The Exploitation of the American Soldier: Part I of II

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The Exploitation of the American Soldier: Part I of II

 

 

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The Exploitation of the American Soldier: Part I of II: Of Caste

Drafts and Society's Complicity

Manuel Valenzuela

 

 

Thursday, August 18, 2005

 

 

I repost The Exploitation of the American Soldier, originally

published 27 December 2003, in honor of Cindy Sheehan and all other

Mother's who have lost a child in this most illegal of wars, based on

nothing but lies, condemning thousands to premature death and

thousands more to the psychological trauma of post traumatic stress.

All for the power, greed and wealth of elites. If you so choose, you

can read Part II of this essay by going to the January 2004 archives:

http://valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/2004/01/exploitation-

of-american-soldier-part.html .

 

 

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is

the first and only object of good government… The mass of mankind has

not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few to ride

them. – Thomas Jefferson

 

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance

prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an

organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons

nor property will be safe. – Frederick Douglass

 

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant

facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For

a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and

falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people

…The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single

dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free

nations and free men. … Mankind must put an end to war or war will put

an end to mankind. – John F. Kennedy

 

The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it

cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is

wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to

obey orders, not originate them. – Mark Twain

 

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

– Aesop

 

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? -- Abraham

Lincoln

 

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal

ailment of all republics.

--Plato

 

In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury

their sons. – Croesus

 

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders. – Ralph Bunche

 

 

The story of the American Soldier is much more than a propaganda-laced

cover in Time magazine, designed to sell copies, make profits by

exploiting patriotism, create acquiescence in BushCo's preemptive

warmongering and empire building policies and in fostering approval

and support of a most ambiguous war campaign. The story of the

American Solider is much more than a picture of three soldiers posing

in full battle gear, M-16's in hand, ready to invade a " rogue nation, "

destroy its infrastructure and kill its citizens. (Perhaps three

soldiers dressed in military dress uniform, without machine guns,

protective helmets and Kevlar vests would have been more appropriate

and in better taste, given the deep resentment and animosity our

little pre-emptive wars are creating throughout the world. In

Indymedia Jakarta, for example, an anonymous poster labeled the US

" psychopaths in pure culture " after he/she saw the cover of Time.

Patriotic propaganda at home, terrible portrayal represented abroad.)

 

Hidden behind the illusory fantasy the corporate media portrays of

noble fighting in tumultuous wars, lies a world of death, suffering

and lifelong sacrifice, a world of psychological trauma and physical

torture, a world of Veteran abandonment by the same government that

has sent millions to kill and be killed, a world where America's

finest, along with their families, are swept underneath the rug of

indifference and a world in which ethnicity, class structure and

society's deadly ills mix in a noxious concoction to form that most

clandestine of military drafts that is based on poverty, lack of

education and the caste one is born into.

 

Our soldiers have become mercenaries to the elite few, neither

defending the illusions of freedom or democracy abroad, instead

fighting, killing and destroying for the sake of the oligarchy, a

small band of miscreant chickenhawks in both government and business

enriching themselves through the collective exploitation of low and

working class men and women. Expendable cannon fodder our troops have

become, invading, occupying and policing those regions of the world

the oligarchs want to conquer and subjugate. The corporate Leviathan's

personal army is unleashed, sent to secure its hegemony, economic

prowess and resource-rich feudal estates.

 

Throughout history, the lower and working class structure has been

created and purposefully oppressed and exploited – through

insurmountable obstacles designed to make almost impossible an escape

from the caste one has been permanently placed into – to defend and

protect the elite's interests. The American army is but another

instrument to achieve the oligarchy's powermongering aspirations.

Through Bush, the American Soldier is being used to enrich the

military-industrial complex, the oil-energy cartel and the corporate

Leviathan oligarchy that controls both business and government.

