CHAPTER ONE
War is a Racket
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
– From Major General Smedley Butler’s War is a Rackett
This is one of the most important articles I will write all year. The statists are coming for your kids, and the conditioning has already begun.
Last night, I came across one of the most horrifying articles I have ever read, which is saying a lot. Before I get into it, take a look at the title and the tagline:
If you think the title is bad, wait until you read the article. What becomes evident is that this grotesque concept of forced “national service” is being actively discussed at the highest levels of government. What Ron Fournier is doing in his National Journal article is conditioning the public to accept something that is completely unacceptable.
Before we get to that, who is Ron Fournier? National Journal provides a bio:
Ron Fournier is the Senior Political Columnist and Editorial Director of National Journal. Prior to joining NJ, he worked at the Associated Press for 20 years, most recently as Washington Bureau Chief. A Detroit native, Fournier began his career in Arkansas, first with the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record and then with the Arkansas Democrat and the AP, where he covered the state legislature and Gov. Bill Clinton. In January 1993, Fournier moved to Washington, where he covered the White House and presidential campaigns for the AP.
So basically, this guy covered Bill Clinton in Arkansas, moved to the District of Criminals after he was elected President, and now wants to convince you to subject your innocent children into mandatory service to a nation provably run by corrupt criminals and oligarchs.
It sure is some twisted notion of “shared sacrifice,” when those who had nothing to do with the disastrous choices made by the oligarchy are the ones who have to suffer the consequences.
Let’s now take this piece of Nazi-esque propaganda apart piece by piece. From the National Journal:
I know a better way to fight ISIS. It starts with an idea that should appeal the better angels of both hawks and doves: National service for all 18- to 28-year-olds.
Require virtually every young American—the civic-minded millennial generation—to complete a year of service through programs such as Teach for America, AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, or the U.S. military, and two things will happen:
First of all, he confidently proclaims that this scheme will appeal to both hawks and doves. Based on what evidence? Let me provide some evidence against his argument based on a recent Rasmussen poll that 45% of U.S. Voters Concerned Government Will Use Military Training Exercises for Power Grab. Here’s an excerpt from the findings:
Just 20% of voters now consider the federal government a protector of individual liberty. Sixty percent (60%) see the government as a threat to individual liberty instead. Only 19% trust the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time.
So the American public has no confidence in government, but somehow they are going to gladly line up to serve the corrupt oligarchy? Of course not, which is why people like Ron Fornier want to make it mandatory. Now back to the piece…
1. Virtually every American family will become intimately invested in the nation’s biggest challenges, including poverty, education, income inequality, and America’s place in a world afire.
2. Military recruiting will rise to meet threats posed by ISIS and other terrorist networks, giving more people skin in a very dangerous game.
This may seem like a radical plan until you compare it with two alternatives: the status quo, which clearly isn’t working, or a military draft, which might be the boldest and fairest way to wage the long war against Islamic extremists.
Notice how he offers us only three options, as if that is all the imaginative well of humanity is capable of coming up with. Forced national service, the status quo or a draft. Nowhere does he offer the logical alternative of say: stop preemptively invading and destroying countries for no reason (Iraq, Libya to name a few). Perhaps then idiotic foreign policy decisions won’t create ISIS in the first place.
This is an important lesson in how statists operate. They only offer you statist choices. Kind of like being forced to choose between a Clinton and a Bush for President.
The Draft Act is highly unlikely to be law, given the nation’s post-Vietnam resistance to the mandatory military service and the relative success of an all-volunteer armed forces. Which leads me to the year-of-service plan: It stops far short of a draft while drawing on the ethos of communal sacrifice.
Notice how he cleverly started the piece by mentioning the Peace Corps, Teach for America, etc, and only listed the military at the end? Pure smoke and mirrors. His entire point is to push for mandatory military service. No one wants to fight any more unnecessary wars to boost corporate profits, and any statist worth his or her salt knows full well mandatory conscription will be necessary in order to maintain the power position and wealth of the status quo going forward.
