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Announcement :: Protest Activity |
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Local Counter Recruitment Event |
Current rating: 0 |
by Cotton/Kruse
Email: jandurl (nospam) insightbb.com (unverified!) |
22 Nov 2005
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Just after Thanksgiving, the Army National Guard has plans to recruit
Illinois high school football players, their friends, family members
and fans near Memorial Stadium. The AWARE counter-recruitment working
group will be there with signs and flyers to provide a counterweight
to that effort. Join us anytime (for as long or as little as you like)
between the hours of noon and 4PM on the Friday and Saturday after
Thanksgiving as we demonstrate with flyers and posters near an actual
military recruitment event. We especially welcome and encourage
veterans to attend. |
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Our counter-recruitment presence will take place near the Army
National Guard tent facility planned for this year's IHSA state high
school football championship games at Memorial Stadium on November
25th and 26th.
WHAT: AWARE counter-recruitment presence (signs and flyers)
WHERE: Army National Guard tent, 1st and Kirby in Champaign, Illinois
(for map, see http://tinyurl.com/8fhfe )
WHEN: noon to 4PM (arrive and leave anytime),
Friday November 25th and Saturday, November 26th
CONTACTS: Randall Cotton - 722-8470 (for Friday's presence)
Durl Kruse - 766-2684 (for Saturday's presence)
If you're interested, but would like to know the details, read on...
---------------------------------------------------------
Every year, high school football teams from across the state, their
families and sometimes a substantial portion of their communities come
to Champaign for two days of state-wide championship games at Memorial
Stadium (see reference 1 below). And the Army National Guard (which is
increasingly being deployed to Iraq) apparently views this as a good
opportunity to recruit high school kids. Last year, the military had a
flashy presence there, complete with a neon-lit Hummer.
AWARE's counter-recruitment working group has confirmed that they'll
be back this year, with the Army National Guard trying desperately to
make up for their recruitment shortfall of more than 10,000 so far
this year, the worst (or best, depending on how you look at it 8-) in
the U.S. military (see reference 2 below).
We've planned a four-hour presence on both days of the IHSA
championships, from noon to 4PM, rain or shine.
The Army National Guard tent will be located on the southwest corner
of 1st Street and Kirby, at the edge of the sprawling parking lot
there, next to large sidewalks along both streets. We've alerted the
Champaign Police Department of our plans and have confirmed that we
have the right to be present with signs on those sidewalks so long as
we don't block traffic. Flyering is fine too, so long as we don't
force folks to take anything.
We will be featuring signs showing a particularly compelling poster
depicting a military cemetery with the slogan "You Can't be All You
Can Be ... If You're Dead". See the poster on-line at:
http://www.syrculturalworkers.com/catalog/catalogIndex/CatCounterRecruitment.html
We'll have other signs as well, including the casualty portraits (both
military and Iraqi) that we often feature at AWARE events (you can see
them in the top page banner photo at www.ucimc.org ).
In addition, all are welcome, indeed encouraged, to bring their own
signs as well.
And we'll have hundreds of copies of two flyers we've chosen for the
occasion, both from the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers).
You can see them on-line as follows:
Do You Know Enough to Enlist?
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/Military-Recruitment/Enlist.PDF
Ten Points to Consider Before You Sign a Military Enlistment
Agreement:
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/Military-Recruitment/10pts.pdf
The tide of public opinion is turning against the war in Iraq. Current
polls, such as the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, show that 60% of
Americans believe the war is "not worth it" (see reference 3 below).
Anti-war activism is increasingly accepted and even welcomed. With
this in mind, we feel that as the military has an increasingly
difficult time meeting recruitment goals and they become more and more
desperate for new recruits, counter-recruitment is increasingly
important and effective.
So please consider joining us for as long or as little as you like on
the southwest corner of 1st and Kirby anytime between noon and 4PM on
Friday, November 25th and Saturday, November 26th as we provide a
counterweight to recruiting efforts aimed at Illinois high school
kids.
And please feel free to contact us by phone or e-mail if you have any
questions or concerns:
Randall Cotton - 722-8470 (coordinator for Friday's presence)
recotton (at) earthlink.net
Durl Kruse - 766-2684 (coordinator for Saturday's presence)
jandurl (at) insightbb.com
References:
1. (IHSA football championship info)
http://www.ihsa.org/activity/fb/index.htm
2. (military recruiting shortfalls)
http://www.political-news.org/breaking/14438/army-poised-to-miss-2005-recruiting-goal.html
3. (recent polling on Iraq)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/2005-11-15-iraq-poll.htm
also:
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq |
This work is in the public domain. |
Comments
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by i was there
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Dec 2005
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Yeah, I was there, and most of the parents used the National Guards trash cans to throw away the flyers that the protesters handed out. The protesters were HIGHLY inneffective and the butt of jokes for all that attended. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
14 Dec 2005
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Gotta love those protesters!
There just so CUTE, those adorable little throwbacks to a simpler time, when protesters could vilify soldiers for their service and spit on them as they returned from a combat theater.
Isn't it wonderful when you can vent your frustrations with the US federal government by protesting against relatively low-ranking representatives of the recruitment wing of a subordinate organization of the executive branch of the Illinois State government?
Maybe it's that 60's nostalgia they're after, no? But without all that troublesome traveling to DC or addressing the actual folks who make the decisions and all...
...and for our next trick, let's all sue McDonalds for the existance of gas-guzzling SUVs, because those puds are directly linked to the deaths of millions of dolphins in the rainforest!
Oh wait, those are a bunch of thoughts that have no logical transition...
...kinda liiiiiike....
....PROTESTING THE **FEDERAL** GOVERNMENT'S ACTIONS BY INSULTING AND DEMEANING **ILLINOIS** **GUARDSMEN!** |
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Urban Myth Alert |
by fyi
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
14 Dec 2005
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"There just so CUTE, those adorable little throwbacks to a simpler time, when protesters could vilify soldiers for their service and spit on them as they returned from a combat theater."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 Dec 2005
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THERE'S the definative objective research resource...Wikipedia.
You've convinced me: I'll turn away from the dark side, Obe-Wan.
Thanks for nitpicking my choice of rhetoric, but my point remains valid. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 Dec 2005
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THERE'S the definative objective research resource...Wikipedia.
