#NotAllSoldiers?
By Mickey Z.
12 June, 2014
Worldnewstrust.com
Photo credit: Mickey Z.
In early June, a news story broke about a noncommissioned sexual-assault prevention officer at Fort Hood recruiting “cash-strapped” female soldiers to join a prostitution ring. Of course, anyone paying even an iota of attention would not be shocked to learn that misogyny, patriarchy, and sexual exploitation thrives within a misogynist, patriarchal, sexually exploitative institution.
However, as the story made the media rounds, it drew predictable comments (even from lefties) warning us to not stereotype all troops and to not forget the good soldiers -- echoes of the recent post-UCSB shooting “not all men” backlash.
Obviously, “not all soldiers” are running prostitution rings or committing war crimes but, rather than engage in a debate about which volunteer mercenaries are good and which are not, I’d prefer to take a big picture view and discuss the entire structure.
Premise #1: The U.S. Department of Defense (sic) -- the interventionist institution formerly known as the War Department -- is a vast and growing criminal enterprise.
From My Lai to Hiroshima, from Fallujah to No Gun Ri, from Dresden to Mogadishu -- across almost every inch of the globe -- the United States military has been and remains responsible for atrocities, oppression, and mass slaughter.
Horrendous, ongoing war crimes aside, the Department of Defense (DoD) is also the worst polluter on Planet Earth. For example: Releasing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined while simultaneously showing callous indifference for human and non-human species like, say, whales.
To add insult to injury, the world's worst polluter -- the entity wrecking havoc upon the landbase that makes all life possible -- also gobbles up at least half of U.S. tax dollars each year. Can anyone possibly calculate the violence, poverty, inequality, disease, and misery that results from the choice to allocate so much money towards death instead of life?
This is but a minute sampling of the carnage wrought by the DoD.
Premise #2: Those even remotely aware of the criminality perpetrated by DoD but still enlist to take part should not be “supported” by any justice-minded individual.
The Left praised Vietnam era draftees who fled to Canada yet typically gives a free pass to today’s volunteer warriors. Somehow, individuals and groups can stand tall against war and military intervention but refuse to shine a light on those who choose (and get paid) to fight. Nowhere else in the realm of activism does such a paradox exist.
Consider the animal rights activists struggling to end the morally indefensible and scientifically fraudulent enterprise of animal experimentation. Can they expose the corporations and academic institutions but somehow "support" the actual scientists performing the lab experiments? Surely, they are "just doing their job" and “following orders.”
How about those fighting to end unfair labor practices? Is it acceptable to call out the CEOs of Nike and The Gap but hang yellow ribbons for those who handle day-to-day operations of a sweatshop in, say, Vietnam? These men and women are just as “stuck in a bad situation” as any grunt in Afghanistan.
Those who volunteer for the U.S. military are directly and indirectly signing up for and endorsing: Daisy Cutters, cluster bombs, and predator drones; depleted uranium, napalm, and white phosphorus; launching cruise missiles into crowded cities, blowing up dams to deliberately flood rice paddies and starve civilians, shooting enemy soldiers after they’ve surrendered, destroying villages in order to save them, etc. etc. etc.
Yeah, I know what comes next: “Our troops are just following orders.”
By activating the Google function on your interwebs machine, you'll easily find many reasons why this concept has no legal basis. For example, Principle IV of Nuremberg Tribunal (1950) states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” (And I hope I don't have to explain that the “only following orders” excuse has no moral footing.)
Define “Support”
While most American citizens -- even if they identify as “antiwar” -- are manipulated, harassed, coerced, and guilted into hanging yellow ribbons, generation after generation of U.S. military personnel has suffered a distinct lack of support from their own government (and the corporations that fund it). Our (sic) troops are just as controlled and exploited as the U.S. citizens programmed to worship them.
Premise #3: Contrary to all the hype, virtually no one actually supports the troops.
Yellow ribbons, flag-waving, repressive laws, peer pressure, and loud chants of "USA" don’t qualify as support. Rather, this is self-policed obedience orchestrated by a corporate-dominated state.
Here’s something else that doesn’t qualify as “support”: Radical activists being awestruck by the veterans within their ranks. Veterans -- whether they are activists or not -- don’t need such superficial backing when realities like this exist:
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the number of suicides among people serving in the armed forces has jumped more than 25 percent since 2005. In 2010 alone, 454 service members killed themselves in combat zones.
Life doesn't get easier for those who make it home. About one-third of the adult homeless population is veterans and, according to the VA, is 95 percent male, mostly likely to be: single; hail from an urban area; and suffer from mental illness, alcohol and/or substance abuse, or co-occurring disorders.
Another 1.5 million veterans, says the VA, are considered at risk of homelessness due to "poverty and lack of support networks."
Yes, you read that correctly: "lack of support networks."
More VA stats:
>> 107,000 veterans are homeless on any given night.
>> Over the course of a year, approximately twice that many experience homelessness.
>> Only 8 percent of the general population can claim veteran status, but nearly 20 percent of the homeless population is made up of veterans.
Despite the government’s demonstrated unwillingness to truly support volunteer soldiers, Americans continue to enlist -- and this shouldn’t surprise anyone. We grow up watching war movies and playing with guns. We're surrounded by war memorials and war monuments, and are taught to obey and fear those in uniform. We witness the demonizing of those who oppose war. Our media is overrun with militaristic fervor. Our tax dollars finance war and pro-war propaganda. Our government passes laws designed to thwart dissent.
Even if we remain immune to wartime spin and propaganda -- even if we don't buy into the story that America has been dragged into conflict after conflict and perpetually left with no choice but to wage a humanitarian war against a savage enemy -- we still face the guilt factor of the "support the troops" peer pressure, e.g. no matter what we think or how we feel, once the actual fighting begins, all Americans must unite behind our troops to insure their safety through victory.
Reality check: The "support the troops" mantra specifically ignores any real examination of who those troops are, what those troops are doing in war zones, what happens to them when they come home, and why many of us don’t want them waging war in the first place. In other words, when we're told to "support the troops," we are, in essence, being compelled to support the policies that exploit those troops.
Inform the Troops
An excellent way to truly “support” the troops would be to inform them. Imagine if every soldier today knew what U.S. Marine Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler knew all the way back in the 1930s.
Calling war "possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, sure the most vicious" racket of all, Butler declared:
“It is the only [racket] in which profits are reckoned in dollars and losses in lives.” Summing up his career, he said: "I spent 33 years...being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism...I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico … safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of a half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street."
Reminder: It takes more than obscene amounts of taxpayer subsidies to keep this criminal enterprise afloat. It also takes more than the volunteers willing to be paid to wage illegal, immoral, and eco-system-destroying wars. The DoD is be able to maintain its crime spree because most of us continue to unconditionally support (sic) the troops.
As long as the yellow ribbons fly, the future of most life on earth remains in doubt. So, yeah, I’m not interested in debates (sic) about “not all soldiers.”
But if you wanna talk about how to dismantle the DoD and work towards a more just and cooperative culture, I’m all ears.
#shifthappens
Mickey Z. is the author of 12 books, most recently Occupy this Book: Mickey Z. on Activism. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on a couple of obscure websites called Facebook and Twitter. Anyone wishing to support his activist efforts can do so by making a donation here.
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