Finally, just in case you think this is merely some hack journalist mouthing off, Mr. Fournier makes it clear that this is being discussed at the highest levels of government.
I spoke about the concept with retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and now chairs the Franklin Project, part of the Aspen Institute that is trying to position a year of full-time national service—a service year—as a “cultural expectation, a common opportunity, and a civic rite of passage for every young American.” His logic tracks with mine.
Second, if this president or his successor gets serious about ISIS, McChrystal said the effort would require an international coalition and more U.S. troops. “Even if we didn’t need a draft” to drum up the required troops, McChrystal said, “I would argue we need a draft, because it forces national commitment.”
Forced national commitment to a government nobody believes in. Can’t wait to see how that works out.
“A problem in America is we’ve let the concept of citizenship diminish into a series of gripes,” McChrystal told me. “One of the ways we can rebuild that sense of ownership, sense of shared ownership, is through experience, and so I believe that every young person deserves—I don’t think this is an onerous thing—deserves the experience of being part of something bigger than themselves.”
No General McChrystal, we have let the concept of democracy diminish into a corrupt, thieving oligarchy. In case you need proof: New Report from Princeton and Northwestern Proves It: The U.S. is an Oligarchy.
Furthermore, you don’t “rebuild ownership” by forcing citizens to serve an oligarchy they hate, you “rebuild ownership” by dismantling the oligarchy.
Bowing to political realities in risk-averse Washington, the Franklin Project aims to make a service year a social expectation rather than a legal requirement. I would mandate it. So would McChrystal—if he had his way.
Statists gonna state.
While ISIS and other terrorist groups are having no trouble recruiting suicide bombers, McChrystal said, Americans are struggling to redefine their national identity for the 21st century. “A year of service for young Americans would be a step,” he said. “Not a panacea, a step.”
This paragraph unintentionally says a lot. You want to fight an army of radical volunteers created by your own foreign policy crimes by forcing people who have no trust in their government to join the military? It’s an idea so stupid and destructive, only a rabid statist could conceive it.
Before concluding, I want to emphasize how dangerous this line of thinking is. It is precisely because I see these sorts of things coming down the road, that I do what I do with this website. The only way to stop statist plans like these is to win the war of ideas before they have a chance to dazzle you with their next bit of propaganda.
Stay vigilant and keep fighting.
For related articles, see:
Accusations Emerge That the U.S. Is Aiding ISIS – The Latest “Conspiracy Theory” Circulating in Iraq
Jeb Bush Exposed Part 1 – His Top Advisors Will Be the Architects of His Brother’s Iraq War
Leon Panetta, Head of Pentagon and C.I.A. Under Obama, Says Brace for 30 Year War with ISIS
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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Didn’t Charlie Rangel call for something similar last year or so? Anyway its always funny to see warmongers who support state slavery when they or their kids are exempt from it.
Yes, he did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZwJrnAXOMo
Parents/Family that allows their kids in this day and age of knowledge and bullshit to enter the meat grinder for Elite Scum/Money Changers should deserve the grinder for themselfs.
Many people miss the connection between the downward spiral of the US economy, the sky rocketing increase in student loan debt (with a diminishing ROI) and military conscription. Give them no options… the mandatory service is an opportunity to further indoctrinate the youth beyond the control of parents. I joined the Navy after high school in the ’90s as a way to pay for school. The purpose of bootcamp is to tear you down as an individual and build you up as a “soldier”. At one point, I asked “Why are we were being taught how to shave and wipe our asses but nothing about the Constitution of the United States of America, that we all swore allegiance to support and defend against ALL enemies foreign and DOMESTIC?” Can you guess how that went over in Gen. McChrystal’s military?
Remember Frances Willard’s words in in 1893, “The department of Scientific Temperance Instruction, conducted by the W.C.T.U., and led by Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, of Boston, has now made such instruction (Temperance, 19th century DARE) mandatory in thirty-six States of the Republic. This is a very large and substantial triumph of the broad and progressive policy…But we must remember that, after all, these are but the days of small beginnings compared with what 20 more years shall show. Doubtless if we could see the power to which this movement of women’s hearts for the protection of their hearthstones shall attain in the next generation.”