 

It is hard to believe that we are securing our own freedoms and

liberties by invading and taking away those same principles from other

peoples and nations that had nothing to do with 9/11. Do not be fooled

by this propaganda hallucination; the truth of the matter is that our

sons and daughters are fighting to secure and expand the interests of

the few; to enrich their bank accounts and increase their insatiable

thirst for power and control. We are invading nations, becoming an

offensive fighting machine. Our troops are not defending our lands, we

are not being invaded, our freedoms, liberties and democratic

principles are not being threatened by an alien enemy but rather by

our own government. Warmongers we have become, offensively decimating

and pilfering other peoples' resources, nations and rights for no

righteous intentions. This is not the America of old, and, thanks to a

few at the top, our soldiers fight battles without just cause and

moral standing.

 

The American Soldier is being used and abused, like so many others

before, for cynical purposes. Expendable they are to the oligarchy,

both in mind and body. Burned, scarred, brain damaged, amputated and

torn open by hot molten shrapnel our soldiers return, dead or wounded,

becoming invisible symbols of the horrors of war and of the

exploitation a few lunatics at the top subject them to. Mentally

stressed, exhausted, damaged and psychologically shredded our men and

women become, unable to heal the perpetual scars of battle that will

linger in their minds the rest of their lives.

 

For many, the stresses of what they have seen, breathed, tasted and

touched will be a part of their daily lives, ingrained in everything

they do, present inside them like a demon attached to their torso by a

macabre chain of trepidation. Over time the demon will devour them

from inside, altering their personalities and their way of life. This

is the sacrifice they are expected to assume, one that changes them

forever – if they are lucky enough to survive. They sacrifice their

remaining existence, the remaining years of their lives. This is the

story of the American Soldier, forced to sacrifice life, mind and limb

while the few chickenhawks who send them enjoy their million dollar

fundraising dinners, basking in their million dollar homes paid by

million dollar bank accounts.

 

The ultimate sacrifice is being paid for reasons that few comprehend,

in circumstances that yearn to be understood and for a reality that is

hard to believe and accept. The excuses have been many, and many have

been impeachable lies and shams. Freedom and democracy are but the

latest, found at the bottom of the barrel by Bush, in a last act of

desperation, being the hardest to implement, therefore the hardest to

prove wrong and question. Now our soldiers are made to believe these

audacious deceits, when in fact they die and suffer for much more

sinister motives.

 

For these reasons, like Time, I agree that our heroic men and women,

in overcoming so much with so little and in spite of everything the

elite few have done to endanger their lives and futures, should be

named 2003's Person of the Year. The reasons, however, are altogether

different. Like so many, I am for our soldiers, against the war, and

this article is dedicated to all those who through no fault of their

own find themselves caught inside the most frightful nightmare they

will ever be forced to endure. We can only hope these moments of

madness instituted by those at the top will soon end and we can devote

ourselves to fighting much more important battles at home.

 

Everyday Guerilla War in Iraq

 

Away for months now from the safe confines of this country's faraway

shores, the American Soldier in Iraq has had to endure the constant

stresses of a continuous and unrelenting guerilla war. It was a war

those at the top, where the buck is supposed to stop, had undoubtedly

expected before the launching of the massive invasion of Iraq. Dozens

of national security analysts, armed forces brass, intelligence

personnel and Presidential advisors had in most likelihood foreseen

the prolonged street to street violence and resistance our men and

women would have to face during the " keeping the peace " phase of the

occupation. To not have expected it would have simply been a complete

failure in intelligence and leadership. In cost-benefit analysis,

however, a few thousand American casualties outweighed the perceived

benefits soon to be reaped.

 

Tens of thousands of men and women trained for and expecting open

desert combat were thrust into a guerilla war very few were ready or

prepared to fight in. Their training in instruments of war having been

deemed useless in guerilla urban warfare, many have struggled to

understand an enemy that sees in the American Soldier invasion,

occupation, exploitation and humiliation. As a result, more than 455

have died and more than 10,000 have been evacuated due to various

injuries and maladies. These brave soldiers were inserted into poorly

trained urban policing roles, -- far removed from their particular

niche training – into environments they did not understand, a culture

alien to most and a language unlike anything they had ever seen.

