This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 215 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, PayPal. Clover, or Wise. Read about why we’re doing this fundraiser, what we’ve accomplished in the last year,, and our current goal, supporting the commentariat.
Yves here. This post looks at the degree of coercion and manipulation needed to get people to kill and die for bad causes like the US empire’s proxy wars.
By Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq, and War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, co-authored with Medea Benjamin
“It’s brave to admit your fears” – Ukrainian recruiting poster. Photo credit: Ministry of Defense, Ukraine
The Associated Press reports that many of the recruits drafted under Ukraine’s new conscription law lack the motivation and military indoctrination required to actually aim their weapons and fire at Russian soldiers.
“Some people don’t want to shoot. They see the enemy in the firing position in trenches but don’t open fire. … That is why our men are dying,” said a frustrated battalion commander in Ukraine’s 47th Brigade. “When they don’t use the weapon, they are ineffective.”
This is familiar territory to anyone who has studied the work of U.S. Brigadier General Samuel “Slam” Marshall, a First World War veteran and the chief combat historian of the U.S. Army in the Second World War. Marshall conducted hundreds of post-combat small group sessions with U.S. troops in the Pacific and Europe, and documented his findings in his book, Men Against Fire: the Problem of Battle Command.
One of Slam Marshall’s most startling and controversial findings was that only about 15% of U.S. troops in combat actually fired their weapons at the enemy. In no case did that ever rise above 25%, even when failing to fire placed the soldiers’ own lives in greater danger.
Marshall concluded that most human beings have a natural aversion to killing other human beings, often reinforced by our upbringing and religious beliefs, and that turning civilians into effective combat soldiers therefore requires training and indoctrination expressly designed to override our natural respect for fellow human life. This dichotomy between human nature and killing in war is now understood to lie at the root of much of the PTSD suffered by combat veterans.
Marshall’s conclusions were incorporated into U.S. military training, with the introduction of firing range targets that looked like enemy soldiers and deliberate indoctrination to dehumanize the enemy in soldiers’ minds. When he conducted similar research in the Korean War, Marshall found that changes in infantry training based on his work in World War II had already led to higher firing ratios.
That trend continued in Vietnam and more recent U.S. wars. Part of the shocking brutality of the U.S. hostile military occupation of Iraq stemmed directly from the dehumanizing indoctrination of the U.S. occupation forces, which included falsely linking Iraq to the September 11th terrorist crimes in the U.S. and labeling Iraqis who resisted the U.S. invasion and occupation of their country as “terrorists.”
A Zogby poll of U.S. forces in Iraq in February 2006 found that 85% of U.S. troops believed their mission was to “retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks,” and 77% believed that the primary reason for the war was to “stop Saddam from protecting Al Qaeda in Iraq.” This was all pure fiction, cut from whole cloth by propagandists in Washington, and yet, three years into the U.S. occupation, the Pentagon was still misleading U.S. troops to falsely link Iraq with 9/11.
The impact of this dehumanization was also borne out by court martial testimony in the rare cases when U.S. troops were prosecuted for killing Iraqi civilians. In a court martial at Camp Pendleton in California in July 2007, a corporal testifying for the defense told the court he did not see the cold-blooded killing of an innocent civilian as a summary execution. “I see it as killing the enemy,” he told the court, adding, “Marines consider all Iraqi men part of the insurgency.”
U.S. combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan (6,257 killed) were only a fraction of the U.S. combat death toll in Vietnam (47,434) or Korea (33,686), and an even smaller fraction of the nearly 300,000 Americans killed in the Second World War. In every case, other countries suffered much heavier death tolls.
And yet, U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan provoked waves of political blowback in the U.S., leading to military recruitment problems that persist today. The U.S. government responded by shifting away from wars involving large deployments of U.S. ground troops to a greater reliance on proxy wars and aerial bombardment.
After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military-industrial complex and political class thought they had “kicked the Vietnam syndrome,” and that, freed from the danger of provoking World War III with the Soviet Union, they could now use military force without restraint to consolidate and expand U.S. global power. These ambitions crossed party lines, from Republican “neoconservatives” to Democratic hawks like Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in October 2000, a month before winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, Hillary Clinton echoed her mentor Madeleine Albright’s infamous rejection of the “Powell Doctrine” of limited war.
“There is a refrain…,” Clinton declared, “that we should intervene with force only when we face splendid little wars that we surely can win, preferably by overwhelming force in a relatively short period of time. To those who believe we should become involved only if it is easy to do, I think we have to say that America has never and should not ever shy away from the hard task if it is the right one.”
During the question-and-answer session, a banking executive in the audience challenged Clinton on that statement. “I wonder if you think that every foreign country– the majority of countries–would actually welcome this new assertiveness, including the one billion Muslims that are out there,” he asked, “and whether or not there isn’t some grave risk to the United States in this–what I would say, not new internationalism, but new imperialism?”
When the aggressive war policy promoted by the neocons and Democratic hawks crashed and burned in Iraq and Afghanistan, this should have prompted a serious rethink of their wrongheaded assumptions about the impact of aggressive and illegal uses of U.S. military force.
Instead, the response of the U.S. political class to the blowback from its catastrophic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was simply to avoid large deployments of U.S. ground forces or “boots on the ground.” They instead embraced the use of devastating bombing and artillery campaigns in Afghanistan, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, and wars fought by proxies, with full, “ironclad” U.S. support, in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and now Ukraine and Palestine.
The absence of large numbers of U.S. casualties in these wars kept them off the front pages back home and avoided the kind of political blowback generated by the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The lack of media coverage and public debate meant that most Americans knew very little about these more recent wars, until the shocking atrocity of the genocide in Gaza finally started to crack the wall of silence and indifference.
The results of these U.S. proxy wars are, predictably, no less catastrophic than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. domestic political impacts have been mitigated, but the real-world impacts in the countries and regions involved are as deadly, destructive and destabilizing as ever, undermining U.S. “soft power” and pretensions to global leadership in the eyes of much of the world.
In fact, these policies have widened the yawning gulf between the worldview of ill-informed Americans who cling to the view of their country as a country at peace and a force for good in the world, and people in other countries, especially in the Global South, who are ever more outraged by the violence, chaos and poverty caused by the aggressive projection of U.S. military and economic power, whether by U.S. wars, proxy wars, bombing campaigns, coups or economic sanctions.
Now the U.S.-backed wars in Palestine and Ukraine are provoking growing public dissent among America’s partners in these wars. Israel’s recovery of six more dead hostages in Rafah led Israeli labor unions to call widespread strikes, insisting that the Netanyahu government must prioritize the lives of the Israeli hostages over its desire to keep killing Palestinians and destroying Gaza.
In Ukraine, an expanded military draft has failed to overcome the reality that most young Ukrainians do not want to kill and die in an endless, unwinnable war. Hardened veterans see new recruits much as Siegfried Sassoon described the British conscripts he was training in November 2016 in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer: “The raw material to be trained was growing steadily worse. Most of those who came in now had joined the Army unwillingly, and there was no reason why they should find military service tolerable.”
