[Peace-discuss] Supporting the troops…Who's responsible?

[Morton K. Brussel]

  I agree with the thrust of the following article. The author poses  
some forceful questions: Are youth in Iraq responsible?   Has the  
fact that they may have been swindled remove their guilt? Are we all  
just pawns of our environment and upbringing? Was Ward Churchill right?

Of course, we all can't be put in the same basket, but are we  
Americans, as a people, any different from the Good Germans of WWII--mkb

Published on Friday, March 3, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Why I Cannot Support The Troops In Iraq
by Doug Soderstrom

One of my friends has a son who volunteered to go to war. The son’s  
father, a democrat, and, of course, no fan of the president, has been  
a decided critic of the war. In talking with him the other day, he  
told me that, like any other father, he loves his son very much, but  
believes that his son made a terrible mistake by choosing to go to  
war. He informed me that he had done absolutely everything in his  
power to dissuade his son from joining the military, but no matter  
what he said, his son felt that he had a patriotic duty to serve his  
country. As of this moment, his son is stationed in Iraq.

I have no doubt that my friend loves his son just as much as I would  
love my own son if he had been the one to have chosen to go to war.  
However, even though he prays that his son will not be injured or  
killed in Iraq, he in no way supports that which his son has set out  
to do. As far as the father is concerned, his son’s decision to carry  
out his orders to kill others is likely no better than if he had  
decided to join the Mafia in order to be a hit man!

On the other hand, for those who believe that George Walker Bush is a  
good Christian, no doubt a true man of God, one inspired (by God) to  
send troops into Iraq, it only makes sense that they would want to  
support the troops in Iraq. Such folks might even be inclined,  
through spiritual obligation, to encourage that of their own children  
to join up and serve the military. I mean, what more could one expect  
of such parents than to encourage their own children to kill in the  
name of God!

However, for those who do not approve of the president’s war (like  
that of the father alluded to earlier who believes that George Walker  
Bush lied to congress in order to obtain approval to send American  
troops into Iraq), there would be no reason for such to support the  
troops in Iraq. Really now, how could one support (much less respect)  
an arrangement in which unscrupulous military recruiters inveigle  
their way into high schools in order to convince high school seniors  
that it would be in their best interest to swap their souls for an  
“up front” payoff, you know what I mean, the enlistment bonus….. the  
“thirty pieces of silver” offered by recruiters to induce  
economically deprived young men and women to join the military for  
nothing more than a feckless opportunity to be a “stand-in trigger  
man” for the President of the United States, an abject mercenary  
grunt serving a commander in chief unwilling to send that of his own  
daughters into combat! No matter how you look at it, such an  
arrangement is a bargain with The Devil, a compact created in Hell.  
The military recruits the kids, and the kids allow themselves to  
become trained assassins assimilated into a ravaged culture of death!

Now, for just a moment, if you would, let’s suppose there was a  
company that, for whatever reason, engaged in an illicit activity,  
one that ended up harming, perhaps even killing people. Let’s also  
assume that more or less everyone in the organization…… from that of  
the CEO, the vice presidents, those in research and development,  
marketing and advertising, the sales staff, the accountants, all the  
way down to those of the office workers in the company, were  
reasonably aware that such activity was likely to harm, perhaps even  
kill, people. Let’s also assume that such led to a criminal  
investigation the purpose of which was to figure out who to hold  
responsible for such crimes; those at the very top of the  
organization, those in the middle, and/or those at the very bottom,  
the fusiliers, those directly involved in the day-to-day operations  
of death?

Well, as it turns out, we, the American people, the citizens of the  
United States, are “that company,” and as sure as George Walker Bush  
is our president, we, like those above, are the very people who have  
chosen to participate in such an illicit activity (that of having  
chosen to invade the country of Iraq).

Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that I ask who, in fact, should  
be held responsible for the ongoing destruction of a such a  
substantial portion of the infrastructure of Iraq, the death of half  
a million children during an earlier embargo, the killing of as many  
as 100,000 innocent Iraqis, the deaths of 2,500 American soldiers,  
and the horrible injury of at least 25,000. Just those at the very  
top (George Walker Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condelessa  
Rice, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the United States  
Congress)? Those in the middle (the under secretaries, the two star  
generals, the commandants, the colonels, even those of the voting  
public)? And what about those at the bottom of the barrel, those  
charged with the responsibility of pulling the trigger, you know, the  
grunts…… the privates, the corporals, the sergeants, the platoon  
leaders; the men and women on the ground who each and every day make  
deliberate decisions to shoot and kill people?

