring under the old notion that the buck stops on the President's desk. Get it?
I will be the first to agree that congress has condoned and enabled the various crimes of the Bush administration, but using the Unpatriot Act as an example, it was brought to congress and forced through by the executive. Get it?
Those of us who use the term "neocon" are describing only that political fraternity begun by Leo Strauss back when. That many of its members are Zionists is pure coincidence, I'm sure.
"the Unpatriot Act as an example, it was brought to congress and forced through by the executive. Get it?"
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just about every member of Congress knew what it was doing and signed it. And you failed to mention the renewing of that tyrannical Act. Nobody was forced to renew it and in fact even the reddest districts and states were against its renewal but the pols flipped the bird and renewed it anyway. Congress is just as guilty as the White House and you know it.
Just some reflections --
1) In talking to U.S. Marine high school recruiters in Spokane, Washington, on several occasions after first working through what I would describe as our mutual hostility to one another, they invariably admit that Iraq is FUBR (f***'d up beyond repair) but insist that Afghanistan was/is the war we should be fighting. So I guess I will be "chatting" with these recruiters for several years to come.
2) Several Child Protective Service social workers in Spokane have left that state agency to work for the VA as suicide prevention counselors. Spokane had its suicide scandals at the local VA hospital earlier this year. http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=17305
3) While "truth" is generally considered the first casualty of the Iraq War, in fact the first "US" soldiers killed in Iraq was an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant, Jose Antonio Gutierrez. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2923209.stm
4) I have met several patriots who have taken it upon themselves to "disappear" U.S. military propaganda and false advertising wherever they find it, such as in pizza parlors across from local high schools, at the ticket counters of movie theaters in the local malls, etc.
5) The Spokane area has an unknown numbers of mercenaries, some associated with Blackwater (which has begun to build operations in Idaho; Blackwater bought the Couer d'Alene, ID based Backup Corporation), some coming through the Spokane area due to their association with the SERE "torture" school just a mile from the North Quest Casino in Airway Heights. http://spokanepoliceabuses.wordpress.com/torture-sere-fairchild-spokane/
6) A group of us at least brought attention a few years ago to the fact that the Spokane School District 81 was failing to adequately inform parents and students of the opt-out option available for students under No Child Left Behind which allows students to opt-out of the automatic sharing of their personal information with the U.S. military; that high school websites were failing to make the information on the opt-out easily available; and that as it originally stood, students choosing the opt-out would lose the ability to have their names listed on honor rolls, sports rosters, and student music/theater productions, etc. The school district clarified all these points and changed the policy such that a student opting out of sharing their information with the military's strong arm recruiters was not opting out of all public use of their information.
Because it is clear that Bush's War in Iraq is to be handed over to Obama and will become Obama's War in Afghanistan, it is clear that we need to be prepared to continue to fight the bastards in every way we can.
David Brookbank -- "Hasta donde debemos practicar las verdades?"
"At our annual local Oyster Festival, the Guard augments these enticements with T-shirts, caps, push-up contests, vehicle displays and a party atmosphere. No amputees on hand."
Summer of 2007 I attended Ozzfest when it came to town, and the recruiters were there with those same enticements.
Daath, the first band of the day immediately spotted them, and early in the set the frontman said something to the effect of "I don't know about you guys, but while I'd die for my country, I will not die for George Bush!" He then got everyone in the crowd to turn around and give the recruiters the middle finger.
I think I saw maybe two or three people over at that booth the whole day. And I think they were gone by 5 pm.
"The "Heroes" are the boys who made it back from Iraq and became "Iraq Vets Against The War". But, then they were marginalized by the mass media and the "Political Elite" avoided contact with them." There are other heroes that can be found at CouragetoResist.org. Check them out, too. Both of these organizations need our support. They speak the truth which the majority does not want to hear.
When are we going to do what needs to be done, ie another American Revolution against the tyrants?
Peggy
I work with one of these National Guard mercs. He is a nice enough kid but sees nothing wrong in going to someone else's country and killing whomever he is told to kill, all to get money for college.
He is going in May and today is his 23rd birthday. I gave him a copy of Smedley Butler's "War Is A Racket." I doubt that he will read it.