Several months later, with the help of Bertrand Russell, Sassoon wrote Finished With War: a Soldier’s Declaration, an open letter accusing the political leaders who had the power to end the war of deliberately prolonging it. The letter was published in newspapers and read aloud in Parliament. It ended, “On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realize.”
As Israeli and Ukrainian leaders see their political support crumbling, Netanyahu and Zelenskyy are taking increasingly desperate risks, all the while insisting that the U.S. must come to their rescue. By “leading from behind,” our leaders have surrendered the initiative to these foreign leaders, who will keep pushing the United States to make good on its promises of unconditional support, which will sooner or later include sending young American troops to kill and die alongside their own.
Proxy war has failed to resolve the problem it was intended to solve. Instead of acting as an alternative to ground wars involving U.S. forces, U.S. proxy wars have spawned ever-escalating crises that are now making U.S. wars with Iran and Russia increasingly likely.
Neither the changes to U.S. military training since the Second World War nor the current U.S. strategy of proxy war have resolved the age-old contradiction that Slam Marshall described in Men Against Fire, between killing in war and our natural respect for human life. We have come full circle, back to this same historic crossroads, where we must once again make the fateful, unambiguous choice between the path of war and the path of peace.
If we choose war, or allow our leaders and their foreign friends to choose it for us, we must be ready, as military experts tell us, to once more send tens of thousands of young Americans to their deaths, while also risking escalation to a nuclear war that would kill us all.
If we truly choose peace, we must actively resist our political leaders’ schemes to repeatedly manipulate us into war. We must refuse to volunteer our bodies and those of our children and grandchildren as their cannon fodder, or allow them to shift that fate onto our neighbors, friends and “allies” in other countries.
We must insist that our mis-leaders instead recommit to diplomacy, negotiation and other peaceful means of resolving disputes with other countries, as the UN Charter, the real “rules based order,” in fact requires.
98 comments
Comments are closed.
Some years ago Chomsky noted in a vid that he did not support eliminating the draft, for which he was roundly criticized. His thesis was that only a mercenary force (volunteer) would maintain an imperial war, that conscripted troops would resist. Resist or wilt, as was the case in Vietnam. Send the sons or daughters of the elites to wars of convenience and the wars would not begin. Send the sons or daughters of the many, and…
But then we had Iraq.
On the other hand, the primogeniture in the European feudal system forced the nobility to send their sons to war (the only way for them to carve out a fortune of their own), which is why “Western Europe”* is still only capable of aggressively expanding, colonizing and dominating.
* today including also northern America, Australia and New Zealand
In contrast, there are some suggestions (Wikipedia) that parts of India and Tibet practised fraternal polyandry, like the Pandavas. This might reduce the birthrate and the pressure to divide property, and eliminate the need to employ redundant males as soldiers or priests. There would be lots of redundant women instead, but they may not be so dangerous.
On the other hand, the scale of the wars that the Pandavas were engaged in, might weaken that argument.
Chomsky himself got an exemption. As for the elite, Cheney had “other priorities”, and Bush got into the National Guard, instead of the army (and doesn’t seem to have been seen much when doing his service).
Chomsky also said “Patriots defend the loot of the elite.”
You have a link for Chomsky’s draft deferment? He was born in 1928 and wouldn’t have been subject to conscription until late 1946. The US was demobilzing and I’m not sure he would have even been subject to the draft. Nothing in his Wikipedia bio. Wikipedia also mentions a US peacetime draft didn’t resume until 1948 and very few were drafted in the late 40s.
It is precisely Wikipedia that provided my data. But rather than rely on Wikipedia, I’ll quote their source, Sperlich, Wolfgang B. (2006) book on Chomsky. I haven’t checked it.
It is a fact that many outside of the UK do not grasp that the huge Labour landslide in the 1945 General election was secured by soldiers and serviceman who had fought on the front lines – results of the election which the Conservatives were sure they had won were delayed by weeks while the results came in. They didn’t want to kill and didn’t fall for the nationalistic nonsense spouted by Churchill. The knew it was the USSR who had ripped the heart out of the Nazis. And they were conscripts. In todays world the people who join the services are those who fall for the nonsense spouted by the recruiters and they are already prepared to kill. They are ideological mercenaries.
Well Churchill did at least fight for Empire as a young man and in our Civil War many of the slave owners died for their fanatical cause. Cut to now and Blair says he was ready to be “blooded” by sending Brits to die in Iraq and Obama makes quips about being good at killing people. The war mongers who keep their hands clean can instead talk about “joy” and even promote themselves as lovers of peace while doing the opposite.They want the power conveyed by violence without the psychological consequences of doing it themselves. The act of killing is little more than a “bump on the wings” as an Israeli pilot once said. When retaliation does finally happen as in the case of 9/11 or Oct 7 the outrage is immense. Blowbacks are a bitch.
The lust for power is at the root of all this and the designers of this country thought they would curb the power of kings to make the commoners their playthings. But that was an “if you can keep it.”
you can see this in the new officer safety is paramount over the people they have pledged to serve and protect bull crap. just look at u-vlade texas. once your public servants become elite mercenaries, they become a occupational army with all of the baggage, and are terribly unreliable in every way, and blow back will ensue.
US police have no obligation to protect and serve. See Gonzales vs Little Rock. Police are there to determine and arrest perpetrators after the crime.
By this metric, having police in a school to protect the kids is clearly nonsense because that’s not what police do, per Supreme Court.
mutatis mutandis:
Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005)
https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2004/04-278.pdf
mercenaries are completely unreliable. they are not trusted, respected, nor viewed as legitimate.
they are viewed as a intimidating dominating occupying army.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLGkRnnyEhA
Uvalde 2.0—Scared Cops HIDE, Refuse to Engage Active Incident
If you consider Attlee was elected PM in the first General Election since 1935 and the 1945 Election was under Representation of People Act 1928…. And Stanley Baldwin was last PM elected by voters in 1935 had handed over to Chamberlain in 1937 who was deposed by Churchill in May 1940….voters probably had no desire to return to Mass-Unemployment as after 1918 when the Lloyd George Coalition was overthrown by the Conservatives leaving in 1922 and the first Labour Government in 1924 could do little
It was obvious a society riddled with inequality and poverty wanted a new dawn. Merchant seamen ceased being paid once torpedoed – millions of men knew poverty beckoned if they were de-mobbed under Churchill – people remembered him as Finance Minister 1924-29 and how HE caused the General Strike 1926 with Return to Gold Standard 1925 and wage cuts
—But then we had Iraq.
The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army quantitatively and qualitatively were light-years ahead of the 2003 (Saddam) Iraqi Army and the occupation insurgency.
The Viet Cong/NVA is the “Premier League” when it comes to post-1945 anti-western fighters.