The triumph of “Progressive indoctrination” of the American youth was Constutional amendments 16-19. And the shared sacrifice of The Great War.
Israel has compulsory military service. 3 years for men, 2 years for women.
Even though only about 50% of the population actually serves due to the various and obvious deferments/exemptions, the policy has a profound effect on the social culture of the citizenry and does indeed instill a sense of inclusion in the “nationhood” and a personal responsibility for its protection.
Every Israeli border is shared with a nation with whom they’ve seen active hostilities within the last 60 years. Given such a history and current situation, it is difficult to categorize such a policy of compulsory service as anything but common sense.
And the same holds true for the United States of America…
Wait… uhhh… hmmm… yeah, nevermind… forget I said anything.
“the policy has a profound effect on the social culture of the citizenry and does indeed instill a sense of inclusion in the ‘nationhood’”
of course compulsory service is common sense. but I would suggest that the nationhood and sense of inclusion exists long before the policy, and that is why it works. the policy cannot create nationhood and the sense of inclusion. this policy, in the absence of pre-existing nationhood and sense of inclusion, is nothing more than slavery.
The Democrats have been trying to get a universal draft for ages. Charles Rangel and Jim McDermott,two of the most liberal Dems in Congress, were calling for it. The Republicans forced the bill to a vote during the 2004 election, and the Dems were outraged, becuase, of course, it got defeated.
Michael Moore, who did the move Farenheit 911, was also in favor of a universal draft. The first half of the movie was about the ties between the Bush family and Osama bin Laden and the Cargill Group.
The second half of the movie was about how working-class military families were losign their kids, but rich Repubicans were not. I was shocked at how strong Moore was pushing the universal draft, so I went back and interviewed everyone lined up to watch the movie. Of the over 300 people I asked, only one person thought a universal draft was a good idea, and his friends gave him a hard time, and he changed his vote.
It was harded to get them as they were leaving, because they were on the move, but of the ones I talked to, about half were supportive of a universal draft after watching the movie.
The Liberals love the idea of creating a military culture.
Don’t kid yourself, the US already has a pervasive and pernicious military culture.
The “liberals” to whom you refer aren’t necessarily intending to further that culture. I will concede they are taking a round-about, essentially spineless, way to diminish it.
The question is: IF we are to continue our course of perpetual war who will actually do the fighting/dying?
The point is, will the military continue to be voluntarily staffed (mainly) by those with no other economic prospects or will forcing the kids of all economic classes into “harms way” possibly start a populist groundswell calling for cuts in the harm-making.
Your 299+1 anecdote about disfavor for a universal draft nicely proves the point.
———–
Note universal military draft is different from universal national service.
I think it is way overdue to have both NGO’s participating in state affairs (Stanley Blumenthal for example…)and official government officials to choose one nationality. There is a very good reason we are defending the Middle East and it ain’t about Kansas. Do a quick search of the dual citizenship of many of the PNAC signers. They are conflicted.
Pretty sure, to a man or woman, all that question the MENA conflicts are only American passport holders. Odd. Not conflicted. The RP types….Dual masters is no way to go.
American Passport only, please. Fix that and most of this BS goes away….then again, start drafting people for this BS and you’ll get Kent State 2.0.
Neocons….Nazi’s redux, ironically heavily Israeli….stick around long enough and nothing surprises.
They will use fresh immigrants to serve as a condition of citizenship.
Start with those who fit “a nation provably run by corrupt criminals and oligarchs.” That would include all of those who have for over sixty years abusively applied the state secrets privilege and related doctrine, act, executive order, regulation and related policy abuses. Are you listening Dick Cheney.
I hate it when these self-serving pariahs (on human lives and the public purse) use patriotism and duty to further their own selfish agendas. They are truly scum. Thumbs Up for seeing this for what it is and trashing it.
