Congress is about to entirely relinquish what little checks and balances they have to prevent the office of the presidency from waging unlimited and unchecked war around the planet.
The post Rand Paul Exposes Congress’ Plot to Give President ‘Unlimited’ Dictatorial Power for War appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
On the same day that the leaders of North and South Korea met and agreed to a historic peace deal, the five largest defense contractors in the U.S. lost more than $10 billion in value.
The post Military Industrial Complex Stocks Sent Crashing as North and South Korea Achieve Peace appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
To get around the obstacle of public opinion, the United States government has an extensive history of lying their way into war.
The post As War Drums Beat for Syria, Remember, Lies And Propaganda Started Nearly Every War In US History appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The U.S. military is in the business of conquest, death, and destruction, not "humanitarian intervention."
The post US Intervention in Syria Will Kill Far More Children than Assad’s Alleged Chemical Attack appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
To get around the obstacle of public opinion, the United States government has an extensive history of lying their way into war.
The post As War Drums Beat for Syria, Remember, Lies And Propaganda Started Nearly Every War In US History appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The U.S. military is in the business of conquest, death, and destruction, not "humanitarian intervention."
The post US Intervention in Syria Will Kill Far More Children than Assad’s Alleged Chemical Attack appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Trump criticized the US for spending trillions in the Middle East, days after signing a military budget that will cost taxpayers $2 billion a day in 2018.
The price tag on the latest National Defense Authorization Act is $700 billion, which will cost American taxpayers nearly $2 billion every day in 2018.
This Veteran"s Day, consider these points when thanking a vet for serving, as the best way to honor them is to prevent more people from joining the service.
While the mainstream media focuses on anything but the current state of U.S. intervention in the Middle East, the Trump Administration is breaking records by accumulating a horrific number of civilian deaths.
Former President Obama earned the nickname of “Drone King” when he dramatically escalated the use of drone strikes, while also downplaying the number of innocent civilians who became “collateral damage.” In the two years that his administration devoted to publicly spending millions of taxpayer dollars to fight the Islamic State group, the estimated civilian death toll ranged from 2,300 to 3,400, according to Airwars, an organization tracking deaths in the war against ISIS.
During @BarackObama"s 29 months at helm of ISIS war we tracked 855 alleged civilian casualty events which likely killed 2298-3398 civilians pic.twitter.com/RUVvcy5zX9
— Airwars (@airwars) August 22, 2017
President Trump has been in office for just 9 months, and he has already surpassed Obama’s murderous record with estimated numbers as high as 4,500 civilian deaths.
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Trump made headlines in December 2015, when he declared that if elected, he would not only kill members of ISIS—he would also “take out their families.” He is following through on that promise, according to a report from Steven Feldstein, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.
Feldstein noted that researchers have documented the rise of “frequent killing of entire families in likely coalition airstrikes” under the Trump Administration. This trend led to “the deaths of at least 57 women and 52 children in Iraq and Syria” in May.
READ MORE: It"s Official: NSA Data Will be Used for Domestic Policing that Has Nothing to Do With Terrorism
While this may come as no surprise, considering the fact that Trump promised to “bomb the hell out of ISIS” while on the campaign trail, his administration’s offensive against the Islamic State is not the only ongoing war that is killing civilians.
According to a report from United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan documenting civilian causalities during the first half of 2017, “aerial operations” led to a “43 percent increase in civilian casualties compared to the first six months of 2016, including a 67 percent increase in civilian deaths.”
While Trump bragged about giving military commanders “total authorization” to make combat decisions in Afghanistan, Washington Rep. Adam Smith said he believes that this move is contributing to the increase in civilian deaths.
“You really have the military making decisions that were designed to be made by the civilian authorities running the military,” Smith said. “We’ve seen an increase in civilian casualties. … I think they’ve become a little too indiscriminate in what they’re doing.”
The report from Feldstein noted that the Trump Administration has “substantially escalated air strikes and bombings” and the U.S. military “has already used 20 percent more missiles and bombs in combined air operations in 2017 than in all of 2016.”
The alarmingly high civilian death toll has continued to build up over the months. For example, from May 23 to June 23 of this year, at least 472 civilians were killed by U.S. airstrikes. That is significantly more than the 459 civilians who have been killed by terrorist attacks in Europe—in the last 12 years.