Arguably, Arab forces, as a whole, from 1948 to 2003 punched much below their potential weight. That has all changed post-2006-Lebanon as the Hezbollah-style modernization has been adopted by all the major Arab players.
“Who Wants to Kill and Die for the American Empire?”
What a killer title for a post. That´s a must-read.
I have long said that the true test of a person’s commitment to a cause is not being willing to die for it but being willing to kill.
You paraphrased George Patton, excluding his notorious prosprofanity.
Totally agreed. The lesson they choose to show us, is a very old one. The need for intense indoctrination of the troops to make humans act against their instincts. Convert humans into killers. For that you need time and a big effort though some drugs may help. This will indeed be an important human factor, possibly a decisive one in Ukraine war as the proxy depends increasingly on fresh conscripts.
Trying to involve Western troops in significant numbers in the conflict, has been a failure indicating that Western populaces aren’t ready for that (not to mention Western armies) and in this way the hard core neocons seem limited to the next miracle weapon.
Yet, i believe that besides what happens in the fronts we should be thinking on the new kinds of “soldiers” that technology is bringing to wars. Drone operators, missile operators and long range artillery operators, plus their helpers in the communication/information domain who only see the effects of what they do through screens as if fighting in the movies. These don’t need such indoctrination because they are nothing but war gamers. We have to deal with the new dangers this brings.
Do you remember the first reports of drone pilots coping with serious psychological stress for the fact that they were killing by remote control? That was interesting and revealing as to how deep conscience is rooted.
I guess the Army was able to shut down those narrative threads in the media. But they did spawn even a couple of movies.
On the future of war: I doubt that “man” will be replaced. You can see it now. Who would have thought that we will experience a war with 500.000 KIA in Europe with all the fancy tech.
But theory and gaming takes you only so far. Turns out the rules are totally different in reality.
I think it was Medvedev who recently stated that the war is developing in an insane speed. It was suprising for NATO for sure but for the RUs as well. They were however forced to act and adapt. And even though they are much more at the avantgarde of things now it doesn´t seem they would stop recruiting humans.
Actually there are a couple of groups that I think don’t need as much indoctrination, but they’re not really counterpoints to Yves’ essay.
The 1st would be psychopathic people, but they’re actually terrible soldiers because they can’t cooperate, maintain discipline, or weigh risks.
The 2nd more interesting group are those that Simone Weil would call the “rootless”. They’re perfectly capable of empathy, but the empathetic life experiences most people take for granted have partly failed. These ones are interesting because they can make very good fighters, but if they have any ambition, they’re also the most likely to go rogue (warlord, coup-plotter, revolutionary, etc.)
And per the drone angle, I think your right about the immediate psychological effect, but there’s still an indirect check on that. Even though US drone forces haven’t seen it much yet, remote piloting arguably breaks down the distinction between active warzone & civilian area. I think moving the drone operators to greater “safety” ironically motivates your opponent to strike deeper with more of a total war mindset.
The 2nd more interesting group are those that Simone Weil would call the “rootless”. They’re perfectly capable of empathy, but the empathetic life experiences most people take for granted have partly failed. These ones are interesting because they can make very good fighters, but if they have any ambition, they’re also the most likely to go rogue (warlord, coup-plotter, revolutionary, etc.)
I’d like to learn more about this: can you get me pointed in the right direction?
I don’t know first-hand of an in-depth discussion, but there’s probably one somewhere. It’s partly something I put together from a few sources:
From Weil herself, it’s not a long comment, but in The Need for Roots, she specifically mentions that often the cruelest people in any colonial enterprise are the ones that were never connected to their own homes growing up.
A bit more theoretical, but it’s also arguably just a corollary of how Confucians (or at least some) see general morality forming in society. It starts with strong moral sentiments among family and close acquaintances, then generalizes outwards. If something degrades people’s connected-ness to the people close to them in childhood though, even if they’re consciously ethical, the instinctive feeling towards other people just isn’t the same.
Then there are just the connections I’ve put together in my head, which seem to match a stereotype. Late-stage Roman generals, the conquistadors that tried to setup their own fiefdoms, maybe Genghis Khan, some of the Bolsheviks, arguably a lot of the people that joined ISIS, etc. Once you notice the pattern, it’s kind of hard to unsee it, though I can’t really prove it’s a thing.
Thank you for the reply and for your informed observations. I would note that the US military is like a magnet for the rootless, and that several in my peer-group from youth (myself included) ended up in one branch of the service or another, all of whom serving in operational roles (as opposed to support)– trigger-pullers.
The Swiss, and maybe the Poles, were the first people I thought of when you mentioned “the rootless.” The actions of the Swiss Guards, I think, were what really broke the French ancien regime, I tend to think.
Simone Weil being an excellent call I have tried to make a simple search of her in conjunction with French movie director JL Godard´s videoessay Histoire(s) du cinéma since he discovered Weil for his work later in life and used Weil´s philosophy in references to cinema, images, war and violence.
In my search oddly not really anything came up.
And I start to wonder whether this is just stupid me or some censorship monster with Godard having been all BDS and Simone Weil being used by anti-Ukraine war action such as the Simone Weil Center…
Possibly the best starting point is something that came out about 20 yeas ago which gathered some of her writings on colonialism: Simone Weil on Colonialism – An Ethic of the Other. My library is scattered in complete disorder over five rooms following a removal a few years ago so I’ve not been able to locate my copy to give you any more details although, as I remember, the section from The Need For Roots mentioned by NotThePilot is included. Weil was truly a remarble thinker and her work seems more relevant by the day.
But in domestic politics, the popular explosions of bloodlust in times of conflict are amazing to behold. The first time this really hit home for me was with the Falklands war and it keeps repeating. In 2022 people were waving Ukraine flags like they were going to the Superbowl. It was a celebration of going to war. People loved it.
Killing the evildoers, defending our democratic values and seeing our superior military being victorious in battle are great reasons to be proud of the best country in the world!
So of course people are excited about war thousands of miles away.
I can recommend two books that directly address the issue of indoctrination to kill.
“On Killing”, by Dave Grossman as well as the companion title “On Combat”.
Both of these books are a chilling and eye-opening read. The issue of “arms’ length” killing vs. killing-at-a-distance and its effect on the psyche is well covered, as is the effect of video gaming.
An excellent article, but one small typo: Seigfried Sassoon was writing about his semi-autobiographical experiences on the lines in 1915/1916, not 2016.
Otherwise, hear hear! None of our kids should be allowed to go before Lindsey Graham and all of his little friends personally secure the eastern front.
I’m sure if we could see pictures of President Biden and Lindsey Graham heroically leading troops in a brave assault on a hospital in Gaza, there would be long lines at the recruiting offices the next day.
Especially if it was a children’s hospital – kill the terrorists young so they won’t come after us later.
