killing machines?!

Eilat
New York

Two quotes from this article haunt me:

"The 'methods that increased the firing rate from 15 percent to 90 percent,' Grossman writes, 'are referred to as ‘programming’ or ‘conditioning’ ' intended to address — or redress — 'the simple and demonstrable fact that there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man.'”

And:

“Once an army is involved in war, there is a beast in every fighting man which begins tugging at its chains."

In sum, the military's purpose in training young men and women is to twist, destroy, and pervert basic human decency, empathy and consideration of other human beings-- everything that most likely his or her family has also strived to cultivate in him or her-- in order to serve the aims of empire.

Thus, the military is essentially an evil institution.

Additionally, I feel that there is a high possibility that young men in particular are attracted to the military because culturally, men are associated with war, aggression, and violence. Such cultural cues are transmitted to young men in our society in regards to "entertainment" (movies, books, video games, etc.) and the gun culture. War is seen as an outlet; an easy way to travel the world and "get some action" as noted in the article. Getting some action often translates into becoming a man and translates into earning respect in the military and in the home country. The military also provides a convenient cover for the unfortunately high number of young people who lack personal discipline, have perhaps some criminal/deviant intentionality, and/or who are lazy (dont want to work anywhere in the real world or dont want to do what's necessary to develop their skills)/have poor economic prospects otherwise.

This is why I do not support the military. I do not support the troops. I do not support these soldiers.
I do not support veterans or sympathize with their war wounds. In my mind, these are indiscriminate murderers and psychopaths, plain and simple. Each made a choice to join an evil institution and to murder their fellow human beings. That is part of the job description, and this fact is never hidden from any recruit. I think that the country's reaction to the punishments against Calley in the My Lai massacre are sickening and indefensible. Those were not 'good boys.' Those soldiers were sickos who took advantage of a situation to indiscriminately murder innocent, defenceless human beings, and the defense of such murderers speaks volumes about our own culture.

My brother recently joined the military. We were a lower middle class family deeply opposed to war for political ends. We were refused toy guns as children. My brother volunteered to help disabled kids in his school as a second-grader. He has never been in a fight, and has always attracted friends due to his good nature, easy going personality, and diplomatic skill. He never had an interest in sports, and cared more about people. My father, a conservative Christian an strict disciplinarian, found it a bit hard to 'relate' to my brother. My brother witnessed physical abuse on his mother and sisters throughout his youth, perpetrated by my father. I think that he learned to associate masculinity with violence. My parents struggled to give him everything he wanted, and he reaped the benefit of being the youngest child so at this point my parents were more seasoned and stable. I watched my parents grieve (literally). This broke my heart. Our hearts are broken to know he will either be murdered or maimed, or committ the murdering or maiming. My brother-- soft, gentle as he was. Holding a machine gun. All for an unjust war or two or three. All for the benefit of the psychopathic war mongers and generals.

My mother has asked repeatedly, "What's the point of having children?" To her, having given her blood sweat and tears over to raise a boy to this state is more than she can fathom or bear. When I watch news reports of the wounded returning home, the 21-year old man or woman with a young family who is brain dead or otherwise incapacitated, I think "what a waste." I become angry. I instantly can empathise with the anger of that person's mother, who no doubt sacrificed her whole life to raise a functional and healthy person in society, only to have him or her crumpled up like garbage in the prime of their life, all for these sick wars.

The American military is no different from any other in history. Occupying forces of any country have been known to commit war crimes and genocide and mass murder, occasionally for sport. Little wonder as to why the so-called terrorists and people the world over hate us so. The monetary scraps we throw at them in compensation will never come close to leveling the debt we have incurred, and it will never be enough to wash the blood off our hands.



Ike Solem
CA

One of the basic rules of military conflicts is that the longer they last, the more likely they are to degrade into mindless savagery and slaughter.

For example, at the outbreak of World War II, bombing raids on civilian targets were considered unthinkable by the Allied forces. By the end of the war, you had Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Hamburg, Dresden. If the war had dragged on further - say, if D-Day had failed - then it's likely that nuclear and chemical weapons would also have been used against civilian targets.

The escalation of the war in Vietnam in the 1960s followed similar lines - atrocities became normal, nothing to think twice about. Likewise, there's a long record of Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan in the 1980s - even very plausible allegations of the use of biological weapons against insurgents. Similarly, there was the introduction and escalation of systematic torture by U.S. troops and contractors in Iraq as that insurgency gained strength in 2003-2004 - an insurgency fueled by the ongoing occupation and the colonial CPA group run by Bremer, which was so obviously bent on controlling the oil.

This is just one of the many reasons why prolonged military conflict, especially when it involves the occupation of a foreign country for years on end, is a bad idea. Brutalization of the occupier is inevitable. Incidentally, the increased use of airstrikes against Afghanistan villages ever since Petraeus took over from McChrystal also fits this theme.

The huge economic drain that such prolonged warfare entails is another good reason to avoid it at all costs. If such guidelines had been followed, the Afghanistan conflict would have been over long ago. What we should have done, of course, is to have gone into Afghanistan with an Iraq-scale invasion, captured bin Laden & associates (not allowing him to escape to Pakistan), and then left immediately afterward - it would have been over within six months.

The invasion of Iraq was always unjustified, and was based on lies cooked up about WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda, with the ultimate goal being control of Iraqi oil production. There's no justification at all there, and under international law that counts as a war of aggression aimed at capturing natural resources, aka "a war crime." For more proof that this was the case, see the recent book by Greg Muttitt.

All in all, the first decade of the 21st century will go down as one of the most shameful in U.S. history, it seems.