If some baby boomer tries to tell you that he was ready and willing to go to Vietnam, go ahead and get right in his face and yell “bullshit!”
You have my permission.
You will be in the right.
|
|
|
|
|
by Don Nash, Unknown News
June 25, 2004
There was a time not so very long ago, when the United States of America had its very own S.S. Now I do not mean to associate our S.S. with the S.S. of Nazi Germany, although there are some that are still alive today that would argue that there really is no difference. I am of course referring to the Selective Service. Your local draft board.
It was a delightful little program run by our government and our government’s military, that made compulsory service in our nation’s military, well, compulsory. All young men upon their eighteenth birthday had to hustle their young selves down to the S.S. office and register. You had no choice. Our government was keeping track of every young man in America and, for the most part, they used the public schools to keep track. It was almost like having a holiday, as you would get the day off from school to go to the S.S. office and register.
And you did register. Our social climate was slightly different than it is now, and there were consequences if you didn’t show up or tried to lie about it.
An air of discomfort was associated with registering for the draft. Eighteen years old and fresh out of high school, the Vietnam war was raging and draftees were coming home in body bags, and you saw it happen everyday. Plans for the future could get a little clouded in the light of Vietnam.
You got to see the death daily at dinner time on the evening news. ABC, CBS, and NBC actually showed the bodies coming home and the horror of the war was the topic of dinner conversation. On the television news every night, you would witness the Buddhist monks immolating themselves as an act of protest. You could witness our military dropping napalm bombs on some Vietnamese village and burn up the inhabitants. You could witness a South Vietnamese general shoot a suspected Viet Cong collaborator right in the head, or you could witness this same general shoving another Viet Cong collaborator out of an open door of a Huey helicopter that was about five or six thousand feet off of the ground.
War correspondents that are still alive today (and are now network anchors) were imbedded with our troops or just out alone doing a war story. They reported the actual death and destruction and the atrocities. They asked really hard questions of the generals that were running the war. They asked really hard questions of America’s president and the Secretary of Defense.
Those were the days. Adrenaline rushes. Vietnamese marijuana. Death. Tragedy. Civil unrest right at home. Protests in the streets, and riots at the political conventions. You can trust me on this, no one and I mean NO ONE wanted to go to Vietnam and especially get drafted and have to go to Vietnam. Dodging the draft became a celebrated folk art in progress way back then.
If some baby boomer tries to tell you that he was ready and willing to go to Vietnam, go ahead and get right in his face and yell “bullshit!” You have my permission. You will be in the right.
Avoiding the draft became a cause celebre. Young men could get absolutely creative in ploys being used to tell the sergeant at the draft board, 'I am unfit for service'. Guys would actually show up at the Armed Forces Entrance Examination Station (AFEES) wearing dresses. Guys would show up drunk, stoned, crying, and the ever popular just not showing up at all. AFEES is military slang for the portal to hell, the very last thing you would see in civilization.
There was a rumor that circulated in those days, that having "F T A" tattooed on your hand would get you exempted from the draft. F T A or ‘fuck the army’. You had to have the entire slogan on the back of your hand and it had to be visible so the entire world could see it. I never saw this tattoo nor did I know anyone that tried that particular ploy. I do know that, guys that came back from Vietnam held this phrase in the highest regard and they wished like hell that they had thought of it previous to the draft experience.
All of this reminiscence is just background to the F T A concept. Fast forward thirty years and you have the preemptive war on Iraq, a mysterious little conflict that was started by George Bush for reasons that are, to date, illusive. Without any substantial evidence or intelligence, or any proof that could hold up in a court of law, the Congress gave George Bush an authorization to do just about anything he liked or could think of to blow the bejesus out of Iraq.
Sounds a little insane, doesn’t it? Remember Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam war?
In our present day, we no longer have the draft. For now anyway, we have the ‘all volunteer army’. Everyone that is serving in our military today is a volunteer. They wanted to. This is a substantive point in this polemic.
Irregardless of the propaganda that was and still is being run by the Bush administration, the preemptive war on Iraq is hardly a surgical and clean operation. There have been substantial numbers of collateral damage -- military double-speak for innocent people that are killed by our military. Large numbers of Iraqi civilians have been killed and horribly mutilated by our ‘all volunteer army’.
One scene from the Iraq preemptive war that stands out in my mind: a number of U.S. Marines are guarding a bridge somewhere in Iraq. An Iraqi family is traversing the bridge, and the entire family is shot to death by our Marines. The Marines are asked about the dead Iraqi civilians and what happened, and our Marines reply, “We told them not to cross the bridge and we told them to stop,” The family didn’t stop. The family speaks only Arabic and the Marines speak only English-American. “So we shot them!”
Oh yes, the Marines shot them all right. One reporter stated that the car looked like a swiss cheese.
A family in north central Iraq is asleep at night and the Army breaks into the house looking for the father of the family. The father isn’t there so, so the Army takes the man’s wife and children and hold them as hostage until the missing father shows up and surrenders to the Army.
Precision guided laser bombs miss their targets and go wide of their intended mark and then detonate, killing scores of innocent Iraqis.
Just about any Iraqi with an axe to grind can turn in whoever is on the receiving end of a vendetta, collect a reward, and watch as this sorry Iraqi is dragged away for some torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
Iraqi wounded are turned away from American military hospitals, and it doesn’t matter that the Iraqi hospitals are more like something out of a Stephen King novel.
Abuse, war crimes, crimes against humanity, simple inhumanity to humanity, murder, kidnapping, torture, and this is just the stuff that has been leaked.
Our ‘all volunteer army’ has the look of a gang of barbarian heathens that will bite your neck open just for looking cross-eyed at them. They're pissed.
Okay, now get ready because here it comes ... fuck the army! The soldiers serving “voluntarily” in this army of one are serving because they want to. “Support our troops” has a very hollow ring to it in light of the substantial atrocity being committed on a daily basis. "F T A" was applicable during Vietnam and it is applicable today.
The International Criminal Court is going to have a serious look at the United States military, it will happen and the grunts that do the work will bear most of the penalty for the military’s war crimes. It always happens this way.
What is happening in our nation’s military is not noble or brave or American or heroic. What is happening is criminal and there is no other way to say it. F T A! Supposedly, having this phrase tattooed on the back of one’s hand would get one exempted from the draft. The draft is coming back and one may want to see a tattoo artist before it is too late.
© 2004, by the author.
What do you think?
|
|
Our ‘all volunteer army’ has the look of a gang of barbarian heathens that will bite your neck open just for looking cross-eyed at them.
They're pissed.
|
|
|
|