The whole assumption by the USA that it is in existential danger and needs to fight everywhere, militarily and with sanctions and spiteful punishments, is based on no evidence whatsoever. In an interview the duran NOW, Jeffery Sachs elegantly explains this in words even the neocons could understand if they tried! By making wars and building bases, denying “US technical superiority” to China and ensuring most of the world hates the USA, it is leading many down that path very quickly.
An empire in decline can either withdraw from areas it can no longer hold, or double down. I think it can be debated why the US is choosing the latter path. High on own supply of propaganda? For every actor in high places it is more rational to go along with the war agenda? The billionaires who owns different politicians are not able to understand the risks of doubling down or are unable to coordinate a policy shift?
The doubling down is creating the existential risk in the form of nuclear war and worsening the empire´s prospects over all. An empire in decline can, if it withdraws from fights it can’t win, last a long time. Surely there are people on the inside that understands this. This is something I listen intently for when US former insiders like Wilkinson are interviewed, but so far no clues.
I have another possible explanation, but I doubt most here will like it: democracy. Democracy is the reason course-correction is impossible. For theocrats, aristocrats, even open oligarchs, etc. power & statecraft is usually personal enough that they recognize they’re in a hole & need to stop digging.
In a democracy though, even the elites only know how to act out a caricature of what the masses think power looks like. In other words, fairy-tale thinking is rife. This doesn’t conflict with the idea that fascism (which is a mass movement) is essentially a weird cross of tantrum & role-playing as conquerors by “little men”.
To the counterpoint that America is an oligarchy, not a democracy, I’ve come around to the idea that every democracy is an oligarchy. The qualitative difference is that the masses have internalized the means of control, which does lead to real differences in the culture & mindset. The actual operation of power is fundamentally oligarchic though (e.g. Pericles in Athens)
“For theocrats, aristocrats, even open oligarchs, etc. power & statecraft is usually personal enough that they recognize they’re in a hole & need to stop digging.”
Two corollaries to this:
a) Theocrats, etc. generally have some fear that the masses will rise up and burn them at the stake. Consider how the CCP seems to care about its citizens and I have read evaluates mayors and other government officials in part on how they improve the lives of their citizenry.
b) Dictators – by definition are already in power and probably living quite well – crave stability. Democracies often have nationalist fire-brands trying outbid each other for the most “patriotic” position (watch a Republican presidential primary debate).
I think the people you describe all have more fear of the population and are more invested in keeping them pacified. Meanwhile democracy, certainly as practiced today, is a great pacifier for most of the population; it channels their energy in a politically safe direction. That was a large part of how British elites were sold on universal suffrage, back in the day. Let them vote instead of rioting. Here in Russia, for example, that pressure valve does not really exist, since few people believe in the efficacy of voting, though it happens; so the elites are much more sensitive to the possibility of mass unrest and to popular sentiment generally. It is far from ideal, but it has its advantages for the majority of the population.
I can’t help but think so myself. I don’t think democracy (representative democracy, actually existing democracy, “democracy”, whatever, it’s the only one we’ve seen on the national level lately) makes course-correction impossible, but it does make changing course much harder. Democracy is good at preventing drastic change. That’s not a strike against it per se, as a lot of drastic changes I can imagine would be catastrophic for the population. Enacting drastic changes, good or bad, is the special strength of monarchies (not necessarily the hereditary kind; just any regime where power is relatively concentrated in the hands of one person). Consider Peter the Great or the enlightened despots. Of course, both democracies and monarchies tend to become corrupted by the practically omnipresent oligarchic elements, as well as by sheer inertia, but a sufficiently vigorous monarch is better-able to change course.
I will note that democracies historically could sometimes produce temporary semi-dictators (David Lloyd George comes to my mind, because I studied him; FDR is the more famous and successful example, though), who concentrated unusual amounts of power and wielded them to get their respective countries out of a crisis. The cooperation of most of the democratic systems was key to their success, of course. If I were American or British, my hope would be that this could happen again, when things get scary enough even for elites. But I’m afraid there are no guarantees that elites will come to their senses in time for it to do any good…
You’re right that I shouldn’t have said “impossible”; that’s my inner pessimist coming out. I also don’t want to come across as totally negative on democracy either. I just don’t think it really leads to good, fair, or sensible government (which is typically its main selling point). And because of that, it’s always sort of doomed in the long-run.
I think the main plus of democracy is more cultural and outside of the formal political system. Art, philosophy, everything outside of the frustrating day-to-day struggle always seems most vibrant when a culture is more democratic and government is at least nominally open to all.
“I just don’t think it really leads to good, fair, or sensible government (which is typically its main selling point).”
Yes, and I have always thought that was a mistake. It has specific advantages, but it does not guarantee just outcomes. Nothing does (and I take no pleasure in saying that). That is a large part of why I have a great dislike for people who push the adaption of democratic forms as though it was some kind of panacea. It can be helpful in some regards and catastrophic in others (for example, prioritising the introduction of democracy in a country with severe socio-economic inequality is a sure way to prevent badly needed reforms – and some of Russia’s historical “democracy promoters” embraced it for that very reason, while many others did so out of naive faith).
“I think the main plus of democracy is more cultural and outside of the formal political system. Art, philosophy, everything outside of the frustrating day-to-day struggle always seems most vibrant when a culture is more democratic and government is at least nominally open to all.”
That, I think, is subjective. A lot of celebrated art and philosophy has come out of non-democratic cultures and polities. People have tried to find a few republics in the history of India, China, Japan and the Middle East, with some legitimate success, but I don’t think anyone has claimed that those were democratic cultures for most of their existence. I myself enjoy a lot of Russian and Soviet art, and practically none of that was created in democratic circumstances either. The late USSR had a very vibrant cultural underground (though not always safe to participate in); the Russian Empire saw several great artistic booms, in spite of considerable and idiotic censorship.
If anything I would’ve thought democracy makes the day-to-day better, because more predictable and easier to plan in absence of unexpected arbitrary disturbances, unless one happens to be very poor or otherwise marginalised. Then again… I wouldn’t know.
I know this is a little late, but I thought I should reply because I realized in regards to the culture thing, we may actually agree.
Like I mention above though, I’ve come around to a weird definition of democracy. While it’s ironically less than it seems in terms of actual power, I think it’s much more common historically than people realize. Pretty much, I don’t think you need elections to have democracy, just some form of access (in theory) for the common man.
Like even in Athens, many decisions weren’t voted on but carried out by rotating officers decided by lots. Or in China, for example, most would say it has never been democratic. I would argue that it actually kind of was whenever the civil service wasn’t too exclusive and the mandarins were responsive to complaints or ideas. That’s arguably true even prior to the unified Qin and Han dynasties (if anything, the Warring States period was one of mass-mobilization). The “demos” is still there; it just has a different form of access.