You've convinced me: I'll turn away from the dark side, Obe-Wan.
Thanks for nitpicking my choice of rhetoric, but my point remains valid. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 Dec 2005
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Actually, come to think of it, for this genius to write a whole BOOK claiming that soldiers returning from Nam weren't abused - physcially, emotionally and psychologically - by those fun lefty war protesters is akin to the recent Iranian offical statement that the holocaust is a myth.
Both concepts are perpetuated by extremist revisionists who believe that by SAYING something wasn't true MEANS that it wasn't true.
...starting to see a pattern here... |
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Really? |
by just a person
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 Dec 2005
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Someone who equates the Holocaust with the myth of the spitting image could be suspected of not really being interested in objectivity.
Even assuming there ever was any truth to the spitting image, a little spittle is hardly the moral equivalent of a gas chamber.
BTW, at the time of this event, there were no reports that anyone insulted or demeaned the Illinois National Guard... but such a charge invented here after the fact out of thin air by some guy seems a lot like an echo of the spitting image trope to me. Do you have any proof that anyone was insulted or demeaned? I haven't seen it, except for your use of caplock. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 Dec 2005
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Jerry Lembcke's work makes him sound like a wannabe, June 7, 2005
Reviewer: T. Cox (Pontiac, MO)
I have been researching the homecoming stories of Vietnam veterans for the past three years or so for a Masters thesis, and Mr. Lembcke contacted me concerning my "possibly fictional" memories from veterans. I have to say that I don't believe all of these soldiers lied about what was done to them at the airports.
There are pictures of soldiers being hit with tomatoes and eggs, which are large enough to photograph well, but Lembcke seems to base his claim on the fact that there are no pictures of anyone spit on.
How well does spit photograph anyway? And how quick would you have to be to capture it? I know security guards who worked in airports who witnessed it, I know a few protestors who claim to have done it, and I have talked to hundreds of soldiers who claimed it happened to them, either at the airport or out in public.
Mass hysteria? I don't believe ir. And interestingly enough, Lembcke does not include in his book what branch of service he was in, or the dates, or his MOS. I have yet to read something, even emails, from Vietnam veterans who do not include that basic info on all their correspondence and writings.
What is he hiding? Save your money. Read the books written by the real Vietnam veteans who can tell you what happened to them, unanalyzed by a "sociologist professor" who claims to have been there. Another point strongly made by over 140 veterans I spoke to about this book: A true Vietnam veteran does not disparage the stories of his fellow veterans and call them liars.Lembcke's work does not ring true. I have names of veterans this happened to, not, as he suggested, just veterans who know someone. They know where they were when it happened, and how it happened. They know how they felt when it happened. Lembcke's work takes away what little dignity is left to the true Vietnam Veterans. Don't give him the satisfaction of knowing another person bought his lies. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 Dec 2005
|
Good to hear from the PC "just a 'person'" side of things. Wouldn't want to get out of a conversation on UCIMC without the subtle hint that specific words I use could somehow be construed as sexist, racist, homophobic or otherwise offensive to someone, somewhere, sometime.
No one ever accused me of being interested in objecivity.
I make no excuses: I very much dislike folks who vent their hatred of soldiers as murderers because of their position in life, and then thinly veil that hatred in an anti-government protest.
The fact that this group of mental midgets decided that protesting in front of a National Guard recruitment tent will advance an anti-war cause is laughable at best and insulting and demeaning at worst to the recruiters there and soldiers in general.
There is no subversive purpose to what I write:
1) your right to protest federal decisions is your right, bar none.
2) your right to protest to the correct people who have the ability to make the changes is your right, bar none.
3) your right to appeal to the masses in your quest is your right, bar none
4) any demonstration or rhetoric that focuses on soldiers directly in the name of an anti-war or other governmental political cause over which soldiers have no control is garbage, and should be treated as such.
Bottom line: Learn to differentiate Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Counter Recruiter
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Dec 2005
|
Counter Recruitment 101
No Child Left Behind
Section 9528: The Hidden Clause
Your school is giving your personal information to military recruiters whether you know it or not!
Why make something as important as where your personal directory information goes so hidden away?
If the bill is meant to "help students," why not be up-front about what their information is used for?
Section 9528 gives military recruiters full access to all students’ personal information (names, addresses, and telephone listings) for recruiting purposes, as well as access to students while in their schools. If a school denies recruiters this information, the federal government can cut funding to that school as punishment.
One way to prevent recruiters from getting your info is to fill out an opt-out form. Sample forms are available on this website.
All students and their parents are allowed to "opt-out," withhold the students personal information from recruiters BUT:
* Many students and parents are not even informed of this option.
* In some cases, students who have opted-out have unwillingly been opted out of everything from the honor roll to playbills and recognition of sports as well as having their information withheld from college recruiters.
* Make sure that your school differentiates between opting-out of the military opposed to opting-out of everything.
* One result of the act being abused is that it allows recruiters to roam schools, some even getting special privileges, such as a whole section of the guidance office.
A Lesson in Vocabulary
The difference between equal access and free access…
How often do you see military recruiters in your school?
How often are college and university representatives there?
A major misconception is that recruiters have full access to students.
SEC 9528 states, "Each local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide military recruiters the same access to secondary school students as is provided generally to post secondary educational institutions or to prospective employers of those students."
This means that the military should only get the same access as colleges and job recruiters, not free access to the students or special privileges.
ASVAB
Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Test
What they tell you: ASVAB is a voluntary test that "will help you make career decisions."
What it really is: The ASVAB test is a sneaky way for military recruiters to get all the information on students taking the test, for recruitment purposes.
The ASVAB is just another tool to help recruiters make their quotas & advance in their careers.
Why would someone take this test? We are told it will tell us what career skills we have. Don’t buy that, ASVAB is not designed to help students make career decisions. There are no connections between ASVAB scores and civilian career skills
Before taking the ASVAB test: Students must sign a document. Scores will not be processed unless it’s signed. Even though most of the students who take the test are minors, the military considers their signature legally binding. This signature releases all of the students’ personal information: name, address, phone number and social security number, into a computer listing used for recruitment.
