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Right now, on C-Span, there is a program that is focused on the military recruitment tactics currently being used in schools, among urban youth, among minorities. I am in another room, but listening to anti-recruitment teachers, to Rep. Cynthia McKinney and other professionals who are strongly opposed to the lying and strong-arming methods that military recruiters are using to combat the growing gap in the number of new recruits and the number needed to fight.
Something else that is disturbing me is this demand that I hear so many callers into C-Span's Washington Journal making. Many callers demand that if the illegal immigrants want to stay in America, then those immigrants must first serve in the Armed Forces, primarily in Iraq. Then, if they are not killed or otherwise destroyed, they may be granted citizenship. My thought is, if those immigrants DO serve in the U.S. military and the native-born Americans DO NOT serve in the military of their own homeland, then WHO really, is the true citizen of this country? I am totally against this or any war, but my rationale says, "A true citizen defends his country when needed." Here is a snip of what I believe to be a related article from buzzflash:
G.I. Jesus? Denouncement of Right-Wing Christian BattleCry
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION by Debra Schaffer Hubert
There is no military draft yet because the Christian Right is doing the recruiting on behalf of the government.
Ron Luce and his co-conspirators in the far right-wing Christian fundamentalist camps, are out there busily glorifying war as if it were godliness. They are having youth gatherings in stadium arenas called BattleCry. BattleCry is so filled with military metaphor and rhetoric that you would think it was a giant pre-boot camp designed to entice troubled youth trying to do good in the world to join the military. Ron Luce is applauding the Bush Administration's atrocities when he brings Navy Seals on stage and talks about how noble it is to be a soldier. Christian rock bands are used to entice the youth to come to these events. Otherwise, I doubt they would be willing to go. It is like being at a rock concert one moment with feeling happy and open, then a speaker is brought in to brainwash you. George W. Bush even sends an endorsement to be read at BattleCry. Virtually all of the propaganda used in the BattleCry literature is utilizing military rhetoric; from a hummer sporting a red revolution flag on stage, to dog tags, posters with youth carrying automatic weapons and Navy Seals giving Christian testimony and making "BattlePlans." Militarism is the epitome of misogyny.
My question is this: If Ron Luce claims he is trying to guide the youth around an evil culture, then why does he openly support the US military war machine with its dumping of weaponized radioactive uranium, known by the misleading name the Pentagon gave it, Depleted Uranium, all over an entire continent, rendering it uninhabitable forever? This, in the name of their God?
The BattleCry Christian youth movement is supported by big money from the Christian right-wing Fundamentalist industrial complex. They are not only promoting war and thereby military recruitment, but also homophobia and severe sexism by advocating the relinquishment of the right of sovereignty of women over their own bodies and firmly denouncing sexual diversity.
They have proclaimed they are the definitive deciders as to what God wants, and they are furiously working their literal biblical interpretations into the government.
more: www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/05/con06203.html
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