READ MORE: US Proves Its Allegiance to Terrorism by Threatening War With Russia All to Protect ISIS
While the argument can be made that Trump is doing the same thing Hillary Clinton would have done if she was elected, the question has to asked as to how anyone can justify killing innocent civilians in the first place.
Obama surpassed Bush’s record, and now Trump has surpassed Obama’s record—but the only thing that has actually been “accomplished” is that thousands of innocent civilians have lost their lives, hundreds of thousands of civilians have lost their homes and their communities, and the civilians who do survive in the countries the United States is targeting now, will grow up hating America for destroying their home in the name of “Freedom.”
On this day 16 years ago, less than one month after 9/11, President George W. Bush delivered a televised address from the White House announcing the beginning of the Afghanistan War.
“On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan,” he said.
What Bush did not say was the fact that the War in Afghanistan would become the longest war in United States history. Thousands of American lives and billions of taxpayer dollars would be wasted at the expense of the U.S. war machine, and the “War on Terrorism” would only create more terrorism as a result.
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Over 31,000 civilian deaths have been documented in Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion. It should be noted that over the last few years, civilian deaths have substantially increased—which serves as a reminder that the situation is only getting worse.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan began documenting civilian casualties in 2009. The combined number of civilians who were killed and injured that year was nearly 6,000. The number has steadily increased over the years, and in 2016, it reached a record high with nearly 3,500 killed and nearly 8,000 injured.
Image via al-JazeeraA report from the UNAMA noted that in 2017, the death rate for children has increased by 9 percent over the previous year, and the death rate for women has increased by 23 percent. The report also claimed that an increase in airstrikes has led to a 43 percent increase in causalities.
Before the United States invaded Afghanistan, the production of opium poppies was significantly low, thanks to the Taliban. Not only did the presence of the U.S. military lead to a rise in opium production—because U.S. Marines were literally guarding fields of poppy plants—it led to a drastic increase that has done wonders for the illegal drug trade.
READ MORE: US Gov"t Proves Love for ISIS as Bill to "Stop Arming Terrorists" Gets Only 13 Supporters
According to a report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, between 2015 and 2016, opium production in Afghanistan increased by 43 percent, and the area used to farm the poppy plant increased by 10 percent to 201,000 hectares. In response to the report, UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov said the figures were “a worrying reversal in efforts.”
After 16 years of war and a price tag of over $1 Trillion, the United States has not only helped Afghanistan to become the largest producer of opium in world, it has ensured that the war-ravaged country produces around 90 percent of the world’s opium supply.
When former President Obama ran for office in the 2008 election, he campaigned on the promise of ending the Afghanistan War—which resonated with a number of Americans who were hopeful that a fresh face in the oval office would bring about the “change” needed to finally end the war.
However, while Obama promised to end the war and increased it instead, President Trump has been much more blunt about the fact that the war in Afghanistan is not coming to an end anytime soon, and while the U.S. may have a strategy in mind, it does not appear to include an “exit.”
The longest War in United States history turns 16 years old today, and in just two years, brand new military recruits will have the opportunity to fight in a war that has been ongoing for as long as they have been alive. While there are many Americans who support the concept of military intervention—including in countries that have done nothing to the U.S.—even they should be asking the question of why the United States continues to fight a war that has only created an increase in terrorism, innocent civilian deaths and illegal drug production.
Before the Gulf of Tonkin incident was used as an excuse to incite major U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the United States was already deploying thousands of troops to Vietnam—and a recently recovered audio recording reveals that the deployments were occurring against the wishes of the president in office.
Former President John F. Kennedy was planning for a full withdrawal from Vietnam during his last months in office. His exit strategy is featured on the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary series on Vietnam, in an episode that looks at U.S. involvement in Vietnam from when Kennedy took office in January 1961, to when he was assassinated in November 1963.
The episode includes an audio recording from Nov. 4, 1963, in which Kennedy shares his reaction to the military coup d’état that resulted in the assassination of US-backed, South Vietnam leader Ngo Dinh Diem, and his brother Nhu:
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While the program glazes over Kennedy’s comments about wanting a full withdrawal from Vietnam, and goes on to talk about his assassination less than three weeks later, his rhetoric is incredibly important.