**CHOOSE OPTION 8**If you do not choose Option 8, then all your information will be given out to the military. Recruiters conveniently don’t mention Option 8, but when taking the ASVAB, Option 8 protects a student’s personal information from the military recruiters. All schools that offer the ASVAB have Option 8 for student’s to choose. Schools can also use Option 8 to Opt-Out the entire school.
Conscientious Objector (CO) & the Draft
A conscientious objector is someone who doesn’t believe in war in any form. You don’t have to be religious to be a CO. The draft law states that it is the moral and ethical beliefs that lead one to become a CO.
When can you register as a CO?
The time to register as a CO is when you receive a draft letter telling you to report to your draft board. If the draft is reinstated and your name is called, it is better to already have documentation that you are a CO.
What can you do now?
Document your anti-war/peace related activities (photos of you at anti-war rallies, anti-war articles you’ve written, articles about you & groups/clubs that you belong to.) and gather community support so that you are recognized as a CO.
For more info, visit GI Rights Hotline 1-800-394-9544 http://girights.objector.org/
Selective Service and its Importance
The Selective Service is an independent executive agency, not the military. Yet, it has the authority to take civilians and order them into the military.
* Young men must register for the Selective Service during the 60-day period around their 18th birthday.
* Men studying in the US on student visas don’t need to register with the Selective Service unless they have a green card to work.
* Failure to register with the Selective Service will prevent you from receiving federal financial aid, federal job training, up to $250,000 in fines & five years in jail.
* If you are a CO at the time you register, make it clear on the registration card that yousubmit to the Selective Service.
* Have copies of it and send it return receipt requested. You can also have it dated and notarized for further authentication. Registering as a CO will not prevent you from receiving federal financial aid.
Visit www.sss.gov for more information.
The Enlistment Agreement
When you sign the enlistment agreement: YOU ARE SIGNING A BINDING CONTRACT!
The actual contract is very clear, but beware, recruiters are very deceptive with how they present it. For example, check out page 2, paragraph 9, point B:
"Law and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of the enlistment/reenlistment document."
Although you are pledging your life to serve in the military, and you must uphold your end of the deal, there are NO GUARANTEES on their end! It’s BINDING to YOU, but not to them.
Don’t sign anything!
Take someone with you when you see a recruiter (legal witness)
ASK FOR A COPY to show a parent, teacher or guidance counselor.
If they refuse to give you a copy, what does that tell you?
After you are in, you are subject to military law and it’s no longer as simple as changing your mind.
The Delayed Enlistment Program (DEP)
IF YOU SIGN UP & CHANGE YOUR MIND…
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GO!!! The recruiter will tell you the exact opposite.
The DEP is Inactive Reserve Status: there is NO OBLIGATION to go, even though you’ve signed up.
The enlistment agreement expires 1 year after you sign it.
Until you show up at Basic Training, you have no commitment to the military
With the DEP, you are NOT in the military
If a recruiter tries to threaten you, coerce you, intimidate you, or tell you that you have to go, you do not have to put up with it! Military regulations don’t allow this. Each branch of the military has these regulations. They can be found through the following website: www.girights.org
Military recruiters have quotas to fill and will be punished if they don’t fill them. We already know they didn’t meet their 2004 quota & their numbers are already low for 2005. This means that their recruitment efforts will be more aggressive than ever.
The Poverty Draft in Full Effect
One of the biggest lures that recruiters have is the promise of funding for higher education and job training. Recruiters aim to target communities that are in the highest need of these programs.
The Facts:
Due to the pressure to meet quotas, as of March 2005, 37 military recruiters have gone AWOL. (New York Times, Sunday March 27, 2005)
This January, for the first time since 1995, the Marines missed their quota (Maj. Dave Griesmer, spokesman for Marine Corps Recruiting Command, told The Associated Press)
The National Guard met only 56% of its recruiting quota in January (The chief of the Army National Guard, Lt. Gen. Roger C. Schultz, told the House panel)
Educational Benefits:
The GI Bill
The GI Bill provides up to 36 months of education benefits only if one is eligible.
So, what does makes one "eligible? "Honorable Discharge and satisfy length of active duty.
Depending on the discharge (release from military), you could be prevented from receiving veteran benefits & unemployment insurance. Discharges include: Honorable, General, Undesirable, Bad Conduct & Dishonorable.
Soldiers given a dishonorable discharge may also give up certain citizenship rights, including the right to legally own or have a firearm and the right to vote in some states.
For detailed info, please look at the Social Security Handbook 956.1 956.2 (ssa.gov)
Facts:
Due to a new military policy, everyone is opted into the GI Bill by default.
$100 per month for the first year in military will go towards the GI Bill plan.
1 out of 3 people never see any money even though they pay into the fund (Commission on Service Members & Veterans Transition Assistance)
25% of all soldiers don’t receive honorable discharges
One must opt out in order to not be signed up for the GI Bill.
Because the GI Bill is issued as a stipend, it actually lowers what you could get for financial aid since it counts as income. This will work against you when applying for financial aid for college! |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Dec 2005
|
None of the above is news - every bit of the information provided in the post above is available to anyone who does the most basic of cursory research.
However, there are a few points I'd like to address:
First, the majority of folks who recieve a discharge that is not an "honorable" receive a "medical." That is not classified as an "other-than-honorable."
There are also other discharges that are not considered "other-than-honorable" due to UCMJ action, such as "failure to adapt," in which the discharge essentially voids the contract and no "true" discharge is issued.
Folks who get an other-than-honorable discharge and are therefore ineligible for their GI BIll/College Fund benefits didn't get other-than-honorably discharged on a whim. In order to get something other-than-honorable, you really have to screw up big time.
Loss of education benefits as a result of UCMJ action is commonly known among military personnel, and it is one of many useful tools for commanders to keep troops with behavioral issues on the strait and narrow.
No one recieves a dishonorable discharge without an extremely serious reason. If someone recieves a dishonorable, then the problem is with the individual, not the government.
2) There are only 2 reasons why someone wouldn't receive any money from the GI Bill - either they received an other-than-honorable, or they did not attend college.
3) If there is nothing barring any serviceman who "opts out" of the GI Bill from doing so, then that cannot be considered a burden on the individual.
4) It's no secret what the ASVAB is for. It's for standardized aptitude scoring within DoD. Anyone who says otherwise either has an anti-US government political agenda or didn't score too high on the test itself.