"He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there and you and me,
And brothers can't you see,
This is not the way we put the end to war."
Nothing Exists.
Depressing, but a fantastic piece by Mr. Collins! I think a few years back the desertion number was only maybe 10,000 or so.
READYTOTRANSFORM, a great post.
We're in a mess in this country, and Bush should be prosecuted for it.
Sioux Rose
EKATON: If you take the premise, "God made man in his image and likeness," what I think you may find is that it's the other way around. The reverse holds true, and with rather undeveloped martial traits, societies that devote their best resources (including their children's lives) to war, it's pretty clear what deity God takes shape as for too many. People seldom ask, even on the left, why the astrologer was cast as heretic, a fate punishable by death. Sincere students and teachers of this ancient craft, which in many respects IS a science, are positioned to offer very different explanations for what passes for the Deity. So when we speak of God, the astrologer rightfully responds, "which God?"
When polytheism was forced upon a variety of purges, executions and inquisitions to embrace "the one true God," a fate still being fought over so tragically in the Middle East (and elsewhere)... it forged a concept of the Deity that has all the attributes of what astrologers see as the persona of Mars and Saturn (The strict father figure who is generally quite punitive). I am drawn to the circle of the heavens and the 12 archetypal positions because they remind us that foremost, one entity does not speak for all, nor does one size fit all. And there is a reason why Jesus selected 12 disciples, and Abraham founded 12 tribes. These 12 positions are pure cosmic math, the potential trespasses of any one of them would be counter-balanced by other positions of the circle, if as societies we did not grant undue credence to the claims of this one god, made in the image and likeness of Mars-Saturn.
People like Kissinger and Brzezinski and their "Think Tanks", "Policy Groups", and "Private Organizations" have led us into three illegal and immoral wars. They used "Lies" and "False Flag Events" to send over 62,000 American soldiers to their deaths....
At no time did Viet Nam, Iraq, or Afghanistan threaten to attack the United States and none of those countries had the capacity to invade or occupy the United States......Sorry, Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11, not even the guy in the cave. (Ask William Cooper. Too late, he was a strong voice and had to be dealt with, but some of his videos are still on "You Tube".)
Wars are waged to make money: The Federal Reserve made lots of money loaning money to banks, who also made lots of money ....But companies like:GE, Halliburton, KBR, Shell, Mobil/Exxon, etc.also made lots of money. So did the mercenary companies like: Blackwater, Dyn Corp, CACI, etc.....Those mercenary companies get $1,200 per mercenary per day and the mercenary gets $365 a day...Good profit for the company and then they get to ship weapons illegally and sell them on the "black market" to the people they are fighting.
(If you have not seen "Zeitgeist", find it on "full length documentary movies".)
The "Heroes" are the boys who made it back from Iraq and became "Iraq Vets Against The War". But, then they were marginalized by the mass media and the "Political Elite" avoided contact with them.
Sioux Rose
HERBERT: I appreciate your posts as you seem an avid student of history, with a ready access to interesting facts at your disposal. Wouldn't you say this pattern goes back to the crusades where the Knights Templar financed this enterprise so the church could wage it? What is most poignant to me is the long history of religious movements using their alleged versions of God's will to deem hell and damnation on their fellow human beings. These belief systems of division, that pit tribe against tribe as is taking place today in at least 4 fronts I can think of... MUST end! When will the belief in enemies be demonstrably more costly to our souls, then the price of all the alleged amassing of "security forces" against them? My recommendation, we learn to put down arms (weapons) and learn to join hands!
I think moonpie has the best plan.
If Mississippi decided to reinstate segregation people could move to other states (territory could be taken away from less populated states and given to more populated states by a weak central government) we could all live well on much much less.