READ MORE: Polarize & Conquer - How the Paris Attacks Benefit ISIS and the Western Military Industrial Complex
“We don’t have a prayer of staying in Vietnam,” Kennedy confided to a friend in April 1963. “Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at any point. But I can’t give up that territory to the communists and get the American people to re-elect me.”
According to reports, there were around 3,200 American troops in Vietnam when Kennedy took office in 1961. The number of troops increased to 11,300 in 1962, and then to 16,300 in 1963. But that increase escalated drastically in 1965 with 184,300 troops. By 1968, there were over 536,000 American troops deployed to a country that is smaller than the state of California.
In the months before Kennedy’s assassination, he pushed for his administration to draft a plan for withdrawal from Vietnam. The National Security Action Memorandum was drafted by Secretary of State Robert McNamara and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor.
An audio recording was also released in which Kennedy was heard discussing what led to the approval of NSAM 263 (National Security Action Memorandum), which implemented the plan get out of Vietnam. Only weeks later, Kennedy would be killed.
In a previously classified memorandum to his fellow chiefs that was delivered on Oct. 2, 1963, Taylor wrote:
A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.
In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.
The idea that Kennedy would push for an end to the United States’ corrupt and troubled involvement in Vietnam is not surprising, considering his ongoing war with the Central Intelligence Agency. However, the fact that Kennedy was pushing for full withdrawal from Vietnam just weeks before he was assassinated, should be noted and remembered. Less than one year later, the Gulf of Tonkin incident served as the perfect false flag to send the U.S. into a war that killed over 58,000 Americans.
READ MORE: Russia & Iran Issue Warning to US — "We Will Respond with Force if Red Lines are Crossed Again in Syria"
While the media focused on President Trump’s latest nickname for Kim Jong Un, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs quietly released an unsettling report on suicide statistics among veterans.
The report concluded that veterans are over 20 percent more likely to kill themselves, when compared to non-veteran civilians in the U.S. While that may come as no surprise, when taking into consideration the number of campaigns to raise awareness about the prevalence of veterans committing suicide, the truly alarming percentage comes from the number of female veterans who take their own lives.
The suicide rate for female veterans is 250 percent higher than the suicide rate for female non-veteran civilians. While there was some coverage of the overall suicide rate that stemmed from this report, the statistics related specifically to females—which were alarmingly high—appeared to be deemed less important.
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The same trend is displayed in research, with the top articles on a search for “veteran suicide” on Google Scholar holding titles such as “Suicide among male veterans: a prospective, population-based study” and “Suicide risk and precipitating circumstances among young, middle-aged, and older male veterans.” When searching for “female veteran suicide,” none of the results included the keywords in the title.
The report from the Department of Veterans Affairs surveyed suicide statistics among veterans from 2001 to 2014. While past reports have been limited to only surveying veterans who received services from the Veterans Health Administration, the latest report claims to provide an unprecedented look at all veterans, including a comparison to American civilians.
“This report on Veteran suicide is unprecedented in its breadth and depth of information about the characteristics of suicide among Veterans. It contains the first comprehensive assessment of differences in rates of suicide among Veterans with and without use of VHA services and comparisons between Veterans and other Americans. This report serves as a foundation for informing and evaluating suicide prevention efforts inside the VHA health care system and for developing lifesaving collaborations with community health care partners.”
In a statement on the report, VA Secretary Dr. David J. Shulkin called the results “deeply concerning,” and insisted that the answer was for more veterans to turn to the VA for care.
READ MORE: "Support Our Troops" - Leaked Document Shows 238,000 Veterans Died Waiting for Health Care
“These findings are deeply concerning, which is why I made suicide prevention my top clinical priority,” Dr. Shulkin said. “I am committed to reducing Veteran suicides through support and education. We know that of the 20 suicides a day that we reported last year, 14 are not under VA care. This is a national public health issue that requires a concerted, national approach.”
However, it should be noted that the VA has faced intense scrutiny in recent year for both failing to provide adequate care for its patients and for failing to helps veterans contemplating suicide. While the VA urges veterans to call a suicide prevention hotline, there have been multiple reports of their calls going to voicemail, and those voicemails being returned a number of days later—in some cases after it was too late.