Trained in the traditional roles of war, our soldiers have instead had

to adapt, evolve and learn as they go, in a war none of them asked

for, for a purpose that has nothing to do with defending our freedom

and liberty. Daily they are shot, maimed and scorned at, unable to

discern friend from foe, welcomed not with roses but with RPGs and

roadside bombs. Securing the peace has meant street warfare and Iraqi

dehumanization, death and destruction, alienation and growing hatred.

Gaining hearts and minds has been a failure, instead being turned by

Bush into into saving face and covering one's ass.

 

The Hummers that transport our troops are without bomb resistant

armor. Kevlar vests are in short supply – more than 40,000 are needed

for soldiers patrolling cities and towns. Parents back home have had

to buy these vests out of their own pockets to protect their sons and

daughters. Many soldiers are dehydrated, safe drinking water is

scarce. Many have traded their M-16 for enemy AK-47s because of the

former's tendency to jam on a consistent basis. Prolonged tours of

duty have been extended to troops whose time to return home has

arrived and gone. The " leaders " at the top, in order to fulfill

self-defeating ideologies, and in order to not be looked on as fools,

refused to increase troop strength when military officers knew it

would be necessary to help secure the peace. As a result, fewer troops

mean less security and more mistakes. But when the reputation of those

at the top is at stake, when they refuse to acknowledge mistakes,

cannon fodder troops are but insignificant statistics that are seen as

lifeless drones, without wives, husbands, sons, daughters, mothers,

fathers and friends. They are expendable entities.

 

This is what life is like for our sons and daughters in Iraq. As a

result, moral is low, AWOLs are numerous and suicides increasing. The

reality is that most troops do not know what it is they are fighting

for, and the only discernable objective seen is the pursuit of black

blood, American hegemony and strategic base allocation. Protecting the

numerous Bush crony war profiteers, those reaping billions in

reconstruction money, is also a central command given to our soldiers.

Destruction of a nation, after all, is an extremely profitable

business venture, especially to friends of the administration.

 

We have destroyed a nation only to rebuild it once again, granting it

and the profiteers the many funds desperately needed to reconstruct

the fabric of our own nation. Our social fabric rots, its funds

disappearing away like footprints on a wet beach, sacrificed to the

war profiteers, leaving us all behind as waves of greed return to the

Leviathan. Pilfering our wages and our soldiers for their own

fraudulent purposes, and we dare raise not our voices. The systemic

larceny of both Iraqi and our country's financial and resource assets

continues unabated, and the exploitation of our greatest assets – our

men and women – has become a national travesty.

 

The ceaseless campaign to make corporate mercenaries of our soldiers,

basically a slave army designed to enrich the Leviathan with each

forward step taken by its collective boots, is resulting in the death

and injury to hundreds and thousands, respectively. All for the love

of the almighty dollar, the greed of a few and the unquenchable

addiction for power and control of the nation's oligarchs. Our men and

women are dying in vain, but when the army is an assembly of citizens

from ghettos, urban reservations and rural communities, mostly from

low and working caste families, perhaps those where the buck is

supposed to stop care not in sending young lives to die and suffer for

the greater wealth of a few contributors and friends.

 

Caste Drafts and Society's Role in the Making of a Soldier

 

Out of the worst neighborhoods and rural outposts they are from,

living both in concrete jungles and desolate fields of dried up crops.

Today's United States armed forces are an amalgam of rural and urban,

black, white and Hispanic, all sharing low and working class

backgrounds, coming from the worst educational districts in the

nation. This is the American Soldier, not upper middle class or elite

boys and girls, not the sons and daughters of the oligarchy. The armed

forces are composed of those less fortunate, those with little or no

opportunity and future, those whose educational systems are in

shambles and those the system throws away into its bins of refuse.

 

Children in urban areas, mostly black and Hispanic, find themselves

encaged by the invisible walls of the ghetto, unable to escape, by

reason of income and parental lack of education and opportunity, their

modern day reservation. These centers of indigence and ingrained

ignorance, fed by a system that helps exacerbate rather than alleviate

both, are a living, breathing, vicious cycle in which escape is near

impossible, where individuals remain stuck inside for their entire

lives, passing on the same destiny to their children. Thus, without

jobs, without a decent income, with a lack of education and

opportunity and fighting against a system that maintains the status

quo, a caste system emerges, trapping generations of urban people in a

perpetual state of oppression.