Thank you, Michael. Well said.
Gotta love the rhetoric about “rebuilding ownership”, “shared sacrifice” and “social expectation”.” In less deceptive words: we want to fool you into thinking that a problem we needlessly created is your personal responsibility. It’s true that you are just as likely to be killed by a falling rock from outer space as to be killed by a terrorist, but nevertheless, this “terrorist problem” (that we intentionally created, and continue to fund and support) will require every young person in the country to service in some way. And all of this will result in a sense of “community” as we confront a “common foe.” Classic.
What they seem to underestimate is the degree to which Americans are demonstrably insouciant – phenomenally so! But you never know, if you can get the NFL and the Kardashians to pitch it… Better yet, frame it as a way to reduce unemployment and pay off student loans (to put those spoiled and irresponsible grads to work!). Spun correctly, I have little doubt that you can fool Americans into believing just about anything is in their own best interest; and it is even easier to get them to believe that someone else doing something is in everyone’s best interest. But you nailed it, Michael, limiting the options and employing the either-or fallacy almost always works when the majority of the population has been engineered to be unable to think critically.
I know you write this blog every day with the best intentions, and I absolutely admire you having the stamina to do it. I know I couldn’t. But don’t you sometimes wish you didn’t have to? I mean, wouldn’t it be nice if you could trust your countrymen to read Ron Fournier and immediately see his bizarre notions as antediluvian, retrograde, and patently insane? Dare to dream.
Thanks a lot Johnathan. I wish all the time I didn’t have to do this. My nature is actually to just want to live my life and be left alone. Problem is, I can see that this will not be possible at all in the future if the current trends play out. So I feel like I have no choice, and it is my duty to do this. Thanks for appreciating my work.
Why destroy just those 18-28?
How about this delusional jack-ass & I both go overseas together to fight?
We can call it Operation Delusional DouchBags.
What happened to the old standby “Economic sanctions against those states which support terrorism”? We know who they are. They are not the American Millenials. The few misguided souls who join ISIL/IS/ISIS or to fight against them don’t realize they are fodder either way.
ISIS Camp a Few Miles from Texas, Mexican Authorities Confirm …
http://www.judicialwatch.org/ blog/ 2015/ 04/ isis-camp-a-few-miles-from-texas-mexican-authorities-confirm/
April 14, 2015… ISIS is operating a camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, … has established its base is around eight miles from the U.S. border in an area …
(Hasn’t it now become obvious which side our federal government will support as ISIS is ‘allowed’ to invade the USA and as the effort to dis-arm US citizens is stepped up? What next ‘false flag’ will coincide with ISIS on our streets, EMP or dirty bomb?)
American warplanes strike Iraqi Army bases in Fallujah IN SUPPORT OF ISIS
Fars News Agency
english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940316001210 Proxy Highlight
Jun 6, 2015 … US Warplanes Strike Iraqi Army Bases in Fallujah, Kill 6 Soldiers … The US-led coalition warplanes hit the bases of Iraqi army’s Hezbollah …
When will our military oath keepers wake up?
For the predictive programming aspect I would point you to Starship Troopers- how long til military service becomes a REQUIREMENT for citizenship? I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that is the ultimate goal. Be on the lookout for tv and movies pushing this kind of meme.
I like that idea. 15 million illegal aliens serving for 50 years ought to fix everything.
“Better angels of their nature”? Where have I heard this before in the past week? Why, Samantha Power, addressing her quasi- and full-fascist buddies in Ukraine [see, Justin Raimondo]. A new White House meme has been hatched!