Ward Churchill in his most controversial book, On The Justice Of  
Roosting Chickens: Consequences of American Conquest and Carnage,  
made it rather clear that each of us, as human beings, to the extent  
that we have chosen to become “Little [Adolf] Eichmanns,” to the  
extent that we have chosen to become involved in the activities of  
war, should be held responsible for that of our own actions. Clearly,  
as mandated by that of the Nuremberg Trials, no one can ignore the  
immense responsibility, the immense crimes committed by those in  
charge; George Walker Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. And, of  
course, let’s not forget those of us in the middle, the 50.7 percent  
who, like sheep being led to the slaughter, made their way into  
voting booths around the country giving George Walker Bush the ill- 
considered opportunity to govern our country.

But then, and certainly more to the point, what about those of our  
own children, our kids who have been charged with the dreadful  
responsibility of carrying out “the day-to-day activity” of the  
president? You know what I mean, the men and women in uniform, the  
soldiers, the grunts out there on the killing fields of Iraq choosing  
to shoot and kill the enemy. What about them, those of our own  
children, the great American patriots having been freed to lay waist  
to the enemy? Should they be given a “free pass?” Doesn’t it seem a  
bit odd that we praise that of our own children when they kill the  
enemy? However, when the enemy does the same to us, we cry out for  
their death. How absolutely absurd for us to claim that our children  
kill in the name of God, while those of the enemy, fighting to  
protect what they hold to be dear, are evil doers having lost their  
right to live.

Jesus taught that those who love not only God and their neighbor, but  
as well that of their enemy have demonstrated the right to be called  
peacemakers, the true seekers of peace, without a doubt, the  
authentically genuine Children of God. Incredibly however, the very  
folks who seem to flatter themselves as being the “true followers” of  
Christ, are those most inclined to send their children off to war.  
How can it be that those who have apparently been taught how terribly  
wrong it is to kill, are the very ones so likely to ignore the  
egregious nature of what their own children have been called upon to  
do…… that of killing the enemy?

In order to justify such behavior, Americans (especially  
fundamentalist Christians) have found it increasingly necessary to  
con themselves into believing that our children are, for whatever  
reason, more precious than that of our enemy’s children, that we love  
our children more than they do, that the death of one of our children  
is a much greater tragedy than it would be for them to lose a child.  
Conceivably such reasoning (convoluted as it is) is that which has  
enabled us to kill their sons and daughters with such a great deal of  
ease. Although no doubt a rather difficult thing to do, it would be  
good for us to realize (regardless of what we have been told) that  
their children are not sand niggers, nor are they or their parents  
camel jockeys! Just like that of our own children, they are human  
beings, and in the long run it makes no difference who is killing  
whom…… if we are killing them, or if they are killing us, since as it  
turns out killing is killing, and as such it is wrong!

Being a psychologist, I am rather amazed that people fail to  
understand how very similar each of us, as human beings, are. We live  
with the pretense that we are somehow different, when in fact we are  
not. In reality, the only thing that stands between “us” (as  
Americans) and “them” (as Arabs) is the mere accident of one’s birth.  
Nothing more and nothing less. Believe me, if we had been born  
somewhere in the Middle East, we would have ended up being “the  
Arabs” wanting nothing more than to kill Americans. On the other  
hand, if they (the so-called enemy) had been born in the United  
States, they would have been “the Americans” wanting to kill Arabs.  
The point being that every single one of us has been conditioned,  
socialized, even brainwashed. Regardless of where we have been raised  
(the United States, Iraq, Iran, or Pakistan), we will end up becoming  
who we have been trained (essentially brainwashed) to be. One can  
gloat that he is an Arab while another might boast that he is an  
American. But regardless of our nationality, each is exactly the same  
in that we have each been brainwashed to the utter core of our being!  
As such we need to realize just how malleably servile we, as human  
beings, are, just how very easy it has been for each of us to have  
been duped into believing that “our god” (God, Allah, or Yahweh) is  
the “right god,” that the proverbial CEO of the universe has given us  
the exclusive right to determine who it is that shall live and who  
shall die. And all of such to no avail other than “puffing ourselves  
up” in order that we might believe that we, as Americans, have become  
the harbingers of good news, standard-bearers of the cross,  
emissaries from God having been sent out to save the world!

What an absolutely insane world in which we live, one that may not  
survive for long, unless we, as a species, regain that which we have  
seemingly lost, the capacity to realize that which we have in common,  
that which we have always shared…… the fact of our humanity.

Perhaps the day will come (but by then it may well be too late) when  
the world finally realizes that killing in the name of God is, and  
for that matter, has always been, wrong, that the future of the  
world, from the very beginning of time until that of the present  
moment, has been contingent upon a mom and dad’s rather simple  
willingness to remind their own children that they have but one, and  
only one, mandate in life….. that of following the voice of their own  
conscience which, has always, without exception, demanded that they,  
as human beings, say yes to life, and, with no apology whatsoever, no  
to war.

Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D. is a Psychologist from Wharton, Texas. Email  
to: dougsod at wcjc.edu


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