 

The system feeds off of those less fortunate, indeed, depends on them

for its exploitable needs. The caste system needs low wage slaves to

work those jobs necessary to keep the economic engine running.

Capitalist elites need to subjugate entire segments of the population

in order to exploit workers with low wages and long hours. Keeping

millions in shackles, through incarceration in ghettos, robbing

children of a decent education and denying upward mobility through

lack of opportunity, guarantees the continued prolongation of the

perpetual caste system.

 

As future fighting machines grow up, they must survive the concrete

jungles, full of dangers lurking around, either in confronting street

pressures, gangs or drug zones, in bad households and in worse school

systems. Learning little, development being purposefully impeded,

resources being almost nonexistent, the future soldier begins to see

at an early age that unless he or she escapes the iron grip of the

urban reservation, life will be the same or worse than parents and

grandparents. Seeing that exodus is virtually impossible thanks to the

numerous obstacles placed at one's feet, the future soldier sees in

the armed forces the only viable alternative.

 

The educational system in these areas is a disaster, ill-preparing

students for higher education and for those jobs that offer upward

mobility. The armed forces know exactly what goes on in urban areas

and their corresponding school districts. It is for this reason that

they flood high schools, in some cases primary and junior high schools

as well, with recruiters who immediately begin selling the " benefits "

of the armed forces to the still young and naïve students seeking a

way out of their confined existence. These schools force upon their

students an annual standardized test that is given by the armed forces

to better determine future prospects. Recruiters are given personal

information about students and the harassment begins, oftentimes with

phone calls to a student's home and forced meetings at school.

Recruiters may seek out potential grunts at homes. Counselors begin

recruiting as well, pushing student's towards joining the armed forces.

 

These heavy tactics are repeated over and over, year in and year out,

until quotas are met. Young men and women, still innocent and easily

manipulated, seeing the bleak prospects at home, are in essence pushed

to join the military and become future killing machines. Promises of

solid wages, better and higher education, an escape from the prison

called the ghetto, an opportunity to be released from the chains of

the caste, all are reasons for joining, all become part of the caste

draft that is thrust upon urban students.

 

This nation prides itself on the voluntary aspects of today's

military. In reality, upon careful inspection, it can be seen that

when one is living in a reservation, without viable opportunity to

excel or a meaningful future to look forward to, the freedom to chose

becomes a choice to survive, and in that sense there is nothing

voluntary about joining the armed forces. When given a choice to

either remain in a perpetual caste or escape onto new horizons, the

decision is simple. In the world's richest nation the choices

presented to the urban citizen should not be so profound.

 

However, when the system encourages and indeed fosters the caste

system in order to have a large number of easily exploitable subjects

that become either soldiers or low wage slaves, the choices become not

voluntary in the normal sense of the word but rather compulsory

decisions made to better one's life. The system's diseases make

joining the military the only option in order to live a better life,

and, in the real world, the system drafts these men and women thanks

to the widespread levels of oppression it creates.

 

This makes the belief in an all volunteer army nothing but a mirage.

People are basically forced to join, preferring to risk going to war

than to dying living a life of hardship in an invisibly enclosed

Bantustan that offers little of anything. The caste draft therefore

selects the downtrodden, the less affluent, the less educated and the

ones that, were they to stay near home, would have but a very

uninviting future.

 

This is manifested in the aggressive recruiting campaign targeting

Hispanics. The goal stated by the military is to increase this

minority representation from its present 10 percent representation to

22 percent in the next few years. This exponentially growing group,

usually low income with very few educational or employment prospects,

has been targeted as the next wave of impoverished minorities that

will act as tomorrow's cannon fodder in wars. Economically vulnerable

citizens are always a huge recruiting segment for the armed forces. It

is these people that provide the means by which to carry out future

wars. Sent to the front lines, Hispanics will fight and die, and the

reason therefore exists to have the system work to keep this minority

at the margins of society.