There is a national movement to restrict the National Guard from being deployed overseas by the federal government - this is a significant first step in disabling the corporate war machine as it now exists. Secondly - the all volunteer army is a farce - the author is correct. I have said this a thousand times - take away the incentives and see what you have left. Mid-level captains and majors - the guts of company command leadership - is leaving in droves - so they raise their incentives. Upper level NCOs are doing the same. I saw a young man in Iraq explaining to a tv crew why he had decided to re-enlist: jobs were tough back home, the money was good, and "I am good at my job" - this was said while he was holding a gun on an Iraqi as he lay on the ground. This is the type of moral disconnect we have nurtured in this country. We pursue the means without any ethical or moral guideposts established for the ends. We send weapons all over the world while we try to manipulate the rest of mankind into giving us their resources and denying the same to others. The fat cats get rich, and the poor have few options except to fight the wars and pretend that they are protecting democracy. And by the way folks - DEMOCRACY and CAPITALISM are not synonomous, in fact, they may very well be antithetical to one another. This is a sad farce indeed.
"Congress has now voted to speed up citizenship applications for those aliens who enlist."
This government needs to be abolished & dismantled.
All 50 governors meet, vote and abolish the federal government and then keep the ungodly amount of money they send to Washington for their own states needs. (Of course that puts an end to the federal taxes working folks and small businesses pay, too.
Its the only chance we have to stop these people.
Yes if you want anther bloody civil war! oh ya thats what we need more death, put the tin foil back on your head pal! State rights, state rights thats all you people care about, you were the authers of the last civil war which wanted to keep people as slaves because you wanted state law to trump federal, you are a dirty sussetionest just like those 140 years ago!!!!
Sandy
While I'm aware lots of recruits come from poor areas of the country, what I am angry about is why the older generations don't teach the young about the last war of lies. The best thing young people can do is read history at a very young age, so they stay home when our gov starts beating the drums for the next war. Three Vietnam era vets living in my building are all slowly dying- just wish people would grow up feeling it's patriotic to build on our democracy than kill people they have never met, just because the gov says so. Panama, Grenada, Chile, etc. This country is always at war with another! We clearly are not protecting anything but corporate interests. Let's educate our younger generation.
"The best thing young people can do is read history at a very young age"
You are absolutely right. Take the history of Rome for example.
If People in the USA read history, they would learn that the more an Empire depends on mercenaries to fight it's wars, the more incentive the Mercenary Army and the Army's commanders have to keep the war going on, and on, and on...
If people read history they might ask themselves: If the use of mercenaries was not personally benefitting the Vice President (for example), how would things be different?
All is true here. However, i sincerely wish we would stop calling everyone who joins the military our "heroes". It is patently absurd and keeps the most primitive beliefs going. Stop calling people who kill in the belief that it is noble and necessary heroic! People who say these things are part of the problem. Knock it off already!!!!
Sioux Rose
READY TO TRANSFORM: That's the point I would have tapped into. Thanks for making it. Do others sense the almost hushed indignation as tone for this article? I think because the author is raising questions about the military in a rather conservative state like North Carolina. Although he takes into account the compelling evidence that half the soldiers are mercenaries, and shows how the military apparatus fails actual soldiers after the front-end payoffs to get them in run dry; he does not actually question the military itself, its bloated size & budget, and base-network all over the world.
When we think about the financial waste on war & militarism, the unexplained billions that have gone missing in Iraq, or wasted on hired killers' contracts, or of late, given to the banksters... these appalling decisions in the face of so much homelessness and hunger in our land sadden all sentient souls.
Thanks Sioux Rose.
I totally agree, of course.
Now, i will get back on my 'original sin' soapbox and the absurdity of this primitive belief. If we believe that we are innately flawed and can't do any better, then we are going to talk about how we shouldn't need to murder and kill in order to survive, yet we don't really believe we are capable of rising above it. And we stay stuck and history keeps repeating, because we never truly question our most basic assumptions. But without original sin, the church becomes unnecessary. And the whole crucifixion/dealth cult goes out the window. That would seem to not be related, but it actually is.
The christian orthodoxy suggests that 'God' sacrificed his 'son' to redeem humankind from original sin. Human sacrifice-Roman state sponsored tortured and murder was God's vehicle (supposedly) as an act of love for all of humanity. From my point of view, this not only underlies our christian nation which accepts torture as a means of saving the masses, but it also affirms a God that would kill his own son. It is a myth that is quite barbaric and feeble minded to say the least.