5) There are ungodly amounts of resources and information available to those who are considering joining the military, both independent and governmental. I find it highly unlikely that a reasonable and even remotely competent person could believe that the military offers a "bait-and-switch" deal to the extent that the above author feels exists.
6) CO status can even be attained WHILE actually in the military, if one can reasonably demonstrate that they are morally against combat in either a participatory or a support role. There are a number of different responses that are available, depending on the outcome of the CO board and classification process.
It should be noted that at no time in US history has CO status been granted on the basis of one's feelings toward a particular conflict - CO status is only granted on the basis of a deep-rooted religious or moral conviction against armed conflict itself. That has always been, and will continue to be the precedent.
7) The National Guard has been missing recruitment quotas for years, even before 9/11. Nothing new there. But the protest here in Champaign was directed against them, and yet the Illinois National Guard (a title 32 USC, Illinois state agency; not a title 10 USC federal agency) continues to exist, to thrive even, as they are contributing just as much, in some units even more than the active duty folks, to the GWOT.
Final thought:
To pretend that any of the information in the previous post is some great big secret is a load of garbage.
Furthermore, if the purpose of the demonstration was against the war, then the content of the posting above this one is relevant only to the me-first self-interest of the individual, not the Iraq war, and therefore is a moot point in this string.
If the purpose of the demonstration was against military recruiting in general, and the above post was a direct reflection of that purpose, then there is no news here, just a rant by those diametrically opposed to the sheer existance of US military personnel, and the protest itself was unecessary, demeaning and insulting to the soldiers on site and in general. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a Kid
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Dec 2005
|
Stop the Military Recruiters!
We Won't be the Cops of the World!
"Stop The Military Recruiters Campaign"
George Bush and Co. want us to join the military to be the cops of the world. But we have a different mission…
Our generation is taking to the streets, standing with the people of the world against the US’s unjust war on the world!
Our generation needs to come together as a fighting force, but not for George Bush's army of murder and destruction. Students and youth are always on the front lines of resistance movements: from the fight to stop the U.S.’s war in Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement, to the Black Panthers and the Chicano Moratorium, to the battle to stop police brutality and free Mumia Abu-Jamal, to the anti-globalization and immigrant rights movements.
Recently hundreds of thousands of us across the country raised our voices, protested, and walked out of school against the illegitimate war in Iraq.
Although the people were not able to stop the war, we showed the world that there are many here that will not go along with the government’s program. Our stand gave people heart, strengthening worldwide resistance. This resistance and opposition helped to expose and isolate the U.S. government. In the course of all this, people developed new ways of organizing- working together to make make connections and alliances with people of different nationalities, ages, backgrounds, and communities.
The cops, the military, immigration police, and school administrations have confronted us. The world needs our generation to rise up and take matters into our own hands to stop the criminals who are waging unjust war all over the world in our name! |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Dec 2005
|
Just a kid:
Good luck with that.
Let me know how that all works out for ya. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a Kid
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
17 Dec 2005
|
Thanks Just a Guy!
Seems like *good luck * wishes from you is about all we need.
Maybe I had you wrong with your indefensible defense of all things military. Support the troops........no thanks. That means I support what they are doing....and I do not. Just bring them home and hope that they are not damaged beyond repair.
Post your e-mail info and we'll be gald to let you know how it's going and how things work out.
At least I'll be saying NO! to the recruiters and that will for sure extend my life expectancy.
Thanks for the *Good Luck* but ya'll probably need it more than me! |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Dec 2005
|
Just a kid:
For us to have a discussion that has any purpose, we must first agree on a few basic precepts:
The world of nation-states is the real world.
That every state is sovereign, has the right to defend itself, and standing armies are the logical and reasonable outcome of that right.
That ONLY states (not non-national combatant organizations) have the moral right to have standing armies for defense.
That international and intranational armed conflict is an recurring inevitability, and therefore preparing for such conflict is not in and of itself immoral.
That there is a distinct separation between Justice OF War (Jus Ad Bellum) and Justice IN War (Jus In Bello), as noted by thousands of years of philosophical, ethical, religious and legal scholarship and precedent, from St. Augustine to McMahon to the states party to the Geneva Conventions.
That both Justice In War and Justice Of War have specific, defined moral criteria that must be met, but that the justness of either form of Justice does not necessarily uphold or negate the justness of the other. Just actions can take place in an unjust conflict, and unjust actions can take place in a just conflict. Generally speaking, individual tactical instances of unjust actions do not “add up” to make a conflict unjust, unless there exists a theater-wide policy (whether official or unofficial) for unjust actions, in which case that policy must be judged under Justice Of War, not Justice In war.
That the authority, responsibility, and accountability for Justice OF war lies solely with the government of a nation, and in a representative democracy, secondarily with the citizens as well.
That by definition, Justice of war is judged at the Political and Strategic levels only.
That the authority, responsibility and accountability for Justice IN war lies primarily with the participatory legal combatants, but also secondarily with the government (and people) for enforcing the legal and ethical codes of conduct by the combatants that support the criteria for justness in combat.
That by definition, Justice In War is judged at the Operational and Tactical levels only, and the justice of independent tactical acts are not factors that the determine the justice of other individual tactical acts. (ie, the justice of the siege of Falluja must be evaluated seperately from other acts in the conflict).
If we cannot agree on the above, particularly the established moral fact that there is indeed a separation between Jus Ad Bellum and Jus In Bello, and that soldiers can only be accountable for Jus In Bello, and then only for actions that specific soldiers directly plan or participate in, then a conversation is a moot point.
If your snide comment “Support the troops........no thanks. That means I support what they are doing....and I do not” is truly how you feel and that’s as deep as you’ve thought about armed conflict, then truly you are “just a kid.”
If you have researched the history of morality in armed conflict, and you still believe that supporting the troops means directly supporting the government’s actions, then you have proven yourself unreasonable, and arguing with you would be rather like masturbating: fun for a few seconds, but messy and pointless.