 

Similar recruiting circumstances also apply to rural America, where

instead of concrete jungles there exist farms of monotony, destitution

and lack of opportunity. Education in these regions, while not as bad

as in urban centers, still lags far behind those of richer suburban

districts. Opportunities in rural zones are limited, jobs are few,

wages low, chances for higher education minimal. For these same

reasons a large portion of the armed forces are comprised of white

rural men and women looking for an escape and a chance to better their

lives. Again the caste system is at work, pulling rural youth in the

direction of the armed forces. Replace the words ghetto, reservation,

urban and Bantustan, and the same forces that push minorities into the

military is prevalent, though to a lesser degree, in rural areas. It

is from these districts that most of the military recruits come from.

Low, working caste men and women, less fortunate, less well educated

and less likely to escape the caste they have been born into than

their suburban counterparts, seek escape from barren rural towns and

farms that do not offer a prosperous future.

 

Thus recruiting and aggressive marketing is used to lure these young

men and women into the military. The government is not stupid, and it

knows exactly where it will be able to meet its quotas. Again, we

might think the choice is voluntary, but is it really when one wishes

for nothing more than to escape the environment and the caste that

cannot be escaped? When government does nothing in its power to better

the lives of millions, in reality making a student's decision obvious,

pushing indigence and lack of opportunities in order to garner

recruits, is the choice really voluntary? Today's young men and women

simply want to live a life worth living, a betterment to their present

predicament, an escape from their homes, and, when the only

opportunity to achieve this is by joining the military, then the

voluntary charade we are made to believe in does not exist, and the

finger can then be pointed to the caste draft that has through the

system's failings introduced millions to the armed forces.

 

Sure, many join out of patriotism and manipulation or out of

hereditary tradition, but these soldiers are few and far between.

Volunteering for them is indeed a part of their decision making

process. (More will be said on this subject in Part II.)

 

History Once More is Repeated

 

In the not so long history of human civilization the continued

exploitation of the working classes continues to be manifested. This

can easily be seen in the government's – and corporate Leviathan's –

abuse of America's brave soldiers. As has been the case throughout

history, the poor are exploited for the benefit of the elite, and

today we see an entire army fighting, suffering horrendous physical

and mental injuries and dying for the interests of our feudal lords.

Serfs and slaves, low, working and middle class, the differences are

minute, the similarities eerie. Time continues on its journey, as does

the human caste system that creates so much inequality, injustice and

human devastation. To be born in misery and deprivation is not one's

fault; to create and foster it is insidious.

 

Through a system that purposefully creates and furthers lack of

opportunity through the continued preservation of blatantly destitute

educational institutions thanks to unjust and nefarious tax schemes

the caste system remains intact, a solidly invisible concrete wall

that acts as an obstacle to millions who through birth are destined to

become exploitable and expendable beings. Those living in areas devoid

of growth and job prospects, making low wages and suffering through

numerous hard working hours without benefits thanks to the influence

and money of elite capitalists are trapped in a vicious circle that

helps maintain the caste system to what it is today.

 

This caste, much like India's, is almost impossible to escape. It

ensnarls millions. People are born into it through no fault of their

own; they live and die in it, unable to escape its grip thanks to the

numerous barriers purposefully placed there by the system. Today the

American dream of upward mobility is but a façade, another illusion

ingrained into our minds to whitewash the reality that has become the

United States. Our soldiers are not the first to be exploited, nor

will they be the last. Unfortunately it is a part of humanity, from

our cave days until today, and only a united citizenry can decide

whether it continues into the future or suffers a most painful death

in the present.

 

Until then, our sons and daughters will continue to die, suffer and

undergo mental anguish, sacrificing their futures for the continued

accumulation of wealth and power from the few oligarch's that sent

them to war. In the coming war of perpetuity, a most unfortunate end

will come to so many of our loved ones, dead not from fighting for

freedom or liberty or to protect our democracy but for trying to

better their lives, escape their urban and rural reservations, find

happiness and to flee that most debilitating and inescapable caste the

system run by the powerful refuses to relinquish. History's pages

continue to be turned by the black abyss of ignorance that makes blind

bats of us all.

 

 

 

 

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