Anyway, as long as we believe we are all killers at heart, we will continue to behave this way. And we won't get creative and break the pattern. After two thousand years, christianity obviously didn't work. I feel it is because the church didn't get it at all. "Be good because Jesus died for you", or obey the church so you don't go to hell. Who can grow up if that is what plays in the back of their minds?
And i am not at all an atheist. Anyone who believes that a patriarchal hierarchical organization can contain and promote an infinitely creative reality doesn't understand a darn thing, by definition.
o.k. This is partly Christmas inspired...Sorry for the rave.
Well we will see who is right and who is wrong won't we?
Sioux Rose
READY TO TRANSFORM: I am feeling the reverberations of the open wounds in Israel-Palestine and along India's border, not to mention Iraq... and to offset this, I will offer a bit of freedom. (Freudian slip? I meant to say bit of HUMOR!)
Honestly, being raised as a Jewish girl I never had what I term "The sex guilt." The premise of original sin never touched me... of course I was not CONDITIONED from the age of innocence to pay heed to it either. When my Jewish relatives gathered for the Seder in March-April, and we read from the little book (I forget its name), there is a passage about thanking God for smiting the Egyptians. And it just ripped me up for its insanity. Just as when I learned that some churches blamed the Jews for Jesus' death, that tore me up, too.
I did inherit some money guilt, however. Apparently Madoff managed to offset that one to our collective chagrin! When I visited India I was taken to a place where there were handmade rugs from Kashmir. I was told how the people would work on these stitch by stitch for weeks, and I knew I could not exit without buying something. Although I purchased one of the least expensive rugs, I laid awake at night wondering how I was going to pay off that sum now sitting on my American Express card. When I was in Singapore, I called it "my magic cup." I was promoted over there by a woman who took a comission from my lectures and private astrological readings. She told me about the "law of diminishing returns," the idea being the longer I stayed, the less interest I would find in a potential client base. But that's not how it went for me at all! The money never stopped flowing... I asked the promoter if she knew Singapore's incorporation date, or birthday and it turned out to be my own! There was powerful synergy operating. The place liked me.
I'm sure others in this forum have been to cities or other nations where things either really flowed, almost magically, or the reverse. There is a branch of astrology known as astro-cartography that explains the variables, and I find it fascinating. Point of my little anecdote was that I managed to pay off the American express rug charge. And ironically a client invited me to a fancy country club in Singapore where there was an auction. I could have gotten a much better rug there for a lesser price! Experience as teacher, definitely has its ups and downs!
Sioux Rose, we have a few things in common... Also,
When i talk about 'original sin' i know it isn't something we all consciously buy into. I never have nor was i directly taught as such. But our entire civilization reflects that assumption. It is within our social systems themselves. It is so very endemic.
In a sense it has translated into the sin of nonconformity. People feel so insecure that those who are different are threatening to them. Also,
It means we really can't trust ourselves(we feel) or anyone else, because we are all 'bad' by virtue of our very physical personhood. The duality belief is part of the 'sinful' self perspective. The belief that we can't stop building weapons because someone will always be wanting to destroy us.
People are so frightened of their own anger and often are afraid they will be destructive if they confront it and feel it completely. Yet, the deeper cause of violence is a sense of disempowerment that comes from constanly denying and burying one's rage. But, the deep feeling of being innately flawed and untrustworthy causes people to be constantly afraid of their own natural emotions. And then we have all sorts of unhealthy behavior and projections, etc.
The belief in needing to be destructive in order to survive is so apparantly absurd, isn't it? It shows a complete lack of creativity. There is always a creative and constructive solution if we get beyond the constraints of limiting beliefs.
Enough said! ;-)
" ... but it also affirms a God that would kill his own son."
Maybe we really are "made in the image of god" since we are killing our own sons and daughters as well as those of the Iraqis and the Afghans in order to "save" them.
Or maybe evil and killing are so common place, so accepted, so ingrained in the human psyche, that we can only imagine a god that would kill his own son in order to "save" us since he or she or it apparently couldn't come up with some other way. Being onmipotent and all, it must be that killing was the only possible way toward "salvation".
But then, what do I know, being a mere mortal and all.
-- ekaton aka d.k.shaw