Fortunately, you appear to be more concerned about your own self-interest, and not that of the troops, so I suppose it’s good for them that you are not only in the extreme minority of the nation in that you dislike troops for being troops, but also that you are completely ineffective in your efforts. |
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You're Forgetting Nuremberg |
by Dose of Reality
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Dec 2005
|
Injust a Guy wrote:
"If we cannot agree on the above, particularly the established moral fact that there is indeed a separation between Jus Ad Bellum and Jus In Bello, and that soldiers can only be accountable for Jus In Bello, and then only for actions that specific soldiers directly plan or participate in, then a conversation is a moot point."
Sounds like a pompous and long-winded effort to reiterate what Bush has been insisisting, that the international rules of war do not apply to the US. Have you been giving legal advice to the White House alongside John Yoo and exactly how to toture by claiming it's not really tirture unless you say it is?
The Nuremberg Principles, established back when the US had at least a shred of international credibility, distinctly call on soldiers to resist unlawful orders unless they want to be implicated in crimes against humanity. In fact, the US military still teaches that the Nuremberg Principles apply, even though it seems that such principles are only rarely honored in the US military at this point and only if the individual troop is willing to stick their neck out for them, which a few have indeed done.
http://www.un.org/law/ilc/texts/nurnfra.htm
http://www.brasscheck.com/yugoslavia/directory/52199a.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/oden01192005.html
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/10/23/war_counsel?mode=PF
PS BTW, you're starting to sound a lot like a certain troll. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Dec 2005
|
Dose:
First, I’m not sure why you consider a well-thought-out and educated response “trolling,” unless your definition of trolling involves anything with which you don’t agree.
Second, none of what I wrote was intended to be a defense of anything (aside from the profession of arms itself), and I intentionally did not attempt to evaluate either the Iraq war itself or tactical actions within it so as not to muddy my point. My post was intended to bring up the very basic and very accepted and established tenants of Jus Ad Bellum/Jus In Bello to explain to “Just a Kid” that generally being against soldiers and being against specific government actions are two very separate concepts that can’t reasonably be lumped together.
While the US has traditionally made great efforts to adhere to international treaties and international law in general, the fact is that the US government has never recognized or ceded ultimate punitive authority to any body or individual outside of the US. The reason for this is that US citizens and government officials have traditionally and legally held the Constitution to be the highest authority for our citizens, and therefore an international body or law would usurp that authority. That is why our soldiers do not stand trial before the Hague, and that is why it is established precedent that no US soldier will ever voluntarily be turned over to another country (in the case of allied operations where other countries sometimes hold operational authority over US troops) for prosecution of war crimes.
Yes, there are cases where the US is not fully party to some international treaties, for instance, the all-out ban on the use of land mines, but by and large, reasonable concessions are made and US troops are instructed, trained, and expected to adhere to such international treaties as the Geneva Conventions.
Yes, it is also a well-known fact that the UCMJ calls for soldiers to refuse to follow unlawful orders, BUT it also states explicitly that orders are generally assumed to be lawful and the individual disobeys any order at their own peril. The burden is on the subordinate to be able to legally defend his act of disobedience in a court-martial.
But since you brought up torture (for some God-unknown reason), let’s use that as an example to illustrate my point of Jus Ad Bellum/Jus In Bello.
Without splitting hairs (strictly for the sake of argument here), torture against any enemy, lawful or unlawful, is generally against US military regulations, the Geneva Conventions, and a moral code of conduct in warfare. Therefore, if torture is conducted by US troops, then someone (or several someones) is conducting an unjust action. But who is responsible and who should be held accountable?
If such torture is the result of independent actions by individuals, then each specific act of torture is a separate unjust act under Jus In Bello. Therefore, each individual act should be prosecuted separately. If, however, there is a national or theater policy of unlawful and unjust torture, then not only should each individual soldier and his direct chain of command be held accountable by Jus In Bello, but the Political and Strategic leaders who implemented the policy should also be held accountable under Jus Ad Bellum.
HOWEVER, actions and policies that do not meet the criteria for either Jus Ad Bellum or Jus In Bello CAN be rectified, and do not necessarily cause the entirety of the conflict to be considered unjust “permanently” under Jus Ad Bellum.
The fact that there are violations of Jus In Bello, international treaties and the UCMJ by soldiers (US and otherwise) is simply a fact of armed conflict, and will continue to happen intermittently, and under US regulations, they will continued to be prosecuted; if anyone could ensure that no one would ever violate Just War theory, then there would be no need for such laws. By and large, such instances of illegal actions ARE prosecuted, save for the few and far between that make media headlines for the sport of the armchair General, such as yourself.
Finally, there are always the gray areas – if a soldier believes that an action he takes is legal and moral, and the superior that issued the order believes the same, but it is the definition or the concept that is in question, such as in the case of what constitutes torture, then it would a difficult day indeed for anyone to prosecute such action, because the violation is held in the subjective eye of the interpreter of the action, not the objective eye of law. (THAT IS NOT A DEFENSE OF TORTURE AS A CONCEPT OR A MEANS!)
The bottom line is that at no point was I defending either the Iraq war itself or any actions or policies within it. The point was that there is a distinct division between Jus Ad Bellum and Jus In Bello, and those who protest soldiers because of what is happening at the national political level, such as at the National Guard Recruiting protest on Thanksgiving weekend, is a muddling of those two concepts by those who are either unwilling or unable to understand that separation.
http://www.crimesofwar.org/
The Crimes of War Project is quite a resource to learn Just War theory, precedent and current educated and non-partisan discussion of current events within that context. |
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America's Anti-Torture Tradition |
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Dec 2005
|
It is nice that the Bush administration has finally been pressured into backing a ban on cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners. But what remains shocking about this embarrassing and distasteful national debate is that we had to have it at all. This administration's newfound enthusiasm for torture has not only damaged our international reputation, it has shattered one of our proudest American traditions.
Every schoolchild knows that Gen. George Washington made extraordinary efforts to protect America's civilian population from the ravages of war. Fewer Americans know that Revolutionary War leaders, including Washington and the Continental Congress, considered the decent treatment of enemy combatants to be one of the principal strategic preoccupations of the American Revolution.
"In 1776," wrote historian David Hackett Fischer in "Washington's Crossing," "American leaders believed it was not enough to win the war. They also had to win in a way that was consistent with the values of their society and the principles of their cause. One of their greatest achievements … was to manage the war in a manner that was true to the expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution."