In the first place, the US got rid of draft precisely because it forced national commitment and the nation was getting commitedly anti-war. Or at least, anti-getting-your-own-hands-dirty-and-putting-your-own-life-on-the-line… The winds haven’t changed since then. They may want to nuke Russia, the middle east, every other corner of the earth and their neighbor, but they don’t want to go and ‘fight’.
young people have plenty of trust in the govenrment. they don’t know any better and their moron american parents are too busy watching football to know any better most of the time.
the youth will be harvested. those who volunteer recieve benefits (welfare) and they get praise on television and media that people actually listen to and immitate and believe in as brainwashed sheeple who believe the values they possess , are their own , rather than coming from somewehre other than the implantation television/media tools.
th eimpoversiehd masses of youth who don’t want to volunteer will get all the cheap marijauana they can smoke and cheap mcdonalds and television they can eat and watch—— and they can enjoy complaining and voicing their opinions ad infinitum.
all you need are a few million volunteers. young and not too obese.
you give americans too much credit.
I think this is what we need, a national draft for everyone. It builds character and if anything that is what the post-Viet Nam generations sorely needed.
I agree. Killing other human beings in preemptive corporate wars for private profit is just what we need. Lots of character.
@Ron Fournier here’s some advice for you: You should eat a bag of dicks!
I think a real discussion needs to be had about who and how ISIS was created and who and how they are supported before any military action is taken.
Strange that there is a comment section here but apparently not at the National Journal.
If the oligarchs want to have mandatory conscription, I say let’s start by first FORCING all of the Senators and Congressmen who vote for such madness, to go to the front lines and do the fighting themselves.
With all due respect, if the USD and economy crash, “universal national service” might not be a bad idea. Of course, the “service” won’t be for the nation. It will be for the Oligarchy. Still, the weapons are so expensive these days, that the “nation” could never afford to equip more than 100,000 soldiers. The rest of them will be standing around looking stupid while “guarding” bridges and federal buildings. More “do nothing” “pay nothing” work in the old USSA.
If a recipient responds to a Selective Service Notification with:
CAN SOMEONE THERE SHOW ME HOW TO SIGN THIS DOCUMENT WITHOUT WAVING ANY OF MY CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED AND SECURED UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, they WILL NOT answer AND THE PROBLEM WILL GO AWAY. Send it Certified with Return Receipt Requested and keep copies of everything if it should ever be needed in the future. It has worked well in the past. Bob
Fuck service to others. The hell with them!
Service isn’t genuine or moral if it’s mandatory.
I see this as a good thing in a way. It will get some physically fit people, hopefully can reduce the burden on the health care. Most are clueless their diet is doing more harm than good.
Reminds me of a Boss I had, Always using the term “we” when referring to some crappy job needing done.. when the reality was It was ME who was going to be doing it.
While I too think that every young person in The U.S. should serve a minimum of 2 years, and not be able to enter college before the 2 years is completed. If the Military needs more people, they need only lower the requirements for entry. I know several that cannot get in because they didn’t score high enough on the test. I know two that scored high enough but have a GED, and were told to get 16 college credits and come back. I know several that are in and went in just to get a reliable job. There are kids wanting to get into the service but have a minor criminal charge and are refused because of it. A shame, but the kids don’t know till it’s to late that one boo boo on your criminal record and you are banished from being successful for the rest of your life. I know of a couple young men that are refused to serve because they have bad credit. lets not give the kid a job serving his country that will get him straightened out financially!
This goes on and on, a real shame!
That’s one way for young folks to learn about how messed up the government is. I know serving sure did open my eyes/brain, To the BS people are being served.
I tell kids to join up, But choose a job that doesn’t involve being shot at.
But then again,It could just be Obama’s version of needing brown shirts like Hitler had.
There are multiple perspectives to this issue. I agree with General Butler. Our government politicians’ world view is “use anything available to start wars”.
I do not have an objection to national service. It needn’t be military. I grew up under the draft. I was a volunteer. What I noticed was those who served were generally more invested in their country than those who did not. Yeah, I’ll admit being a naive patriot. It comes from generations of familiy who served.
Would I do it again? Perhaps not. There is nothing I would change about the values acquired through the experience. It was an honor to have served. I wish my country’s leaders had honor.
Without honor, it is all downhill.
…a year of full-time national service—a service year—as a “cultural expectation, a common opportunity, and a civic rite of passage for every young American.”