Interesting thought, thanks. Something similar did occur to me, but “democracy” in this sense is much harder to pin down. I might say that all societies have some democratic elements in them (you really can’t govern a population that absolutely refuses to be governed, and there usually is at least some sort of communication between the rulers and the ruled, how ever flawed). But there are major and important differences of degree and of specific mechanisms in action.
For example, Edo period Japan seems like it wouldn’t be very democratic by the standard you suggest, less so than the Sengoku period Japan which at least had more overt social mobility. The Tokugawa shoguns presided over a society that was very exclusive in theory (though in practice there were ways around it). Yet it also saw, among other things, a great increase in the de facto autonomy of villages. Those villages also had a vigorous protest culture that could often extract concessions from their rulers through petitions and demonstrations (which were often suppressed, of course, but that kind of trouble was seen as deeply undesirable, as was the use of “excess force” like firearms; so compromises were usually preferred).
All this existed under the cover of a rigidly hierarchical semi-feudal society and made a major difference for everyday lives. I’m not sure if villagers ever had that much collective power in Imperial China, though the latter typically gave them better odds of individual advancement. Which is more democratic? That is not an easy question to answer, I think…
So many problems in modern Britain stem from Lloyd George – Ireland, House of Lords reform over 110 years overdue despite Pre-Amble to 1911 Act, and of course Palestine……
DORA 1914-1915
Emergency Powers Act 1920
The absolute power of the British State simply grew like topsy which is why constitutional theorist Sam Finer used to say it was most powerful Executive on earth with few constraints
Unless I’m misremembering, DORA wasn’t primarily Lloyd George (he was in cabinet but busy with other things and only became PM at the end of 1916). One can credibly blame him for a lot, of course, and I do agree he was a watermark in the expansion of state power in Britain. On the other hand, Britain would’ve had a lot more problems during and immediately after WWI without him reorganising the economy. I’m not sure that they would’ve avoided starvation otherwise. The way he handled Ireland was fairly diabolical (a package of state terror and manipulative tactics in negotiations), but it allowed Britain to contain damage in a situation that could’ve spiraled much further out of control. A lot of what he did was a temporary patch job to meet urgent needs (Versailles and its early revisions also come to mind…), but then I’m not sure if he could’ve done more as opposition to him rallied.
The problem with this argument is that people generally actually don’t want war. To the extent our rulers do get public approval for their imperial escapades, it’s via massive propaganda build on lies (Iraq being the classic example). So to say elites are somehow trapped in their wars because of democracy/people who don’t allow them to change course, is without basis in reality.
You’re absolutely right that propaganda is a central mechanism. That’s actually what I was referring to by the idea that democracy = oligarchy + successful indirection.
I’m not really saying that the people are driving the elites either though. More in line with Plato or de Tocqueville, I’m saying that even if democracy is largely an illusion in terms of the down-and-dirty of power structures, it is very real in the sense of how the society thinks.
In a paradoxical way, I’m actually saying most people underestimate how democratic America is in that the elites are very much of the people. In something like a theocracy or aristocracy, the elites draw very clear distinctions around themselves, in how they think and even in little habits. In America though, both the elites and the common people are largely using the same framework.
From their PoV, the common people see all the individual flaws that the elites don’t have to look at, but most don’t really discard the framework. Maybe it’s changing, but for now, I think even our wealthiest elites are mostly just what your typical, upwardly-mobile, American family envisions for their own kids in extremis.
IMHO it’s not so much the public trapping the elites as the elites trapping each other and the public being more or less neutralised by various means. If everyone who’s anyone is for war and most people who aren’t anyone won’t do much against it, any one person, elite or otherwise, won’t be able to do much about it. The group consensus takes over.
It’s been suggested that democracy is a means of smooth coordination among elites (who would fight more openly and bitterly without it); if so, it might succeed too well sometimes.
The billionaires likely understand the risks, but considering that they are used to being at the front of the line to get bailed out when the excrement hits the fan, they know they aren’t subject to the same degree of risk as ‘the little people.’
The whole assumption by the USA that it is in existential danger and needs to fight everywhere, militarily and with sanctions and spiteful punishments, is based on no evidence whatsoever.
Yes, of course, and it has always been so. Defense is not the goal. Securing trade advantages is the primary goal but since ww2 increasingly I think bureaucratic inertia becomes a big motivating force too. How do you justify such unbelievable budgets and org charts? The bureaucracies themselves always want these to grow and they are not powerless in the political sphere. Keep the problems going to keep the budgets growing. I’m over simplifying, ofc, but you can see the basic logic even in the Clinton quote in this article. Why have all this military capability if you don’t use it? It’s horrifying to think that this is why we kill thousands and millions and destroy their land and what they have built but it sure seems like a big part of the motivation to me.
The USA may have many families who have four generations whose livelihood depends/depended on the military industrial and foreign policy complex.
Throw in the media and its subservience to power and one has created a system resistant to change.
One can can scroll through the list of Rhodes scholars and find Jake Sullivan, Bill Clinton, and Rachel Maddow. Quite appropriate to follow in Cecil Rhodes’ footsteps.
The existential danger is to the economy as we know it. Hegemony produces concrete material benefits until, as many historical examples prove, it doesn’t. Not only does capital benefit from hegemon status but so it would seem does labor: See for example: Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy, from Nature Communications, link previously posted at Naked Capitalism. It didn’t seem to generate discussion, which is unfortunate. I’d like to hear from those with more knowledge of the topic than I possess.
Thanks!
This look really good
“(…)
Abstract
Researchers have argued that wealthy nations rely on a large net appropriation of labour and resources from the rest of the world through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains. Here we assess this empirically by measuring flows of embodied labour in the world economy from 1995–2021, accounting for skill levels, sectors and wages. We find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this net-appropriated labour was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices, accounting for skill level. This appropriation roughly doubles the labour that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development. Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. We find Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income.
(…)”
This comment will tax me more than most can understand, I make no excuses for grammar or spelling, so ….
I killed a lot of people [mass murder], very good at it, like a Belgian Malinois, in my service in the American military from the mid 70s to early 80s, elite service, almost went Legion post ETS. Complicated back drop in America. Who knew that hunting as a kid on a farm understanding topo and what one is hunting is …. now I watch.
So I just don’t understand why killing others for any reason is a good way out of this mess … when has that worked …
your comment gave me the chills, I’m sure it was taxing for you. Sounds like you carry a very heavy debt.
What do you think about the “reasons” you were given?—Please, only if this exercise is not too taxing for you!
Reminds of such popular publications as “Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier” which are the closest most people in the West get to this kind of truth (and which in themselves are already products. I doubt there is any way to do justice to this sort of existence in our society.)
The point of it all is of course, you might call it mass murder but noone else would. Especially not those who called for your “service”. I would assume…
Correct me if I´m wrong.
“There is a refrain…,” Clinton declared, “that we should intervene with force only when we face splendid little wars that we surely can win, preferably by overwhelming force in a relatively short period of time. To those who believe we should become involved only if it is easy to do, I think we have to say that America has never and should not ever shy away from the hard task if it is the right one.”