The fact that the patriots refused to abandon these principles, even in the dark times when the war seemed lost, when the enemy controlled our cities and our ragged army was barefoot and starving, credits the character of Washington and the founding fathers and puts to shame the conduct of America's present leadership.
Fischer writes that leaders in both the Continental Congress and the Continental Army resolved that the War of Independence would be conducted with a respect for human rights. This was all the more extraordinary because these courtesies were not reciprocated by King George's armies. Indeed, the British conducted a deliberate campaign of atrocities against American soldiers and civilians. While Americans extended quarter to combatants as a matter of right and treated their prisoners with humanity, British regulars and German mercenaries were threatened by their own officers with severe punishment if they showed mercy to a surrendering American soldier. Captured Americans were tortured, starved and cruelly maltreated aboard prison ships.
Washington decided to behave differently. After capturing 1,000 Hessians in the Battle of Trenton, he ordered that enemy prisoners be treated with the same rights for which our young nation was fighting. In an order covering prisoners taken in the Battle of Princeton, Washington wrote: "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren…. Provide everything necessary for them on the road."
John Adams argued that humane treatment of prisoners and deep concern for civilian populations not only reflected the American Revolution's highest ideals, they were a moral and strategic requirement. His thoughts on the subject, expressed in a 1777 letter to his wife, might make a profitable read for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as we endeavor to win hearts and minds in Iraq. Adams wrote: "I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this — Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed."
Even British military leaders involved in the atrocities recognized their negative effects on the overall war effort. In 1778, Col. Charles Stuart wrote to his father, the Earl of Bute: "Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate."
In the end, our founding fathers not only protected our national values, they defeated a militarily superior enemy. Indeed, it was their disciplined adherence to those values that helped them win a hopeless struggle against the best soldiers in Europe.
In accordance with this proud American tradition, President Lincoln instituted the first formal code of conduct for the humane treatment of prisoners of war in 1863. Lincoln's order forbade any form of torture or cruelty, and it became the model for the 1929 Geneva Convention. Dwight Eisenhower made a point to guarantee exemplary treatment to German POWs in World War II, and Gen. Douglas McArthur ordered application of the Geneva Convention during the Korean War, even though the U.S. was not yet a signatory. In the Vietnam War, the United States extended the convention's protection to Viet Cong prisoners even though the law did not technically require it.
Today, our president is again challenged to align the conduct of a war with the values of our nation. America's treatment of its prisoners is a test of our faith in our country and the character of our leaders.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com |
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'Iraq, Ourselves': America's Own Chronicle of its Hellish Descent |
by Pierre Tristam
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Dec 2005
|
Every week as I prepare to write this piece I tell myself: Not Iraq, not this time. Almost every week something makes it impossible to stay away, to get away. Iraq is 6,800 miles from our shores in geography only. What happens there in any given week has more bearing on what we're becoming here than anything happening between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains in any given month. And what we're becoming is a fraud of our former selves.
The 1970s had "Our Bodies, Ourselves," the Talmud-like treatise on gender and sexual identity that midwifed feminism's ascent toward the ankles of America's power structures. This decade has "Iraq, Ourselves." Less Talmudic, more communal, it's written every day and -- fittingly for the Internet age of diffusion -- in innumerable parts by anyone who chooses, and by many who don't, and whose last words are etched on tombstones in every state.
"Iraq, Ourselves" traces the descent of American values into various circles of hell. The lust and gluttony for power, the greed for cheap and easy profit from Iraq's ruins, the wrath of our terrified military, of our mercenary "private security" goons, and now of Iraq's government-backed death squads and their hunt for heretics: All of it combines into a three-ring circus of violence with the Tigris for a River Styx and the Potomac for a Rubicon. Our imperial president crossed that one three years ago, with fraud on his lips and hubris in his plastic laurels.
He, of course, is the head writer of this shameful testament, its editor-in-chief, though he cannot see past fictions. The White House has become his very own Eighth Circle where he wallows in the sloth of flatterers, false prophets, falsifiers, counterfeiters and roving hypocrites. He plays with them in their little ditches, then rises every once in a while to spin their tales in front of big audiences in uniform before sending them off to etch their marble stones while he retreats back to his circle, unrepentant.
The Bush-Pentagon vast disinformation campaign in Iraq is finally generating the reaction it ought to have generated back when, in the earliest days of the war, the Pentagon was spilling Jessica Lynch-like lies as liberally as it was spilling other people's blood, staging statue-toppling victory parades in the heart of Baghdad and manufacturing a "Mission Accomplished" celebration on the deck of an aircraft carrier. No one should be surprised about the vast right-wing confabulations that take their source in the White House's messianic conviction that its little junta should represent the Middle East's second coming. But the sense of outrage isn't discouraging still more dangerous fantasies on the part of the administration's foot soldiers. Television's fair-and-bollix propagandists, radio's dittoheads, the blogosphere's approximation of a mobosphere -- they think more disinformation abroad, more censorship at home, more of the same policies and strategies everywhere, including torture and secret prisons, are the answer.
Charles Krauthammer's defense of torture in last week's issue of The Weekly Standard gave every intellectual sadist and me-generation jingoist reason to cheer. The argument is too craven to answer. But Krauthammer throws in a popular myth along the way, that the Pentagon treats Guantanamo's inmates so well that "our scrupulousness extends even to providing them with their own Qurans, which is the only reason alleged abuses of the Quran at Guantanamo ever became an issue."
"That we should have provided those who kill innocents in the name of Islam with precisely the document that inspires their barbarism is a sign of the absurd lengths to which we often go in extending undeserved humanity to terrorist prisoners," Krauthammer says.
Never mind the assumption about the Quran's barbarism, which is demonstrably false, or the more serious guilty-until-proven-innocent assumption about the detainees, even though not one of them has been found guilty of anything. There's a more monstrous fallacy here. As a new book by James Yee, the Army chaplain falsely accused of having "infiltrated" Guantanamo as an al-Qaida member, makes clear, the Quran has itself become an instrument of torture. Because of the petty abuse heaped on the book by their captors (dropping it, kicking it, mishandling it), Gitmo inmates took to refusing to have a book in their cell. They weren't allowed to refuse. Those who still resisted were forced, violently, to accept a book -- a procedure known as a "forced cell extraction" -- then placed in isolation until they relented. Their captors, with creative cruelty, have turned the inmates' one and only haven against them while still making us believe that "our scrupulousness extends even to providing them with their own Qurans."