Well said, Gen. McChrystal ! (I joke, of course)… His above quote, and his other quotes in this article, has the ring of a 1930’s ‘public works scheme’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS4pmfLWiz8
And many countries ran them back then.
Young adults will start off in ‘Teach for America, AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, …(but after all the training, will end up in)…the U.S. military..,’
The government will give amnesty to the illegal immigrants in country now , use them in the military , then the communist in the White House will use some disaster or what he can to declare Martial Law , and use the new “citizens” to fight against anyone who try’s to fight back against the government , the reason is at this point they now realize that they cannot pull the wool over folks eyes like they used to , and they have no recourse but to use physical force against the people to push us to accept total government control . Be prepared and ready . Keep your powder dry .
Warmonger John “Insane” McCain is hard at work
Am I the only one who sees the obvious flaw here? We don’t have a recruitment problem. Its difficult to get in right now and hard to stay in compared to my first ten years. If we weren’t meeting goals, I could see discussing mandatory service but at this point it is ludicrous unless we are planning a major boost in military strength that we can’t afford and wouldn’t be productive in an asymmetrical war scenario anyway. This is someone talking to hear himself talk or stir up trouble.
Wasn’t the most deadly and vicious war the United States ever fought at least partially about the horrors of involuntary servitude? Isn’t conscription for some sort of national service also involuntary servitude? Why was slavery such a bad idea 150 years ago and such a good idea now?
Looking back during the Vietnam war… I recall at basic training no one asked or questioned why we were there. To do so you would be a coward or worse a traitor. I do recall in basic training there were times I woke up at 500am in the morning, as everyone did to find several bunks in the barracks were empty. I recall the bunks beds were disguised as if someone was sleeping there. We never heard about these guys or what happened. As soon as the day began we forgot them. No one talked about it but I recall the look on the other recruits faces. Likely the same as mine. Stoic.
I recall the peace movement in California at the time but never understood why these guys, mostly musicians were not fighting or being called up? Now I think I know. They were “exempted” from military service courtesy of uncle Sam. Why? Because the goverment saw the danger that this peace movement would have if it caught on. They stopped it but using these musicians, to paint them as evil dangerous non patriots, when in fact the musicians themselves were aware of this agenda but the sex drugs and rock and roll was so good. How could you say “no” to a young sexy girl grabbing you in all the wrong places.
Remember Jim Morrison? His father was a rear US Navy Admiral that helped to start the Vietnam war by lying about the “Tonkin” incident that got us into Vietnam. Jim Morrison was never called up and neither were any of these “peace makers”. They knew and so did the fathers. The CIA was behind it all, but I was so young and did not understand…. Yeah peace and love and flowers in your hair. Our country is done.
I have nothing but respect and admiration for the young men and women who serve in our armed forces and risk their lives in service to their country. But I’m old enough to remember another time and another war and to remember that we had the power to end a bad war because we all were part of the army that fought it. And when enough of us said no, that war had to end and the killing had to stop. We also ended the military draft and brought about the creation of the Volunteer Army and the beginning of the separation and marginalization of the people who fight for us and the loss of our power, as a sovereign people, to decide what wars we fight and why. We lost the power of “no”, because we were no longer necessary to say yes.
I hated the military draft, and I would hate it again, because no government should be able to compel any of us to kill against our beliefs and our will. But I do not hate the idea of national service, and think that it offers us all a way back to a sense of community and shared sacrifice, as well as mutual help and succor. I also understand the need for a strong military for the defense of our country when that is needed. So I would propose a program of mandatory National service, with a military option, for all young men and women, either upon their graduation from high school or their graduation from two or four years of college. We could use that opportunity to reinvigorate VISTA and the Peace Corp and medical clinics and teacher aid programs and all the variety of things that we need to do for each other as a society, as well as create an army of citizen soldiers whose first loyalty would always be to the cities and towns and rural communities they came from and would return to. We could sweeten the pot by forgiving college loans for young folks who participated or pay for college if they haven’t already gone.
