Laurence Vance - Antiwar.com Blog

The Feminization of the Military

Because it is getting harder to meet recruiting goals, the Marines are looking for a few good women–literally. The Marine Corps is marketing itself to women in magazines like Shape and Self and Fitness. The latest ad campaign shows a female marine in front of some men,Â captioned with: “There are no female marines. Only marines.â€

The U.S. Military Academy now hasÂ gender-neutral lyrics in West Point’s Alma Mater and The Corps. For example, the lineÂ “The men of the Corps long dead” has been replaced with “The ranks of the Corps long dead.” Said Superintendent Lt. Gen. Franklin “Buster” Hagenbeck, singing “Guide us, thy sons, aright” at the funerals of two dead female soldiersÂ was “unacceptable.” Preserving the words for the sake of tradition “disrespects the West Point women who serve,” said the Superintendent.

These are disturbing trends. AsÂ more womenÂ join the military, moreÂ women will die for a lie while in the military. It is bad enough that young men continue to join the military, but it is tragic that families are raising their girls to be soldiers. Yes, these young women are joining of their own free will, but it is tragic nonetheless.

How Many McVeighs Will This War Create?

The crimes of war don’t stop on the battlefield. Here is an account of how fighting in the first Iraq war changed Timothy McVeigh:

McVeigh was assigned as a Bradley gunner, and his Army buddies report that he was “just thrilled” when he blew up his first Iraqi vehicle. McVeigh’s friend Kerry Kling reports, “He said when they were invading Iraq he saw an Iraqi soldier coming out of a bunker and that when the first round hit his head, it exploded. He was proud of that one shot. It was over eleven hundred meters, and shooting a guy in the head from that distance is impressive.” McVeigh’s mother reported that he was “totally changed” by his experience in the war, and that when he came home, “It was like he traded one Army for another.” Or, it might be added, it was like he failed to respect the carefully nurtured differentiation between “heroic” and “terrorist” violence (Lee Griffith, The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God, Eerdmans, 2002, pp. 150-151).

How Many McVeighs Will This Iraq War Create?

The Hessians Are Coming

“He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.” ~ Declaration of Independence

Like the German mercenaries known as the Hessians who fought with the British against Americans in the Revolutionary War, soÂ now American mercenariesÂ are coming to a country near you. Since 9/11, the United States has granted citizenship to over 32,000 foreign soldiers. Thanks to a generous citizenship to foreigners plan, about 8,000 foreigners join the U.S. military every year. Then we transport these “large armies of foreign mercenaries” overseas to do our dirty work.

Let Us Not Forget

After describing the carnage of the World War I battle of the Somme, future president Herbert Hoover remarked that in another even more dreadful sense he saw inhuman policies of war:Â Â

That was the determination on both sides to bring subjection by starvation. The food blockade by the Allied Governments on the one side, and the ruthless submarine warfare by the Central Powers on the other, had this as its major purpose. Both sides professed that it was not their purpose to starve women and children. But it is an idiot who thinks soldiers ever starve. It was women and children who died of starvation. It was they who died of the disease which came from short food supplies, not in hundreds of thousands, but in millions. And after the Armistice came famine and pestilence, in which millions perished and other millions grew up stunted in mind and body. That is war. Let us not forget.

Tragically, most Americans did forget. On this fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, let us never forget the evil deeds of the architects of the war and the congressmen who continue to fund it.

Republican Politician Admits that Waterboarding Is Torture

Speaking before the American Bar Association, former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, went against most of his fellow Republican politicians, at least on the subject of torture: “And I believe, unlike others in the administration, that waterboarding was, is, and will always be torture. That’s a simple statement.”

What Is the Purpose of the Military?

As I have written about over and over and over again, the purpose of the military should be to defend the country. That’s it. One would think that the Secretary of Defense would know that. Yet, in a recent speech before the Association of the United States Army, Robert Gates articulated the followingÂ role for the U.S. military:

“Army soldiers can expect to be tasked with reviving public services, rebuilding infrastructure and promoting good governance. All these so-called nontraditional capabilities have moved into the mainstream of military thinking, planning, and strategyâ€”where they must stay.”

That is, anything but do what the military should do.