Re: Re: Quaker/Buddhist goes AWOL

On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 [email protected] wrote:

> ...
>
> And on the twit's comment that he did not want to be a pawn of political
> idealogy, name me one war that wasn't based on political idealogy.
> Whether we were fighting communism, fascism, internal issues such as
> slavery or fighting against Britain, it has always been based on
> political idealogy.  Now we can split hairs over which wars were just
> ones but let's be honest here. Even if we fight North Korea, it will be
> to stamp out the last stronghold of Stalinist Communism.
>
> ...

what you've named are political mythologies not ideologies.  these are how
you get people to enlist, get drafterd or vote for war (neither of which
are self-determined habits).  most people in the services are there under
the pretext of some (albeit expanded) notion of "defense".

granted, a white buddhist army grunt who is *able* to move to canada is
not a case-study of u.s. conscripts.  this single situation overlooks the
"stop gap" measures (the "new draft"), the benefit (health care and
family) -dependencies, the over-representation of poor and people of color
(the "economic draft), the new reliance on reservists and a host of other
instiutional measures that fuck with service members who on top are
fighting an overtly bull shit war.

to hold vietnam vets as some romantic standard but consider the "War on
Terrorism's" troops as a bunch of nincampoops with poor decision skills
and bad career portfolios is monday morning quarterback syndrome.

the service people who want to leave Iraq will be people who can't go
AWOL, can't afford to get out of the serice (have dependent families), and
will be rooted with varieties of bad politics, but will now be acting on
the best information one could have: a real idea what the empire is
fighting for.

i'd call off your individualistic way of looking at how people join the
military, as if it is some simple adventurous choice to choose a moral
life path.  of course we can tell these "rainy day" foot soldier's "we
told you so", but we and nobody else really did.  schools allow ROTC in
them.  and moms of enlistees usually respond with, "that's great" and
dads, "way to go son/daughter". they probably have more in common with us
then you'd believe.  it's easy to want to poke fun at these "stop gap"
dodgers, and keep our distance from them.  that works well for the defense
department. i think it's best we reach out.

"an army of one" is their bull shit, not ours.
/a
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