U.S. Army Recruiting at the Mall with Videogames

You never know who you might run into at the local mall–perhaps even an Army recruiter. At the Franklin Mills shopping mall in Philadelphia the U.S. Army Experience Center has 60 computers with military videogames to ensnare young people. Prospective soldiers can also pretend to fire from a real Humvee or participate in a helicopter raid.

This is certainly contributing to the modern Army’s culture of death that this former Army Ranger just wrote me about:

Dear Dr. Vance,

Today I followed a large pickup bearing an Arizona “Purple Heart”  plate and driven by a youngish type, perhaps in his 30s, a sad  commentary in itself. But worse, it sported a bumper sticker reading,  “Special Forces. If God didn’t want us to kill people, he wouldn’t  have made us so good at it.”

From a culture I’m well familiar with (having completed Ranger  training 37 years ago), such a sentiment would once have been shared  only among practitioners—Rangers, Special Forces, Delta Force—and not  
thought fit for even non-elite infantrymen. Now we’re seeing it openly and casually expressed, as if commenting on the economy. Even a  generation ago soldiers expressed regret about their experiences; now  they want to tell you how proud they are to have killed and, presumably, that they would not hesitate to do it again.

Join the Army, meet interesting people, kill them.

The Problem with the Blackwater Indictments

So, five Blackwater guards have been indicted on charges related to a 2007 shooting in which 17 Iraqis were killed. Blackwater hired guns should be held accountable for their actions—actions that Iraqis call premeditated murder. However, I see a major problem with this. As I said when light sentences were given out to U.S. soldiers for murdering Iraqi civilians: “We should never forget that since the invasion and occupation of Iraq was itself aggressive, unnecessary, and immoral–every Iraqi killed by U.S. troops could be said to be murdered.”

The government criticizing Blackwater is the ultimate case of the pot calling the kettle black. It diverts people’s attention from the criminality of the war. The most ardent supporters of the war can condemn Blackwater guards while at the same time lauding U.S. soldiers as defenders of our freedoms even though they have unleashed a genocide in Iraq. It is hard to get excited about the indictments of the Blackwater guards when I see no indictments forthcoming of George Bush, Robert Gates, and Donald Rumsfeld.

Every Iraqi Was Murdered

In the excellent article by Ann Wright, “When Refusing to Kill Has a Higher Sentence Than Murder,” mention was made of the light sentences that were given out to U.S. soldiers for murdering Iraqi civilians. Many who support the war are also outraged about this. Yet, we should never forget that since the invasion and occupation of Iraq was itself aggressive, unnecessary, and immoral–every Iraqi killed by U.S. troops could be said to be murdered. There is no such thing as state-sanctified murder.

U.S. Military Presence Worldwide

When someone from Mother Jones wrote me a few weeks ago with a minor question about one of my LewRockwell.com articles on overseas U.S. troops I had no idea what the magazine was up to. You must check out interactive map that Mother Jones has prepared on U.S. military presence worldwide. This is the most exhaustive piece of work on this subject that I have ever seen.

Will McCain or Obama do anything to reduce the number of U.S. troops overseas? I am not holding my breath.

The Arrogant Hypocrisy of the U.S. Government

Is there any government more hypocritical than the U.S. government? Has there ever been? The United States is considering punishing Russia for its military actions in Georgia by cancelling U.S. participation in an annual Russia-NATO naval exercise. Read the full story here. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insists that “the Russians need to stop their military operations as they have apparently said that they will, but those military operations really do now need to stop because calm needs to be restored.”

Well, how about the United States stopping its military operations in Iraq so calm can be restored? The very idea that the U.S. government would seek to lecture Russia about its military actions in Georgia is ludicrous. Has Uncle Sam no shame about the genocide its military has unleashed in Iraq?