[Peace-discuss] An “Army of One” to Heal and Educate, Build and Fix

[Robert Naiman]

https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10159407472617656

An “Army of One” to Heal and Educate, Build and Fix

Reflecting again on how Harold Diamond “tricked” me into going to graduate
school by giving me a Special Problem to solve opened up a flood of other
memories: times in my life when a male teacher or other male authority
figure - always a man - helped me by giving me a Special Assignment to
complete. When I look at my younger self now through the eyes of these men,
I see an angry young man sporting a particular scar that these men
recognized. “Ah, yes. Yet another angry young man sporting THAT scar. Come
here now, angry young man. I have a Special Assignment for you to complete.
This Special Assignment is only for you. When you have completed the
Special Assignment, come back and receive my praise.” When I think now
about how these men helped me, the word “grateful” doesn’t begin to cut it.
I’m 100% sure that I would be dead or in prison if I had never received
this aid. So to say that I’m grateful for that aid would give new meaning
to the word “understatement.”

But here’s what makes me angry. I’m quite certain that in every generation
there are a whole bunch of angry young men in America sporting this
particular scar. And I’m quite certain that a bunch of these young men are
actively recruited to join the U.S. military, because they’re looking for a
do-over, a male authority figure that they can trust, unlike the first one
they had. It’s the Abuse Victim Draft. I considered joining it myself, many
times, even though I was against U.S. wars and against U.S. imperialism.
That’s how desperate I felt to escape from the abusive authority of my
father. When I see a flag-draped casket at Dover Air Force Base, I think:
that could easily have been me. Sometimes when the U.S. military wants to
offload responsibility for PTSD among veterans, it says: some of these
people had these psychological problems before they joined the U.S.
military. Good job, Brownie. Like you didn’t know you were actively
targeting this vulnerable population in your recruitment efforts.

This dynamic wouldn’t bother me at all if it were the job of the U.S.
military to heal and educate people and build and fix things. If that were
so, I would think that it was great. Collect all the angry young men of
America into an Army to heal and educate, build and fix. Fantastic. Sign.
Me. Up. Draft me and enlist me now for that project. But the job of the
U.S. military is to kill people and blow things up. Including in wars that
are not justifiable based on the interests of the American people, still
less based on the interests of the brown and black people who live in the
countries where the wars takes place. Some of these young men are killed in
these wars, some of them are physically maimed, and some of them are
psychologically maimed. And I’m quite certain that some of the
psychologically maiming happens when some of these young men realize in
horror how they’ve been abused a second time in the place where they sought
refuge from the first abuse.

When I think about how the U.S. military is taking advantage of these
vulnerable young men — all of my brothers — “an army of one,” “the toughest
job you’ll ever love” — with the enabling of the democratically elected
United States Congress, the universe can’t hold my howl. I waited my whole
life to feel strong enough to sit fully with this howl.

When John Lennon wrote “Imagine,” he sang about the “brotherhood of man.”
When Lee Hays of the Weavers wrote “If I Had a Hammer,” he pledged he would
hammer out love between all of his brothers, if only he had the hammer to
do so. We don’t talk like this now because this language is not considered
politically correct, because it doesn’t explicitly include women. But
canceling the phrase “brotherhood of man” cancels a key idea. Our sisters
didn’t start the war. Our brothers started the war. Our brothers can stop
the war. If rape is a men’s problem, then war is a men’s problem. We need
to hammer out love between all of our brothers so our brothers will stop
the war.
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