Sez a famous keyboard warrior and dumpy white chick, mentored by famously immoral dumpy white chick Madeleine Albright, who couldn’t be bothered with the death of 500,000 Iraqi children caused by U.S. sanctions. Clinton’s patriotic gore is coming from someone who perceives no consequences for her actions. Send her to Poltava as a trainer, sez I.
The U.S. of A. should indeed have a draft: Women and men.
One will be surprised how quickly the tone of various “feminists” changes when women get their letters from Selective Service telling them to report to be sacrificed to Moloch.
Start the draft with the top 10% man and female ….
Don’t forget what Sean Penn, the schmuck, said: “Only cowards fear WWIII”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbOadMp3AH8
“With all the aggression and violence around, don’t you think that society could do with a few more cowards? Yes, cowards, … isn’t that what the military call people who prefer not to kill each other? So it’s about time all you cowards came out of the closet and got to know one another. You can all help. If you see a fight starting, get the names and addresses of the people with their hands in their pockets whistling, or walking away. It may be simple, but it’s a start.”
– Max Headroom
I have a book on self defense by a couple of black belts. Half the book is about how to detect a situation that will get violent, and the reasons to be somewhere else first.
One reason is that any person in a confrontation who has defensive training is usually regarded as one of the aggressors.
#McResistance imbeciles who lost their minds when a real estate hustler/game show/Borscht Belt comedian was elected President (Because Hitler!), are more than happy to support literal Nazis marauding in Eastern Europe (Because Freedom!)
After all, one of the side benefits of Russiagate (which failed to remove, but did hamstring Trump) was normalizing and deepening Russo-phobia and prepping liberals for proxy war.
I really would like to have a transcript of Hillarity’s response to the Banker’s very sober question. And some cameras reading the room.
Tangentially, I am reading a lot of scary scary stories of Venezuelan gangs taking over oil fields in Texas and apartment buildings in Denver. Nothing like Fear and Loathing!?!
Perhaps it is as simple as the worm turning and that all of our imperial empire building and attendant transgressions are literally coming home to roost. And we have a very innocent soft white underbelly here in Murica. Anyway, war may be in our streets soon enough that the draft, or volunteering, is moot.
400 million plus guns and lots of supportive ammo in the hands of a non-trivial number of angry, scared, and divided Americans.
If the covid doesn’t get you, it might be lead poisoning?
I always wondered if there is a correlation between our mass shootings and the glorification of war in media and popular culture. If , as this article says, killing strangers does not come naturally to humans and desentisizing is needed then how are these mass shooters( some are also kids) getting so?
Couldn’t possibly be video games.
I wonder if anyone has done a simple correlation study between school shootings and the development and growth of first-person-shooter games. Not that it has the same effect on everybody, or almost everybody . . . but the rare kid’s actions affect lots of others.
From 1982
The Lords Of The New Church – Open Your Eyes
[Verse 1]
Video games train the kids for war
Army chic in high-fashion stores
Law and order’s done their job
Prisons filled while the rich still rob
Assassination politics
Violence rules within’ our nation’s midst
Well, ignorance is their power tool
You’ll only know what they want you to know
The television cannot lie
Controlling media with smokescreen eyes
Nuclear politicians picture show
The acting’s lousy but the blind don’t know
[Chorus]
Open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya
Open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya
Open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya
Open your eyes
[Verse 2]
They scare us all with threats of war
So we forget just how bad things are
You taste the fear when you’re all alone
They gonna git ya when you’re on your own
The silence of conspiracy
Slaughtered on the altar of apathy
You gotta wake up from your sleep
‘Cause meek inherits earth six feet deep
[Chorus]
Open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya
Open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya
Open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya
Open your eyes
I just read this yesterday on exactly that:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/09/06/lcno-s06.html
I saw on Telegram today a video of pigs eating a Ukrainian corpse. It is probably not unusual in warfare and particularly in these Bloodlands but it shows to what level human beings have descended
It shows nature, and nature is not always pretty. Any corpse left on the ground will be eaten by something.
Human beings have not descended because they have always been on this level, but have put a lot of proverbial lipstick on a pig to make it look nicer in the eyes of some. The history repeats itself because human mentality does not change.
To what deaths are most USAians directly exposed? Almost nil. Maybe a few bug-splats on the windshield or a dead animal along the highway, but that’s about it– one usually needs to go out of their way to find it.
Perhaps this could partially explain our casual attitudes towards life and death, our detachment from each.
Americans are very-much shielded from the consequences of their actions– the elite, even more so.
That’s the whole point of this “civilization” thing we have come up with: to let us hide (or hide from) the inexorable cruelty of nature. And we have perfected that to a great degree in the US, hiding the dead in funeral “homes”, the old people in senility warehouses, the dying and deathly sick in sterile hospital wards, the lawbreakers in fortified prisons, the dead animals we eat in plastic packages that give no hint of what goes on in the slaughterhouse, not to mention the speedy whisking away of excrement, garbage and plastic waste that we pretend is recycled. That’s why seeing homeless people in the street or crazy people on the subway is so offensive, because we have been instilled with the belief that things like that should not be allowed in public, in our advanced society. And the internet is letting us become disembodied screen images, so even our own messy physicality doesn’t have to distress us and distract us from our mental fantasies. I think this is the ideal the PMC is aspiring to, a post-physical existence where only our imagination counts. Can’t see this divorcement from reality continuing for much longer.
Thanks for this — one of the more perceptive comments I’ve read here or in other sites I frequent.
isn’t this all about information? at better than 50 years, I can say that the US has never been in a war, or or done anything with it’s military that was ever “good”.
For these past five decades(and 5 before that), but especially these five past decades, the US… has exploited misinformation, as a tool to trick the population into furthering the economic decisions of those whose wealth and fortunes could be, and were made.
Vietnam was for rubber,oil and tin.. and american designs of french colonial losses.. The rest of the 20th century after that, was drug running to get money to fund regime change … all over… and oil.
Those who remember that 9/11 kicked off this centuries non stop aggressions around the world… should pay attention to the 4 year study done at the university of alaska engineering dept, team who using their unique ability to test large frame structural components, came out with a report for all the world to see.( as opposed to the NTSA’s “conspiracy theory on why those 3 towers fell that day. Which they say we can’t read because of “national security”) The finding on BLDG 7, was that there were 2 near simultaneous waves , in which ALL structural columns were lost… GO LOOK.
Anyone watching could see those buildings were blown up. The team of architects and engineers have basically proven this point. and the U of A report really put the final nails in the coffin.
Yet, rather than the world, find out who knew the hijackers were going to do what they did, and also had the ability to wire those buildings for explosives, and to cover it up after the fact for almost twenty five years now…
we have had war crime, after war crime…
And people wonder why these elites think they can get away with anything/// and I mean anything…
it is because they do it (get away with stuff, rewrite history) all the time.
