I would question the suggestion that all young people join the army out of choice. Many join because the inequality that is rampant in todays society they have little or no choices in terms of education or career.
Even if we are to assume that they all join because thats the most important thing in their life, as opposed to being strapped for cash or being made to feel worthless by society, then it still does not excuse the immense betrayal of trust commited by the administration.
When you join you dont get told 'the army and the administration reserves the right to send you to invade a country if we have a hunch and/or of we need gas!'
These people join under trust , that the government will act responsibly and it is clear that this has not been the case.
The fact that the UN inspectors were qualified to do their job. is reflected in the fact that they were proven right!
If you want to invade countries on a hunch thinking they might become hitlers in the future why be selective in your invasion policy?
Why not invade Libya, or Saudi, or Israel or Zimbabwa or Uzbekistan etc the list goes..
This logic of 'maybe', 'perhaps' or 'possibly' is not what intelligent, responsible foreign policy is based upon!!
Lets face it were in there for the oil and our kids are getting killed for it and they were lured in on a pack of lies because they wouldnt have gone in otherwise and we would not have accepted them going in based on the real facts and now the pro-Iranains or running the chaos that was once a country.
Its time to bring em home!
Quote:Young, Black, and in the Military
by Michaela Purdue
Recently my grandmother told me that she was very pleased that more and more black young people were enrolling in the high school Reserve Officers Training Corps program in my hometown. I listened as she told me how reassured she was that more black young people would be going into the military instead of "hanging out on the streets" or hanging out with gangs. Something about this bothered me.
Last year I left school and started working because I didn't have the money to pay for school. In thinking of ways to fix my situation, I considered going back into the military and finishing my advanced training so that I would be eligible for the G.I. Bill. I remembered when there was a time when I felt that the military was the only option I had in order to go to school. I know that there are many young black people who feel that the military is their only option. I also know that there is a lot of pressure on some young black people to go into the military because they are told that everything else around them will get them nowhere but into trouble.
When I was seventeen years old and a junior in high school, I enlisted in the US Army Reserve. During the summer between my junior and senior years I went to basic combat training (known as boot camp). Most people reacted to my joining the Army based on their perceptions of the cruel treatment in the military. They felt that the humiliation and the powerlessness that one is subjected to is the worst part of being in the military. Yes, people are treated cruelly in boot camp. We were called names like "lazy," "stupid," and "hard-headed," or we were told we were incapable of listening to directions. We were also laughed at and teased by our drill sergeants and by each other, and we were made to do things that we would not wish to do on our own. However, as a young person who had already experienced feelings of powerlessness, humiliation, and fear on a day-to-day basis, I did not consider this to be cruel. It was the usual deal.
The only difference between being at boot camp and being a young person is that for a young person there are small windows in one's life where mistreatment doesn't occur in such high volumes. I think the hardest part about being young, black, and in the military is feeling like this is our only option, feeling like the only way we will be able to get the things that we want most in life is to endure mistreatment.
As young black people who are geared toward going to college-and many young black people are not even encouraged to go-we don't want our efforts squelched by financial difficulties. We work hard in school so that we can get into a good college and lead what we consider to be successful lives. However, for many of us, the one thing that seems to stand in the way of going on to college is lack of finances. The image that comes in my mind is climbing up a rugged mountain for twelve years, a mountain with a huge gap in the middle that keeps us from getting to the other side. Then, out of nowhere, there appears a big shining boulder called the military, promising to bridge the gap in the mountain and create a safe passage to success. I saw in the military a guarantee that I would be able to get the money I would need to go to college. I could first enlist in the Army Reserve and then use that status to increase my chances of getting an Army ROTC scholarship that would pay for most of my expenses. Many black women who were in my unit in boot camp had this experience. Out of the sixty women in my platoon at boot camp, about thirty-five were black. And out of those thirty-five black women, ninety-five per cent were between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one. We were there only because we wanted to get money for college, not because we felt a deep sense of patriotism.[/u]There are other reasons why many young black people who are looking for ways to bridge the gap between financial difficulty and success through higher education look only toward the military. In recent years in the US less money is available for national academic-merit scholarships. At the same time, more money has been put towards the military. There is heavy competition for the academic scholarships that are available, and most young black people don't know that there is money available to them through small private scholarships. Also, people who seek financial aid on the basis of need end up having to applying for high-interest loans. Therefore, the military appears to be a better option for people who may run into financial trouble in college because in the military it looks like you are getting something for practically nothing.Many young black people also join the military as a direct response to the way we get treated as young people. When we are born into the world we know that we are significant and that we make a difference to everyone and everything around us. However, because we are not treated with complete respect and our thinking is not considered important, as we grow up we quickly lose our hold on our significance and we don't feel completely accepted. The military is portrayed as a place where one can find the longed-for acceptance. In the US on TV you will see countless commercials about young people enlisting in the military and finding success. "Be All You Can Be," or "We're Looking For a Few Good Men," appear in advertisements promoting enlistment into the military. They capitalize on how we, as young people, don't feel completely sure of ourselves or significant enough as we are right now.
Young black people (like all people) want acceptance - in our families, in our communities, with our friends, and in society in general. We want to know that we are significant and that we do make a difference in the world. Because of the way young people's oppression works, we are not able to notice on a day-to-day basis that we do make a difference in the world just because we exist. We don't often hear from our family, our friends, or our teachers that they are glad that we are alive. So we spend a lot of our time doing things that we hope will make us feel significant, feel like we make a difference.
By being in the military or going to school, young people feel more accepted by our family, our community, and our society than by doing things that other young people often do to find acceptance, such as joining a gang. A lot of the things that people do in gangs are harmful to themselves and to others, but there is nothing inherently wrong with getting together with a group of other young people and noticing that you have a connection with these people.
However, young people who join the military are made to think of themselves as better than those black young people who are in gangs, regardless of what those young people do in their gang. Many people feel that being in gangs means getting hooked up with "those violent black people." However, it is considered to be okay, and for many black adults it is a source of pride, to have a son or daughter walking around the neighborhood trained and paid by the government to kill other human beings and to think less of other black young people at the same time. There is something contradictory about being seventeen years old and being trained to fire automatic and semi-automatic weapons, to throw grenades, and to detonate claymore mines. We learn how to do all of these violent things under the banner of patriotism while not even being considered old enough to vote. A few years before I enlisted in the reserves and went to boot camp, there were US government initiatives to curb the increasing violence in our country, with black men and boys as the main suspects. While some black men were being accused of being violent and crippling our country, those of us in the military were being trained to use violence to represent the US, and this was considered to be okay.
Regardless of our economic situation or our inability to notice our significance in the world, there are other options available to young black people besides the military. As I discharge more and more on my experiences in the military as a young person, I'm realizing that it is important to share those experiences and to also have allies who can hold out other options to me.
(c. 1994 Black Re-emergence #8. Reprinted with permission: Rational Island of Publishers, Seattle, Washington)