No lie more demonically speaks of the undivine comedy of this whole war, of the falsehoods corrupting its core assumptions, of the brutality that shadows America in others' eyes, and not only in others'. Rot is replacing our ideals from here to Baghdad, to ourselves.
Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer.
© 2005 News-Journal Corp.
http://www.news-journalonline.com |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Dec 2005
|
Congratulations.
You've managed to be as subtle as ever in changing the subject to avoid logic and reason.
My point was never about Iraq or torture. I neither condoned torture or defended the Iraq war in any of these posts.
My point has always been about the established moral difference between Justice Of War and Justice In war, but apparantly that has fallen on either deaf or ignorant ears.
This persistant fallacy in the AWARE community that US soldiers as a whole are immoral agents of violence and evil is unfounded and undeserved. As long as this falsehood persists, the reasonable majority of the nation will continue to marginalize your opinions. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Marginalized views gaining in popularity!
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
19 Dec 2005
|
Recruiters pitching military service to high school students tout job training, college scholarships, foreign travel and lifelong friendships.
Peace group offers a different view: Enlisting in the armed forces isn't like signing with a job placement agency. War can kill you.
That's why peace activists say students who hear from recruiters in school should also expect to hear from them.
"We want to be there to balance that perspective," said Javier del Sol, an activist . "The military has money and personnel. But a few people can make a difference."
Through a pilot program this fall, students could see peace recruiters in the cafeteria, career fairs, assemblies, classrooms and JROTC classes -- all the places on campus they now see uniformed military representatives. In time Area Draft Counseling, a Quaker-sponsored anti-war group, says it will seek equal access to all County schools.
Del Sol and Marie Zwicker, who joined the anti-war movement say they're recruiters for peace. They'll counter claims made by recruiters and distribute information on alternatives to the armed services, such as the Peace Corps and college degrees in diplomacy. And they say they'll tell students of their right to not have personal information shared with representatives of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
The pilot peace program appears to be on firm legal footing because of a little-known 1982 U.S. district court ruling granting the peace group, of which Zwicker was a member, the same access to students and the right to hand out literature.
In the decades that followed, peace groups around the nation have won similar cases. But principals continue to resist giving military detractors access to students, said Oskar Castro of the National Youth and Militarism Program, a Quaker group, in Philadelphia.
Principal Ana Meehan said details must be sorted out, but she's open to the idea of letting Area Draft Counseling onto the campus."We're looking for a balanced approach," Meehan said.
The armed forces recruit heavily in working-class cities. But these area are also counter-recruiting capitals, having spawned many recent anti-war, anti-globalization protests as well.
The group also intends to inform students that they can fill out a form telling the school that they don't want any personal information shared with recruiters. High schools must comply with the requirement, part of the 2001 No Child Left Behind act, or risk losing federal grants. Students and parents can opt out by submitting a written request to the school district asking that the information not be shared.
The No Child Left Behind act also guarantees that military recruiters have as much as access to schools as college and company recruiters.
Jean Schurr, who has had three children in high school, said she's used to getting calls and brochures from recruiters. She'd like to keep them out of the schools.
"I don't think you'll ever get recruiters out of the school. So people with an alternative view should definitely have access."
The Area Draft Counseling group has had a history in county schools.
A U.S. federal district court judge ruled in 1982 that the Area Draft Counseling group should have the "same opportunity to distribute pamphlets, literature and related material opposing participation in the military in the same manner military recruiters are permitted to encourage participation in the military."
The war in Iraq spurred the two area residents to action. Del Sol said he expects to have more help this time. Finding volunteers has become easier because a flood of young activists have joined the counter-recruiting movement.
Students aren't getting the whole story about joining the military in a time of war, said Zwicker.
Military brochures have been sanitized, she said. They no longer show combat. And they focus on glamorous jobs, not the ones on the frontlines, she said.
"We need to be there," Zwicker said. "And all the teachers need to be aware that if they invite a military recruiter to a classroom to give a talk about why it's good to be in the military, according to the agreement, they need to be inviting us as well." |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Dec 2005
|
I agree, everyone should have as much information as possible about the military before signing up, even if some information comes from anti-military biased sources. The more informed a citizen is before he signs up, the more satisfied he will be as a soldier.
Although it may help recruiters' numbers to lie to soldiers in the short term, it certainly doesn't develop a stronger military to have duped and dissatisfied citizens serving alongside those who genuinely want to serve and knew exactly what they were getting into when they enlisted.
Recieving information about enlistment solely from a recruiter, as any current or former soldier will tell you, can be a bad idea.
However, the preceding post does STILL not address my point about the moral difference between soldiers and those who make strategic and political decisions.
The preceding post was (again) about self-interest, not specific moral accountability of soldiers once someone has already enlisted.
The purpose of counter-recruitment is to appeal to the basic instinct of self-preservation of potential recruits.
Why, then, am I not convinced that the counter-recruitment protesters do not have have the future bodily safety of the potential recruits in mind as the sole purpose of the event?
Because the purpose of counter-recruitment is about the political interest of the protest group, which brings me back to my original point, that the Just War Theory moral separation exists, and that it is both pointless and immoral to protest a political decision and direct it at those who perform at the tactical level. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Dec 2005
|
I also find it interesting that political activists would side with Quakers - a devout christian sect - but I suppose political expediency make strange bedfellows.
Being a Quaker has traditionally been a very good way to attain CO status, as Quakers are not only against war in any form, but are strict interpretters of the 10 commandments, and "thou shalt not kill" for them also extends to self-defense.
Yes, that strict interprettation is a logical counter to Just War Theory, but it takes a lot of balls to say that one believes so deeply that it is ALWAYS wrong in EVERY instance to take a human life to give your own during someone else's commission of a deadly crime. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Veterans Counter Recruit
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Dec 2005
|
The fact is that the AWARE Counter recruitment event was not a protest but held to pass out information to balance what the military was giving out.
Does sharing information that you don't like make something a protest?