And now…. those of us with unauthorized viewpoints are about to become terrorists in the eyes of those who really don’t know anything about what is going on and what has gone on.
Those cheering and dancing in real time from a prime viewing spot – the video is impossible to find these days but even 10 years ago was still up on utube.
“Seven”. Important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJPuWy9utss
Israelis have done a wonderful job indoctrinating. Weren’t there planeloads of young men flying back to Israel after the Hamas incursion, partying for their right to maim, kill and destroy? And a substantial percentage of the population is still pro genocide. If there hadn’t been hostages, hoo boy…
This is such a powerful piece – so many sections to quote. I often wonder, if we had conscription, would the average American start to genuinely examine our justifications for foreign wars? Almost all of my American friends seem so distant from all the suffering caused by our military escapades – even resigned or indifferent. I suspect they would feel differently with some skin in the game. They are so easily manipulated into seeing enemies where there are none.
Perhaps, every member of Congress who votes for war should have to send five family members to fight – preferably children or grandchildren – boots on the ground. And the President needs to send double that number. Let Chelsea Clinton, Hunter Biden, Donald Jr and Ivanka be sacrificed for American hegemony.
S.L.A. Marshall once told the story (in a collection I can no longer identify, so I hope my recollection is correct) of an American squad that attacked a hill held by the Chinese in Korea, and despite heavy losses – with only three surviving the fight – they prevailed, killing all of the enemy. But the hand-to-hand combat with bayonets had so unleashed the blood-lust of the Americans that – with no more enemies to kill – they went on and slaughtered a small herd of horses that the Chinese had corralled there.
The power of this account – and the sadness of it – is in the awful realization that each of us is probably capable of such blood lust, given the same circumstance. This is perhaps the rapid flip to the dark side (that Jung termed “enantiodromia”) by soldiers ordinarily reluctant to kill at all.
I remember reading the same story.
USA will continue to plunder its slave workers by engaging in wars and raking off profits. Those who control the American and British systems will make sure of that.
Enjoy the next decade.
Good thing Kamala wants to make our military more “lethal” then. Team Pepsi and Team Coke offer slightly different flavors of warmongering.
Lol, I tried both but I can’t tell the difference. Both are artificially-colored and flavored sugar water, and very unhealthy. .
Well, did a quick look at the comments to see if my perspective was there and it doesn’t seem to be. At one time, like in ‘Nam people “killed for peace” in the US military and to “stop” communism etc. In reality in that war which, if you have read the Pentagon Papers you would know that expert opinion was that the war was unwinnable and shouldn’t be fought. Lyndon Johnson was also skeptical of winning (if you listen to the Presidential tapes) but continued because if he didn’t he would have been denounced as “soft.” But the reality on the ground was that the motivation for the war was that it made some people rich and gave military officers a chance to automatically get a promotion if the went in country.
More recent wars, except the Gulf War, the US, again, lost because the motivation was not patriotism of stopping communism the motivation was for contractors to get rich. We are talking here about serious money being made beyond what they made in Vietnam. Today wars whether proxy or not are waged, in my view, to make money and money, in part, to feed the House of Bribery (aka the House of Representatives and Senate) and in other ways to enrich the various security services in all kinds of nefarious activities never reported on from drugs, rape, human trafficking. This is particularly the case in Ukraine which, before the war started, was considered by many as the most corrupt country in Europe ruled by oligarchs who took and are taking many slices of the American pie poured into that sad country.
Money, as the song goes, makes the world go round and while American society is built on greed, conquest and human misery in order to extract resources combined with a laudable idealism and a brilliant Constitution and a relatively responsible ruling class (in the 19th century) wherein corruption did not cripple the country as it is doing now. We are and have been on the cusp of becoming a humanist culture if we can avoid the repression of information that seems to be the goal of the Demotic Party and its corrupt backers.
We can lie and lie and lie as we have since the end of WWII about every major even but we can avoid lying to ourselves today because we have the information available on war if you look outside the official US propaganda organs. I’ve seen the result that wars have had on working class young men and their families not only the PTSD of seeing your friends die but also to kill others for a cause that many veterans from the more recent wars in particular know was based on lies and corruption. I can’t stop thinking of a woman I counselled who walked into her husbands swinging body in their gym and having to tell her young children about it.
The worst of Americans who work for various special forces (who we so foolishly laud) are the worst of the worst often killers who feel nothing but the fact the murders they commit around the world are just biz as usual for them. Remember the Empire stretches around the world and “troops” don’t just hang around but actually engage in murders, combat against whoever they are told to fight and much more that few ever report on–but I’ve talked to some of these people over the years. These semi-spooks who are recruited because they have no conscience about killing are the future of war aided by robots and drones.
I registered for the Draft a week before my 18th birthday. I still have the Card. The War in Vietnam was “winding down” and my lottery number was 233. Any man of my cohort who says he doesn’t remember his Draft Lottery number is a liar. But had it been 23 or 2, I would have been drafted. And I would have done my duty. The Draft focused the mind. The only way to stop these illegitimate, imperial, hegemonic wars is to have an absolutely inescapable Draft. It would probably never include Chelsea Clinton or one of the Bush or Trump children, but if the sons and daughters of the local doctors, lawyers, accountants, and bankers were as likely to come home through Dover in a box as the children of their housekeepers, home healthcare workers, and the owners of small marginal businesses, things would change. Immediately.
Agreed. I was too young for Viet Nam but my two oldest brothers were not. I still vividly remember the suppressed tension at the dinner table as lottery day approached. Thankfully, both brothers received high enough numbers to avoid being drafted.
To your point about dissent among the petite bourgeoisie, I also remember overhearing my parents quietly discussing how they might support my oldest brother going to Canada if necessary to avoid induction. At the time, I was surprised. My father was a division head at the large electric utility and both parents were dyed in the wool law and order Reaganites (being in California).
‘Any man of my cohort who says he doesn’t remember his Draft Lottery number is a liar’
Yes, mine was 253. I was young and stupid then and felt let down as now I had to go to college rather than experience an exciting war time adventure. Many years later I married a woman born and raised in Saigon during the American war. To this day she hates the sound of fireworks and helicopters. During our decades together she has gently removed the scales from my eyes allowing me to see how hegemony works.
Back during the Vietnam war, the media did extensive coverage of it and you could watch it on the news night after night. In that era there was no doubt as to what combat would be like in ‘Nam and young men did not want a part of it at all. Something about all that death and destruction. The Pentagon learned their lesson from this war and made sure that future reporters would be embedded and images of the war would be sanitized. As an example there was the Highway of Death back in ’91 which showed endless destroyed cars & vehicles. It was only later that I realized that there was something missing from the images taken of that destruction – the bodies. From that I surmised that the bodies had been taken away to sanitize that battlefield so that any photos would be fit to print. Fast forward to today and I am willing to bet that through social media that young people have seen exactly what this war is like in the Ukraine and do not want a bar of it. Maybe too they saw a lot of stuff from Iraq and Afghanistan. And people aren’t exactly queuing up at enlistment booths to join up. So maybe kids are no longer so swayed to join up as they know what is in store for them. And I would call that a good sign. Not that many people want to join up to be a Storm trooper of the Empire anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death
I was hanging out in a friend’s coin store in the mid 1990’s one day, and a Gulf War veteran comes in and wants to sell some cheesy medal the Saudis gave all GI Joes and worth bupkis, so my friend says sorry-not interested.
