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A gung-ho sort of military person might say to me, when I don't lavish them with praise, I'd better be thankful for the men who died for my"freedom."
I'd better? Or else what? What?
What about a person's choice to serve or die means I OWE them my trust or acquiescence? That might be how things are done in the military, but one thing these gung ho people never fathom is this:
I never asked for their sacrifice. The president ordered it of them, and they obeyed. I had no say in it. I would prefer they DIDN'T go to die and fight against people in faraway places, killing people they don't know, in old-money's profit-making wars.
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by Underground Panther in the Sky, Unknown News
Nov. 26, 2003
I'm not gonna mince words here. I don't respect the military or most police, because the people in these outfits have collectively become a SYSTEM. I do not respect or trust any system or anyone who represents a system.
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I don’t respect anyone who hasn't earned my trust according to my own standards of what makes someone trust-worthy, as determined by their actions.
You know that biblical cheese,"By their fruits you shall know them"? It actually applies here. No system, no leader, no state, nobody has the automatic right to be trusted — ever.
This is one reason why I know I would not last five minutes in the military. It's not that I am a wimp; I can kick some serious ass if I need to.
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No, I'd be out because I would not obey a sergeant who belittles me or abuses me.
I won't be treated like a dog. I won’t stand for any drill sergeant’s manipulative, bullying brainwashing bullshit.
I have a deep sense of self-respect. Also, I know I can't sit by when another human being is being torn apart emotionally as if they were a piece of shit.
I don't play the military way because my spirit finds that kind of abusiveness abhorrent. The military is all about force and IMPOSING a particular kind of order on people whether they agree or not. Authoritarians and their vision of "order" have no tolerance for pains in the ass who don't go along with them — like me. And I know it.
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Many people are lured into military service with a hope for a better future, like getting money for a college tuition, or who are lured into service by fear, or some kind of patriotic hero delusion.
They aren’t entering “the service” to serve a leader; they want to better their lot in life.
And that same 'better life' lure is what convinces all sorts of free people who feel an economic or political pinch to become slaves. People who can let themselves get turned into mindless guns
for the state are not thinking for themselves. They've lost their inner locus of control, which is necessary for a person to have a sane moral compass.
On the contrary, military 'pogroms' are designed to take the
inner locus of control out of a person and put it into their "superiors."
Boot camp is a friggin’ cult. (Christian fundamentalists with their blind obedience have no moral compass left in them either, once their pogroms are underway).
Why do I say this offensive stuff? Because I have seen what the military does to a human soul.
The military tormented my father in too many ways to count. I hold my father responsible, for being a dupe. I hold the leaders and everyone in the chain of command that obeyed orders and contributed to his suffering responsible, too. So I do not trust the state at all.
The state is not a human being, so it need not have compassion for us. It is a machine that chews people up.
Most military personnel have a slanted loyalty installed, they are loyal to flag, leader and country, and if they can't stomach ‘country’ they insert ‘the constitution,’ ‘democracy,’ or ‘the people’ — any emotionally stirring but amorphous word that inspires will do.
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Soldiers are taught to be loyal not to themselves, not to listen to their own integrity.
They are trained, no, broken down psychologically, until they are willing to follow the state’s orders instead of their own sense of right and wrong, or anything which might conflict with the state.
A person who balks at commands because they might be wrong isn't soldier material. They aren't an efficient enough killing machine. I say this because a lot of soldiers do not question the motives and directives of their superiors enough.
They are told if they get too insubordinate they’ll get court marshalled or have their career fucked with, pension cut, or whatever asshole extortion the higher-ups on the food chain can think up to ensure a soldier's compliance with whatever they want, be it silence to cover a crime, military incompetence or something worse. Or something requiring a soldier to do something we — the civilians, the less state-loyal people — would find morally repugnant and wrong.