Just a thought on this Veterans Day, as we remember those who fought and died (and the ones who lived and came home….) and think about how to deal with the human costs of the wars we seem to be unable to extricate ourselves from as we go forward. And maybe to take back the power to extricate ourselves if we decide it is time to do so.
I have more faith in my country than you do, and I’m a liberal. But, like I said, I also remember ending a war and how we did that. All governments require our acquiescence in order to pursue it’s projects, war foremost among them, but if we refrain from participating and let a small cadre of people do our fighting for us, then we have marginalized ourselves, and our acquiescence becomes unnecessary. That’s the power of the citizen army, and we have lost that. And if we still believe in the nation and the common life of the nation, then we all have common responsibilities above and beyond wearing uniforms and carrying arms. We have our friends and neighbors to take care of, and that is what communities are made of. Pardon my idealism, but I’m probably a lot older than you and have learned that cynicism is a self fulfilling dead end. If you give up, my brother, then it is over. I was all alone at 20 years old, in the belly of the beast. facing down screaming drill sergeants and the threat of federal prison for refusing a direct order, but I stood my ground, would not take a gun, and found support and encouragement from my fellow soldiers. I was part of movement that ended a war and brought my brothers home. And I saw it succeed and I know how and why it succeeded. And it had something to do with loving my country for what it could be and aspired to be, and insisting that it live up to it’s ideals. And, at least for a moment in time…it did. It can do so again. We just have to take back our power. By taking back our responsibility.
Sorry, Tap, we are probably the same age. I have a different memory of my Army service then you do. And I was one of those people who probably should have been “disappeared” in the middle of the night. But I wasn’t, and I found allies and supporters there. And some of those kids turned in their weapons too. And in the end, I won and they had to release me. Not without spending some time in the stockade and facing a courts martial, but ultimately they found it better to have me gone than have me there. But the will to fight that war was gone, in soldiers in the states and soldiers in Vietnam, and they finally had to leave. But they created a “volunteer” army than could insulate them from the unrest and discontent of the society they drew their soldiers from and make the wars they fought something done by people most of us didn’t see and didn’t know, not our kids and our brothers and sisters and our friends and neighbors. And without the power of participation we lost the power to decide where we fight and what we fight for. We let too many other people to do too many things for us that we should be doing for ourselves and for each other. That is the power and duty of citizenship. And that is neither conservative nor liberal. It’s simply American. We can take that power back anytime we want
This idea for national service is not a “military draft”. Far from it. If you don’t want to kill folks, you don’t have to kill folks. There are other ways to serve your country. I was drafted while I was serving as a VISTA volunteer, setting up learning centers and alternative schools for kids in a black community in Omaha, but my draft board didn’t call that “alternative service” and refused to defer me. I never had any problem with the duties of citizenship and serving my country….I just disputed the forms that that service had to take, and I was particularly resistant to the particular war they wanted me to tote a gun and kill in. And at the time I was probably a supporter of the idea of a volunteer army, it’s only in retrospect that I understand that as Nixon’s revenge. Maybe they made him get of of Vietnam, but future Presidents wouldn’t have to worry about massive resistance or soldiers infected with the anti-war virus from back home. They would just keep their army small and “professional” and make sure nobody white or middle class or suburban would have their bright futures threatened by the unwelcome interruption of pesky wars. That’s for po’ folks kids. Who need the money and don’t have all those great opportunities just waiting for them. And we have had more wars, albeit with smaller footprints than Vietnam, since that time. Afghanistan has gone on for 14 years and shows no signs of ever ending. If white kids from the suburbs were being conscripted to fight that one, do you think it would still be going on? That’s why I want a citizen army, but I don’t want anybody to be compelled to kill and I also understand that we strengthen our bonds as a community when we understand citizenship as an honor and a duty to take care of each other and gladly take it on. That also devolves power, because lots of social service obligations done by paid bureaucrats become acts of caring done by our friends and neighbors and children. So my proposal is for (mandatory, yes…) national service with a military option and a guarantee of a free education in exchange for the time and effort you put in.