An inspector general’s report from February 2016 noted that multiple veterans complained about reaching voicemail, and said that some VA workers did not even know the voicemail system existed.
“We found 3 of the 41 complaints made to the VCL in FY 2014 were claims that calls were transferred to a voicemail system. Our review identified over 20 calls that were routed to voicemail at 1 of the backup centers. When VCL management investigated these complaints, they discovered that the backup center staff were not aware the voicemail system existed; thus, they did not return these calls.”
While many politicians use their “support” for preventing suicide among veterans as a talking point during their campaign—such as Donald Trump’s 2016 bid for the White House, which included a push for raising awareness about veteran suicide prevention—they don’t always follow through once they are in office.
READ MORE: Small Acts of Kindness Have Huge Potential. Here is an Uplifting Example in One Touching Story
The Department of Veterans Affairs just released a report claiming that female veterans are 250 percent more likely to commit suicide than female civilians—that statistic alone is a reminder that it is time for all of the politicians who claim they support veterans to stop supporting the one thing that is creating debilitating cases of post-traumatic stress disorder in the first place: sending them to fight in illegal, immoral, never-ending wars in countries that have never harmed the United States.
Every year on July 4, Americans celebrate their “freedom” on Independence Day—the anniversary of the day the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence and established the United States as an independent nation in 1776.
As Americans prepare to commemorate Independence Day in 2017—gathering together with friends and family to eat, drink and watch elaborate fireworks displays—they are blindly celebrating a false sense of freedom based on a list of liberties that are far from the current practices of the U.S. government.
When schoolchildren in the U.S. learn about the great American Revolution, they are taught about the important role taxes played in the decision to rebel against the British government. American colonists fought back against the unnecessary taxes and tariffs that seemed to increase by the year, and they took a stand against the heinous idea of “taxation without representation.”
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However, today the U.S. federal tax code is around 75,000 pages—so long that most of the politicians who have the authority to push for legal change to it, have never actually read it. In fact, the Washington Examiner reported in April 2016 that the current version of the federal tax code is more than 187 times longer than it was a century ago.
“Amazingly, in the first 26 years of the federal income tax, the tax code only grew from 400 to 504 pages. Even through President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the tax code was well under 1,000 pages. Changes during World War II made the length of the tax code balloon to 8,200 pages. Most of the growth in the tax code came in the past 30 years, growing from 26,300 pages in 1984 to nearly three times that length today.”
When schoolchildren in the U.S. are taught about history, they are taught about the abolishment of slavery in the 1860s, followed by the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. They are taught that Americans finally learned how to appreciate all people, regardless of race. However, they are not taught about the forms of modern day slavery, in which race and poverty play an important role.
READ MORE: Cops Shutdown High School Kids Trying to Earn Money by Shoveling Snow
A study conducted by the Brennan Center of Justice at NYU School of Law in 2016 found that nearly 40 percent of the U.S. prison population—around 576,000 people—are behind bars with “no compelling public safety reason.” More than 25 percent of prisoners—364,000 people—are serving prison sentences for nonviolent offenses.
The peaceful transition of power is known as one of the cornerstones of American policy, and issues such as mass surveillance appear to transcend party lines. From President Bush signing the Patriot Act, to President Obama signing the USA Freedom Act, Americans have seen an ongoing loss of privacy rights in the 21st Century.
While President Trump has openly praised government surveillance, he wouldn’t have his current ability to spy on innocent Americans, if it wasn’t for the actions of his predecessors. Just days before he left office, Obama signed an executive order that gave the National Security Agency the authority to share the raw streams of the communications it intercepts from Americans directly with government agencies such as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
When British colonists arrived on American soil, they acted as if they were the first to ever discover the land, and appeared to have very little regard for the Native American people who were already inhabitants. The only “war” that was waged was for a land the American colonists chose to claim as their own—in many ways, that practice is still carried out today.
The concept of endless war is one that has been passed from one administration to the next in the U.S., with each new president adding to and intensifying the current ongoing conflicts. Instead of pursuing a conflict because the opposing country directly attacked the U.S., the true strategy revolves around what the U.S. can stand to gain from the country’s natural resources, along with the factor of whether that country recently dropped the U.S. dollar.