The fact is that there were at least 4-5 military veterans present and passing out this information. I talked to veterans from WWII, Vietnam, and Gulf War I. They were insistant that they wish someone had given them some balance of information ahead of enlistment. Those Veterans present at this event aren't working on a thesis they have first hand experince and support counter-recruitment. I have guess they know something you have not figured out yet.
I respect Staff Sarget Camilo Mejia former Florida National Guard. The prision abuse he witnessed and the inhumanity of war/occupation prompted him to refuse to return to Iraq. A true hero; a war resister. He stands with those who work to stop war.
AWARE is proud to assit the efforts of people like Camilo Mejia and other Iraq Veterans against the war! |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Just a guy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Dec 2005
|
First, as with most of the lefty garbage cut-and-pasted on this board to avoid directly addressing specific issues, the bit about the college thesis was taken from elsewhere on the net to show that there are indeed differing opinions as to what Vietnam Vets experienced. That wasn’t mine, although it did make a good point.
As far as vets go, in case it hasn’t been blatantly obvious, I too am a soldier, 11 years and counting, and the fact of the matter is that it is a drastic minority of vets that join organizations such as AWARE – Just like it is a vast majority of soldiers that commit war crimes.
You can’t have it both ways: you can’t both generalize that soldiers are evil, and then generalize that soldiers have turned against the war and are therefore now “righteous.”
That “something” that they know that I haven’t figured out yet apparently is nothing more than a faulty attempt at cramming your opinion down the throats of the of those who really don’t want to hear it because indeed there ARE things in this world that are worth fighting and dying for, something MOST soldiers “get.”
The fact is that this Thanksgiving Day BS WAS a protest –
“I respect Staff Sarget Camilo Mejia former Florida National Guard. The prision abuse he witnessed and the inhumanity of war/occupation prompted him to refuse to return to Iraq. A true hero; a war resister. He stands with those who work to stop war.”
– those are not the words of a group concerned about the well-being of potential recruits; those are the words of someone playing out a POLITICAL soapbox drama in front of soldiers, which I have addressed time and again above. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by Political Soapbox Drama 101
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Dec 2005
|
What Did You Learn in School Today?
Words and Music by Tom Paxton
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody's free.
And that's what the teacher said to me.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that policemen are my friends.
I learned that justice never ends.
I learned that murderers die for their crimes.
Even if we make a mistake sometimes.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned our government must be strong.
It's always right and never wrong.
Our leaders are the finest men.
And we elect them again and again.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned that war is not so bad.
I learned of the great ones we have had.
We fought in Germany and in France.
And some day I might get my chance.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school. |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by More Political SoapBox Drama 101
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
20 Dec 2005
|
Ochs Phil
Lyrics for Song: I Ain't Marching Anymore
Lyrics for Album: There But for Fortune
Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
At the end of the early British war
The young land started growing
The young blood started flowing
But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I've killed my share of Indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the Little Big Horn
I heard many men lying I saw many more dying
But I ain't marchin' anymore
chorus)
It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all
For I stole California from the Mexican land
Fought in the bloody Civil War
Yes I even killed my brothers
And so many others But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I marched to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain't marchin' anymore
(chorus)
For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning
That I ain't marchin' anymore
Now the labor leader's screamin'
when they close the missile plants,
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore,
Call it "Peace" or call it "Treason,"
Call it "Love" or call it "Reason,"
But I ain't marchin' any more,
No I ain't marchin' any more |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by War is a Racket!
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Dec 2005
|
WAR IS A RACKET
Smedley Darlington Butler
Major General - United States Marine Corps [Retired]
Born West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881
Educated Haverford School
Married Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905
Awarded two congressional medals of honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914,
and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917
Distinguished service medal, 1919
Retired Oct. 1, 1931
On leave of absence to act as director of Department of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932
Lecturer - 1930's
Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932
Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940
For more information about Major General Smedley Butler, contact the United States Marine Corps.
Chapter One
WAR IS A RACKET
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.
The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.
There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.
Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?
Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:
"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."
Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war – anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.
Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.
Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.
Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.
Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.
But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?
Yes, and what does it profit the nation?
Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.
CHAPTER TWO
WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?
The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.
Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:
Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!
Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.
There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.
Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.
Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.
A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.
Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.
For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.
International Nickel Company – and you can't have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.
American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.
Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.
And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.
But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.
Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.
Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!
Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam.
There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.
Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.
Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them – a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers – all got theirs.
Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time.
There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.
One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.
Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.
The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up – and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.
It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.
The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.
Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee – with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator – to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.
Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.
There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.
Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.
CHAPTER THREE
WHO PAYS THE BILLS?
Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.
Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.
Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.
In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.
There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn't stand it.
That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.
But don't forget – the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.
Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share – at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.
Napoleon once said,
"All men are enamored of decorations...they positively hunger for them."
So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.
In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.
So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed.
And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.
All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed.
But wait!
Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.
Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.
We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back – when they came back from the war and couldn't find work – at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!
Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly – his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.
When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too – as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.
And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.
CHAPTER FOUR
HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!
WELL, it's a racket, all right.
A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers –
yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!
Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.
Why shouldn't they?
They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are!
Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.
Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people – those who do the suffering and still pay the price – make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.
Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant – all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war – voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms – to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.
There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide – and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.
A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.
At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.
Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.
The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.
The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.
The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
We must take the profit out of war.
We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
CHAPTER FIVE
TO HELL WITH WAR!
I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.
Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.
Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?
Money.
An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:
"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars.
If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't.
So..."
Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."
Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.
And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.
Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?
The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments.
The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.
There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough.
The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.
Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too.
But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.
If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war – even the munitions makers.
So...I say,
TO HELL WITH WAR! |
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Re: Local Counter Recruitment Event |
by anti-recruitment person
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
01 Jan 2006
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In response to "just a guy" this person obviously did not pay much attention to anything the people there were saying.
NO ONE was vilifiying the nationl guard or any other soldiers for that matter.
Literature was handed out regarding other options to joining the military, and to give kids more information than they might get from the recruiters. There are many veterans who feel abused and lied to by their leaders and who are trying to get out some truth about this government's lies and real reasons for being in Iraq. The people at the high school football event were in no way making any statements against any soldiers. If you had paid attention to what was handed out and talked with any people there instead of laughing at them and throwing away the handouts you might have a different attitude. |
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