It's a rare soldier who refuses to go along with orders, and gets anywhere in a military career. They get shit-canned for questioning orders. The chain of command does an excellent job of obscuring the moral responsibility of leaders, by putting it onto lessers and weeding out those who will not obey.
So because of the nature of a state-run military and the moral breakdown of the human spirit it requires, I don't respect it's modus operandi. If you think it's noble to kill or die and not fully understand why you kill or die, well, good for you — you can sell yourself down a river. But me, I ain't buying this game and I ain't gonna reward someone with my words for obeying bad orders and being a patsy for an asshole. I ain't putting lipstick on a pig.
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A gung-ho sort of military person might say to me, when I don't lavish them with praise, I'd better be thankful for the men who died for my"freedom."
I'd better? Or else what? What?
What about a person's choice to serve or die means I owe them my trust or acquiescence? That might be how things are done in the military, but one thing these gung ho people never fathom is this:
I never asked for their sacrifice. The president
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ordered it of them, and they obeyed. I had no say in it. I would prefer they didn’t
go to die and fight against people in faraway places, killing people they don't know, in old-money's profit-making wars.
If I did have a say in a declaration of war, I'd demand the truth be told. I would question the sanity of my superiors for their requests that I let myself die for some half-baked thievery scheme painted up as something other than the pig-in-a-poke it is.
Of course, that is exactly why I will never be president, a senator or a governor or even town dog-catcher. Integrity is a liability when dealing with corrupt or amoral power in this world, but I value my integrity more than I value power, security, or even my life.
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I ask you, how many young gun-toting grunts ever get to know the real nitty-gritty intimate details of exactly why they have to go kill people they don't know? The wars America gets into now don’t come with clear-cut reasons why — unless you follow the money. Then you can see the ugly shadow-playing games for what they are.
I don't have money, so why should I care what rich people who profit from selling death, terrorism and war think about me? Shit, Iraq was fought for enriching the Enronesque U.S. economy, for Christ’s sakes. It was fought for a lie.
People are still there dying, and for what? For democracy? Har de Har Har! You do know Reagan and Bush put Saddam in power, right? And that the U.S. funded the Taliban to fight
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Russia. Ever see that 'free market' trading atrocity, the "terrorism futures"? How much of the information pertaining to why a soldier has to die is suppressed from the average soldier through this cult-like "need to know" basis?
I will not kill people I don't know unless I know for sure I am threatened personally or someone I know personally is being threatened directly. That is where I draw the line, and I ain't moving it.
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Unlike world leaders of various countries, I don't routinely piss off people, bully them, or steal from them. The U.S. government's wealthy leaders do these things constantly, and their military bails |
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them out.
Going into combat at the behest of some old white rich asshole isn't enough of a reason to die. I don't give a shit if the wealthy suffer for their immorality. They sure don't care about me and my suffering; if they did they'd share more and be less greedy. So why should I give two shits about them?
Most "leaders" are haughty and have an entitlement delusion. They don't have the guts to empathize with anyone outside their own class, anyway. They wouldn't be able to justify themselves to themselves if they did.
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Why should I think any public official gives a shit about me? Like 99.99% of the rest of the people in America, I've never met the president — yet he can order my friends, who were duped enough to sign up for military "service," to die. And with the lame-ass sold-out media we have, and the secrecy people let the military get away with, how could I know what manipulative bullshit Bush is pulling in other countries? I certainly am not going to put my life on the line for this crap.
I don't care if the sick way of life we lead here is threatened. We stole this country from the Indians. We live this well because most of the rest of the world lives in abject poverty and disease, and they think they are powerless. If we as people don't start taking responsibility for what we do, personally, and if we don't get the balls to be insubordinate, ask the ugly questions of authority, and get a moral compass of our own, our way of life will collapse under the weight of it's own corruption, pollution, hubris hypocrisy, mental illness, greed and consuming.
Our way of life is about growth, and constant growth NOT sustainable on a finite planet. When constant growth occurs in the human body it's called cancer. When it's an economic system is based on constant growth it goes undiagnosed as it ravages the Earth for those greedy hungry ghost elites who cannot stop themselves when gorging at the trough of this Earth's bounty.