READ MORE: Viral Video Asks the Question, "Has America Gone Insane?" -- The Answer is Yes
While Donald Trump ran on a policy of not invading other countries, his sentiment quickly changed once he became the lead puppet for the military industrial complex.
As U.S. Founding Father Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” In 2017, the current status of the United States is one in which when it comes to the areas of taxes, war, and the police and surveillance state, the American public seems to have no regard for the police state they willingly submit to, all the while openly celebrating their “Freedom.”
If you have served in any branch of the military, Memorial Day has symbolic and emotional meaning others can only relate to empathetically, but might never fully grasp. Today, we honor those who fought for the United States, dedicating a portion of their lives in defense of what we, as a nation, hold dear — often returning scarred and battered inside and out.
A mythos exists about the armed services — indoctrinated veneration of men and women in uniform, and a call to duty — where, by design, the people of this land aren’t taught to question war or the military, or the consequences reverberating into the past and future.
However, as a growing number of veterans will tell you in moments of bare honesty, taking up arms and donning a uniform isn’t exactly about fighting for freedom — and the wounds sustained in battle physically and mentally haunt many former service members for reasons that have little to do with glory and honor.
Our military, as many have discovered, entices young people not even old enough to buy a beer to risk their lives — and the Pentagon and recruiters propagandize service as a patriotic, educational adventure and opportunity to work with state of the art technology and equipment. But what they don’t explain are the horrors of the battlefield — and the truth about our government’s motives for war.
So, this Memorial Day, it’s imperative to examine military service for what it truly entails — what the government actually asks of service members — and why the last thing we should do is ask more youth to join up.
Inveigling young Americans to join the military by touting free college and patriotism is perhaps the most dishonest hoodwinks the government could make. Indeed, service members do fight in the name of the United States, but wars abroad in modern times are far more complex than just good fighting evil — and much of that surrounds our many proxy wars.
While the Pentagon claims the U.S. fights terrorists, particularly of the Islamic State, in Syria and many other Middle Eastern countries — and to a degree, that’s true — other terrorist groups are now considered our allies. In fact, certain offshoots of al-Qaeda — the exact radicals targeted by the U.S. in the years following 9/11 — receive funding and training from different agencies of our government.
This trick of logic benefits only the notorious goal of regime change — ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — while infuriating embattled local populations and the governments of other nations who don’t distinguish between the nefarious groups. To civilians victimized by military battles and belligerent radicals alike, a terrorist is a terrorist — no distinctions necessary.
Veterans who’ve experienced this duplicity firsthand agree with that assessment and many are furious with the government essentially employing terrorists to fight terrorists under the overarching mission to oust another nation’s leader. Discovering you’ve agreed to fight for reasons you not fully explained from the start — and should consider terrorists allies — has embittered countless veterans who honestly believed the military defends Americans’ freedoms.
Once you’ve fought for the government, it cares very little about your wellbeing.
Scores of fighters return to the United States in desperate need of expert healthcare to heal and rehabilitate minor to wholly incapacitating physical injuries — and mental and emotional trauma endured in witnessing the horrors of bloodshed. But the Veterans Administration tasked with that job falls criminally short on nearly every level.
Over two years ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs had amassed a backlog of 900,000 applications for healthcare, but far worse — and deeply revealing of a systemic issue — at least 300,000 of those applicants died while waiting to receive the benefits which should have been immediate.
Post-traumatic stress disorder affects tens of thousands of veterans, leading many to take their own lives not to be haunted by horrific and agonizing images making daily life a continuance of war. Those considering suicide have the option of reaching out to the Veterans Crisis Line — but actually speaking with a trained counselor is a task in itself.
A report earlier this year revealed the Crisis Line is rife with inexcusable problems, leaving desperate callers on hold for over 20 minutes wasn’t rare — and some calls were even diverted to voicemail, which staff did not even know existed. An investigation was initiated after an Iraq War veteran got voicemail instead of help, and proceeded to take his life.
Disrespect for former service men and women doesn’t end even once they pass away — in September, a whistleblower revealed the bodies of veterans in one VA hospital morgue had been allowed to languish for a month, and had badly decomposed.
Issues continue to plague the VA to this day.
If you think the U.S. enters countless military conflicts to protect the security of the American public, you would be astonishingly incorrect.
