Peddling War to Children

[Catherina]

Peddling War to Children
by Robert C. Koehler

In the gap between a boy’s passionate fantasies and the smell of dead bodies in a mass grave marches . . . America’s Army.

“He wonders if God is punishing him because before he joined the Army he thought of war as something fun and exciting.”
We couldn’t wage our current wars without the all-volunteer military whose recruitment goals get fed every year by idealistic young people, who continue, despite all counter-evidence bursting off the front pages, to buy into the romance and excitement of war and armed do-goodism that the recruiters, with the help of a vast “militainment” industry, peddle like so many Joe Camels.

The words quoted above are from a psychologist’s PTSD evaluation of a young soldier named Brad Gaskins, whom I wrote about several years ago; he was one of the soldiers in the first wave of our 2003 invasion of Iraq. He went AWOL after his second deployment.

“Bulldozers were used to push the bodies into mass graves,” the psychologist wrote after her interview with him. “The bodies would fall apart, the smell was unforgettable. He felt badly that the bodies were treated with such disrespect. There was no effort made to identify the dead so that their families could know what happened to them. He was expected to handle many of the dead bodies which were significantly decayed and often ‘oozing goop’ into the ground.”

...

This has nothing to do with real war, but the adults with a self-interest in its perpetuation continue to sell it to the young as though it were. What an obscenity, it seems to me, to exploit the yearning of the young, and feign a solidarity with it, in order to perpetuate a system that will in all likelihood simply chew them up.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/18

[billlll]

1. UN has several Peace Colleges... SIPRI is leading

Research centre on peace.

Stockholm International Peace Research institute ... IIRC.

Has a site.
----------------------
Welcome to SIPRI — www.sipri.org

A first-rank research center, with support from the Swedish government. Arms and military research areas including publications and database.

www.sipri.org/
---------------------------
UN colleges Costa Rica , JaPan maybe others. Denmark ?

[handmade34]

2. rec

made me think of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWsGyNsw00

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. K&R. Brutal. As an aside...

...if the patient quoted by the psychologist at the start of the article wasn't a believer, he wouldn't be as miserable.

[Starry Messenger]

4. k&r

[unhappycamper]

5. JROTC is nothing more than soldiers (aka Cannon Fodder) in training. n/t