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If you piss on enough people in other countries by bullying, exploiting, enslaving and lying to them, then of course they'll want to bash you. So the military of America has become a bully for the state (read the top 1 percent wealth's goons). I don't respect this bullying.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why a soldier who says he respects democracy would act like such a totalitarian when it comes to obeying orders.
It is the responsibility of a citizen to stay
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informed and get up their leaders and elected representatives' collective craws. I can't do much to make these selected leaders act in a way befitting their position. I'm just a citizen. But people in the
military can do more than me, simply by not obeying commands. That old saying, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" is really about empowerment and integrity. What threat is a bully without his fists?
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I know that the U.S. Revolutionary War wasn't fought by a state-run "volunteer" (read poor and bribed, or career military) army like the American military of today.
The Revolutionary War was fought by a lot of people with a similar slanting moral compass acting on their own moral impulses. All the citizens who together decided the king was a jackass, revolted. When they fought against their king's demands, they were automatically dubbed insubordinates. And they didn't care. They wanted a better country, and they made it happen.
These "founding fathers" and revolutionaries were not sterling examples, however. They saw no moral problem with enslaving blacks and massacring Indians, so they were not all that moral, not in my opinion. But they got a few things right.
Compared to the true volunteer spirit of the Revolutionary military, today's military is just eclipsed by bullshit.
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There were arguments among America's founding fathers about the dangerous lack of wisdom of even establishing a standing army. But certain wealthy landowners wanted a permanent military, to protect their hoarded stuff from the poor and exploited. And you don't hear a peep out of this part of America's history now, not with this authoritarian neocon delusional gang in control.
The things in the human heart that make moral giants out of mere mortals have been systematically eroded in America's military, and in America, quite deliberately.
I wish more people had the integrity and courage to question and be insubordinate to the authorities in their daily lives. Life might be better for all of us, if more of us had that much bravery.
I respect someone who dies for doing what is right in his own heart, who knows full well what he's fighting for. That right thing in the heart might be in line with America's ogliarchs or not — only he knows why he thinks his cause is important enough to die for.
My true admiration is reserved for those people who do these noble things and still have an inner locus of control intact. I respect people who have the real integrity to neither be nor work for a secretive, corrupt, exploiting bully while they are fighting against a secretive corrupt exploiting bully.
Those bravest souls who fight for what matters most in their hearts, who are insubordinate enough to say no to a bully, say no to a immoral command. Those who are not able to be forced into compliance by authoritarians and their threats, fear, emotional hype or fantasies wrought by superiors or the media — these are golden examples of humanity's finest for the rest of us mere mortals.
I am well aware the average soldier might not be an asshole in reality, but the minute you let an asshole step in and be your moral compass for you, you become an asshole by proxy. I fuckin' hate that chain of command bullshit people buy into so easily, and all the corruption it fosters in otherwise pretty decent people.
If you choose to obey an asshole who's asking asshole things of you, you become an asshole. If you follow asshole orders from assholes somewhere higher up on that chain of command without question, what does that make you? No matter who you blame, you pulled the trigger. You dropped |
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the bomb that kills.
To me, the unquestioning obedience demanded of the military is the essence of a broken moral character in America and its "leadership. But broken character or not, in the military or not, you are still repsonsible for what you do.
You are still responsible for your part in any war. Because you could have refused an order if you felt it was wrong to obey it. The responsibility remains on the person who performs the act, because all human beings have free will.
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It's tragic that this lapse of morality in a soldier leads them to face horrible traumas in wars and after wars, traumas that sadly may further erode their character or shatter their minds. And soldiers who are traumatized sometimes bring war home, not by direct fault of their own, really, just by becoming mentally ill and mentally injured, from facing the corrosive effects of the military's war on the human soul.
© 2003, by the author.
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