In addition to the aforementioned conflict over regime change — which is a favored tactic of our government — most wars are battles to further establish U.S. hegemony and exploit the targeted nation’s natural resources. Oil is perhaps the most well-known motivation for war, but probably isn’t the most valuable.
Afghanistan, as seasoned U.S. veterans can attest, has the world’s largest opium poppy crop — courtesy of the American intervention.
In May 2001, a report by the New York Times said U.S. narcotics experts visited Afghanistan and discovered that Taliban rule “appears to have wiped out the world’s largest crop in less than a year.”
On October 7 that year, the U.S. conveniently invaded the country in the name of fighting terrorism, and shortly afterward opium poppy cultivation took off — increasing 35-fold from 185 tons in 2001 to 6,400 tons in 2014 — a veritable boon for Big Pharma.
And while pharmaceutical manufacturers enjoy skyrocketing profits from pushing opioid medications, the United States is now in the midst of a heroin epidemic. Veterans also suffer, as the VA doles out countless opioids rather than instituting reforms to actually care for those who served.
In addition to opium poppies, the U.S. discovered around $1 trillion in mineral resources in Afghanistan, as the New York Times reported in 2010:
“The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
“An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the ‘Saudi Arabia of lithium,’ a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.”
Afghanistan is, of course, only one of the countries the U.S. continues to exploit.
Countless additional arguments could be proffered to why we must inform young people about the true nature of military conflict — and many returning soldiers have made it their mission to stop people from signing up and bring an end to wars fought for less than noble reasons.
Veterans for Peace accepts former military members from around the globe, and as the group’s mission states, seeks to “increase public awareness of the costs of war, restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations, end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, seek justice for veterans and victims of war, and abolish war as an instrument of national policy.”
Honoring veterans with a day certainly provides a symbolic recognition of service — but it rings hollow for too many who served for what they believed was duty, only to discover the truth of war.
Instead, we must stop creating veterans — stop destroying the lives of people who join the military and those of millions of civilians victims in foreign lands — all in the name of U.S. imperialism.
It is our imperative to expose these insidious truths and inform those considering signing up to serve that patriotic duty is only an illusion to ensnare the uninformed into fighting, killing, and even dying for corporate profit, exploitation, and hegemony.
Ask the profiteers and politicians to send their own kids to fight — and we’d see how quickly peace would prevail.
If you have served in any branch of the military, Veterans Day has symbolic and emotional meaning others can only relate to empathetically, but might never fully grasp. Today, we honor those who fought for the United States, dedicating a portion of their lives in defense of what we, as a nation, hold dear — often returning scarred and battered inside and out.
A mythos exists about the armed services — indoctrinated veneration of men and women in uniform, and a call to duty — where, by design, the people of this land aren’t taught to question war or the military, or the consequences reverberating into the past and future.
However, as a growing number of veterans will tell you in moments of bare honesty, taking up arms and donning a uniform isn’t exactly about fighting for freedom — and the wounds sustained in battle physically and mentally haunt many former service members for reasons that have little to do with glory and honor.
Our military, as many have discovered, entices young people not even old enough to buy a beer to risk their lives — and the Pentagon and recruiters propagandize service as a patriotic, educational adventure and opportunity to work with state of the art technology and equipment. But what they don’t explain are the horrors of the battlefield — and the truth about our government’s motives for war.
So, this Veterans Day, it’s imperative to examine military service for what it truly entails — what the government actually asks of service members — and why the last thing we should do is ask more youth to join up.
Inveigling young Americans to join the military by touting free college and patriotism is perhaps the most dishonest hoodwinks the government could make. Indeed, service members do fight in the name of the United States, but wars abroad in modern times are far more complex than just good fighting evil — and much of that surrounds our many proxy wars.
While the Pentagon claims the U.S. fights terrorists, particularly of the Islamic State, in Syria and many other Middle Eastern countries — and to a degree, that’s true — other terrorist groups are now considered our allies. In fact, certain offshoots of al-Qaeda — the exact radicals targeted by the U.S. in the years following 9/11 — receive funding and training from different agencies of our government.
This trick of logic benefits only the notorious goal of regime change — ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — while infuriating embattled local populations and the governments of other nations who don’t distinguish between the nefarious groups. To civilians victimized by military battles and belligerent radicals alike, a terrorist is a terrorist — no distinctions necessary.