The vet then asks if he’d be interested in photos from the Highway of Death, and some things cant be unseen and 30 years later the images of seared black corpses clutching steering wheels, still infiltrate my mind.
Wish I hadn’t looked~
IMO a draft would put the brakes on warmongering. I’m glad I didn’t have draftees in the army when I served (there were some remaining from the 70s when I was in, but they had reenlisted), as most were there by choice and therefore easier to work with. Waging wars like the US has done since 1991 with conscripts would produce enough outrage to stop the process.
What the article fails to address is the poverty draft. Many people volunteer because they need to get education and experience somehow, and the military offers both (at a price). I’m one of those people. I ended up being so good at being an artilleryman (13E) that they sent me straight to OCS to get a commission. If I had other options to pay for school I would have taken them, and at least half of my cohort was there for GI Bill education support.
As my time in service (barely) missed any deployments to Asia, I lucked out and got the benefits without the risks of deployment. The benefits were mostly as advertised- GI Bill plus wages helped pay for school, the skills I learned as a 13E translated into land surveying which led eventually to an engineering degree, the skills I learned as an officer still help with personal and professional life (logistics, problem solving, people skills, etc.).
There’s no way in hell I’d recommend the military to anyone now. But the poverty draft is still a thing, and whether recommended or not the cost of education continues to push people into the military. The relationship between the “All Volunteer” military and the cost of college and trade school is proportional, and can’t be ignored even though most try.
In the mid 1960’s a college education wasn’t nearly as expensive as today. (BTDT.) I had college roommates who were drafted/served in Vietnam and went to college on the GI Bill. They said that the college route allowed them to serve only 13 months in Vietnam, then released from service. (They said that was an inducement for NOT engaging the enemy (peasants).)
One of their friends was a survivor of the “Hamburger Hill” assault. He eventually made it to college after 5 or so years of PTSD. He graduated with a degree in History. Years later he died at the hands (gunshots) of the local SWAT team after a serious PTSD episode: standing, yelling incoherently on his front porch, with an M-16 rifle (unloaded).
A “thank you for your service”.
I am reminded of a conversation that I had during a dinner party at a house north of Beirut. Asked about her family, the woman next to me explained that her son, a militia soldier, was recovering from a serious wound incurred in a recent battle. The woman, upper middle class, looked to be not more than early 30s notwithstanding her serious and anxious mien. When I asked the age of her son, she said “14”. I looked shocked and stupidly said something to the effect of ‘how could a 14 year-old boy be a soldier’? She replied with the obvious: “You don’t understand: they need to get them very young when they have no brains and can’t think”. I will remember her face forever.
Wow. Perhaps this very young age thing is an awful situation for many of the warriors we may see.
I remember hearing about much vicious killing done in Africa by very young “soldiers”.
But I was drafted for Vietnam at age 20. Many around me were a bit younger. These 14 YO only few years difference but probably a lot easier to indoctrinate into accepting very bad stuff is ok.
Very sad on the original story, but for military training, not much in them to break down and no deep morals that can’t be circumvented.
We surely were stripped of individualism at the start of training to make us more malleable. What was most profound was built into a formed brotherhood. If you get in the **** don’t fail your brothers and they won’t fail you.
>The impact of this dehumanization was also borne out by court martial testimony in the rare cases when U.S. troops were prosecuted for killing Iraqi civilians.
This brings back a hazy memory and I don’t have the energy to track it down at the moment but many years ago there was a mass shooting ( here in the US) and turns out the perpetrator was formerly in the Army. A guy that knew him was quoted (paraphrasing here), “They taught him to kill without remorse and then when they were done with him just turned him back out into society. What did they expect was going to happen eventually?”
Great post, thanks for this and the great comments.
You made me think of this great tune from Bob:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUr7hpejbVA
Clean Cut Kid
Written by: Bob Dylan
Everybody wants to know why he couldn’t adjust
Adjust to what, a dream that bust?
He was a clean-cut kid
But they made a killer out of him
That’s what they did
They said what’s up is down, they said what isn’t is
They put ideas in his head he thought were his
He was a clean-cut kid
But they made a killer out of him
That’s what they did
He was on the baseball team, he was in the marching band
When he was ten years old he had a watermelon stand
He was a clean-cut kid
But they made a killer out of him
That’s what they did
He went to church on Sunday, he was a Boy Scout
For his friends he would turn his pockets inside out
He was a clean-cut kid
But they made a killer out of him
That’s what they did
They said, “Listen boy, you’re just a pup”
They sent him to a napalm health spa to shape up
They gave him dope to smoke, drinks and pills
A jeep to drive, blood to spill
They said “Congratulations, you got what it takes”
They sent him back into the rat race without any brakes
He was a clean-cut kid
But they made a killer out of him
That’s what they did
He bought the American dream but it put him in debt
The only game he could play was Russian roulette
He drank Coca-Cola, he was eating Wonder Bread
Ate Burger Kings, he was well fed
He went to Hollywood to see Peter O’Toole
He stole a Rolls-Royce and drove it in a swimming pool
They took a clean-cut kid
And they made a killer out of him
That’s what they did
He could’ve sold insurance, owned a restaurant or bar
Could’ve been an accountant or a tennis star
He was wearing boxing gloves, took a dive one day
Off the Golden Gate Bridge into China Bay
His mama walks the floor, his daddy weeps and moans
They gotta sleep together in a home they don’t own
They took a clean-cut kid
And they made a killer out of him
That’s what they did
Well, everybody’s asking why he couldn’t adjust
All he ever wanted was somebody to trust
They took his head and turned it inside out
He never did know what it was all about
He had a steady job, he joined the choir
He never did plan to walk the high wire
They took a clean-cut kid
And they made a killer out of him
That’s what they did
This is a really interesting stat, and one I actually find quite encouraging. If I were ever drafted, and felt the consequences of resisting were too high, I would almost certainly be in that remaining 75% to 85%. It turns out that doesn’t make me as strange as I thought it did.
It does mean that the 15% to 25% of actual killers are, almost certainly, killing mostly people who are not returning fire and never intended to do so. That’s a pretty horrible thought, although I expect the people who worry about it largely fall into my cohort and not the killers.
Draft would not put the brakes on warmongering. Already 40 years of DINKS households worshipping their 401ks. Let Lindsey Graham, Nikki Halley and Hillary lead the charge!