Veterans who’ve experienced this duplicity firsthand agree with that assessment and many are furious with the government essentially employing terrorists to fight terrorists under the overarching mission to oust another nation’s leader. Discovering you’ve agreed to fight for reasons you not fully explained from the start — and should consider terrorists allies — has embittered countless veterans who honestly believed the military defends Americans’ freedoms.
Once you’ve fought for the government, it cares very little about your wellbeing.
Scores of fighters return to the United States in desperate need of expert healthcare to heal and rehabilitate minor to wholly incapacitating physical injuries — and mental and emotional trauma endured in witnessing the horrors of bloodshed. But the Veterans Administration tasked with that job falls criminally short on nearly every level.
Over two years ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs had amassed a backlog of 900,000 applications for healthcare, but far worse — and deeply revealing of a systemic issue — at least 300,000 of those applicants died while waiting to receive the benefits which should have been immediate.
Post-traumatic stress disorder affects tens of thousands of veterans, leading many to take their own lives not to be haunted by horrific and agonizing images making daily life a continuance of war. Those considering suicide have the option of reaching out to the Veterans Crisis Line — but actually speaking with a trained counselor is a task in itself.
A report earlier this year revealed the Crisis Line is rife with inexcusable problems, leaving desperate callers on hold for over 20 minutes wasn’t rare — and some calls were even diverted to voicemail, which staff did not even know existed. An investigation was initiated after an Iraq War veteran got voicemail instead of help, and proceeded to take his life.
Disrespect for former service men and women doesn’t end even once they pass away — in September, a whistleblower revealed the bodies of veterans in one VA hospital morgue had been allowed to languish for a month, and had badly decomposed.
Issues continue to plague the VA to this day.
If you think the U.S. enters countless military conflicts to protect the security of the American public, you would be astonishingly incorrect.
In addition to the aforementioned conflict over regime change — which is a favored tactic of our government — most wars are battles to further establish U.S. hegemony and exploit the targeted nation’s natural resources. Oil is perhaps the most well-known motivation for war, but probably isn’t the most valuable.
Afghanistan, as seasoned U.S. veterans can attest, has the world’s largest opium poppy crop — courtesy of the American intervention.
In May 2001, a report by the New York Times said U.S. narcotics experts visited Afghanistan and discovered that Taliban rule “appears to have wiped out the world’s largest crop in less than a year.”
On October 7 that year, the U.S. conveniently invaded the country in the name of fighting terrorism, and shortly afterward opium poppy cultivation took off — increasing 35-fold from 185 tons in 2001 to 6,400 tons in 2014 — a veritable boon for Big Pharma.
And while pharmaceutical manufacturers enjoy skyrocketing profits from pushing opioid medications, the United States is now in the midst of a heroin epidemic. Veterans also suffer, as the VA doles out countless opioids rather than instituting reforms to actually care for those who served.
In addition to opium poppies, the U.S. discovered around $1 trillion in mineral resources in Afghanistan, as the New York Times reported in 2010:
“The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
“An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the ‘Saudi Arabia of lithium,’ a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.”
Afghanistan is, of course, only one of the countries the U.S. continues to exploit.
Countless additional arguments could be proffered to why we must inform young people about the true nature of military conflict — and many returning soldiers have made it their mission to stop people from signing up and bring an end to wars fought for less than noble reasons.
Veterans for Peace accepts former military members from around the globe, and as the group’s mission states, seeks to “increase public awareness of the costs of war, restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations, end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, seek justice for veterans and victims of war, and abolish war as an instrument of national policy.”
Honoring veterans with a day certainly provides a symbolic recognition of service — but it rings hollow for too many who served for what they believed was duty, only to discover the truth of war.
Instead, we must stop creating veterans — stop destroying the lives of people who join the military and those of millions of civilians victims in foreign lands — all in the name of U.S. imperialism.
It is our imperative to expose these insidious truths and inform those considering signing up to serve that patriotic duty is only an illusion to ensnare the uninformed into fighting, killing, and even dying for corporate profit, exploitation, and hegemony.
Ask the profiteers and politicians to send their own kids to fight — and we’d see how quickly peace would prevail.
