Home > ARMY RECRUITING VALUES
ARMY RECRUITING VALUES
By Peter Fredsib
May 21, 2005
Today I listened to C-Span featuring a Major General in charge of recruiting for the U.S. Army. He was very cogent and knowledgeable. He explained the training that recruiting N.C.O.s must go through and what level of competence is expected of them. He talked about the many difficulties recruitment has faced, such as discrimination because of gender, sex, education, economics and other factors such as homosexuality.
He was fairly candid in answering the questions of journalists, though sometimes evasive when it came to what may be considered delicate matters. But he certainly was aware of the problems. He spoke of reducing the period of service to 15 months, plus about 3 months training time, plus a reserve period later. He acknowledged that lately the recruiting goals have not been met. In fact, they were some 6,600 short lately.
He spoke of values and was proud of being firm in standing for values, including success orientation. There is no doubt that the army is excellent training for young people, and that a well-trained army is vital for a superpower. There is no doubt that abuses and discrimination occur, but the General was aware of it and said that everyone was doing their best to eliminate such problems.
The General was eloquent in speaking for recruitment and his sincerity seemed beyond doubt. I do not think that the problem of short fall is due to any negligence or other fault of the General, or any of his staff, nor of the highly-competent recruiting NCOs at over a thousand recruiting stations. I do not think that the problem is lack of awareness or lack of attention to discrimination or abuse. As armies go, the U.S. army has excellent equipment, training, supply, regulations, etc. making it at least the equal of any army in the world. The problem is not in potential recruits being cowardly, anti-patriotic or ignorant. The problem is not a lack of proper values or trying to enforce their regulations.
Where then does the problem arise or “lie?” The great problem, which no soldier can even hint at, is that the commander in chief is a murderous and reckless neoconservative guided by the desire for world domination, unilateral action, preemptive action, and heedless regard for the loss of life in meeting the goals of conquest. The lies of the entire Bush cabinet concerning Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction, aluminum tubes, biological laboratories, nuclear weapons, pilotless planes that were going to attack the U.S., the connection to Osama bin Laden, and a hundred other deliberate lies were all planned long before the 9/11 tragedy by the dominionists, reconstructionists, neoconservatives.
The war was hatched by lies, which killed over 1,600 of our soldiers, many thousands of Iraqis, thousands of mangled and wounded, resulting in great infrastructure destruction, and the use of “shock and awe” tactics. The first act of the invading U.S. army was to seize the oil wells, and turn the production over to Millennium Corporation, which only coincidentally was once run by the Vice President Cheney. Another act was to give the military and associates billions of dollars, which has vanished without trace.
Our soldiers didn’t die for their country. They died by order of their murderous commander in chief and his cowardly draft-dodger associates, in order to seize oil. Bush didn’t shed a tear for any dead, but is reported to be happy that he has brought “freedom” to Iraq in the form of a puppet government under his cannon muzzle and that the huge air base he is building will keep American soldiers there for at least a generation, and provide Corporations with billions of dollars of profit.
Of course no military person may even hint that the problem is with the commander in chief, or the Secretary of Defense. That would end their careers immediately and would probably result in some kind of charge of treason. But most young people know that they might be throwing away their lives under Bush for his self-glorification. Most young people, despite poverty, ignorance and discrimination, are not stupid enough to volunteer for a shallow, smirking, lying, glory-seeking S.O.B. But as soon as he leaves office, unless a clone takes over, recruitment will probably resume normal levels.
Forum posts
22 May 2005, 08:04
Values are tied to what a person takes in as information and beliefs. It is clear that in the nation state oligarchic structure of military oriented, financially controlled, and geopolitcially motivated through "patriotism" which is a love of the elitist structure in the modern sense and the ultimate lie to the common person that would sign up and defend their country under this structure. The military would and is a creation of the modern post World War I world where the concept of competing economies, and work forces played nicely into the profit models of the banking investment class and their goal of control by taking the competing economies to fight and kill eachothers expanding social progressive working classes by playing the economic turmoil card against the nation state. In this way the banker can fund both sides of the war and the sales of arms to the governments which then will be paid back not by the leaders that led the working class into the wars but by the tax paying based of lower and middle class workers. This way the possiblity of social progress change is controlled through the economic tightening which always accompanys a war in the nation state, since the tax funds are being used to purchase the weapons to kill the very citizens and families that will pay for these weapons to kill their own peers in the opposing nation state "enemy."
These really is no enemy unless the government wants one for profit and social control reasons. All people of earth have the same biophysical needs, social needs and operational participation needs in a social structure. But those that seek control and profit only see money as the final controlling value and have always employed war to maintain its dominance. It is only by government sponsored propaganda that one race, or culture, or religion is turned into "the states enemy" and the patriotic structures and neurolinguistic programming taught in schools, public military institutions, and the body politic always use this concept to drive the confilct and thus the war economies which by the way are the most profitable ones since they create social fear in two middle class cultrures turned against each other, genertate arms sales profits to the leaders of both sides, and the oligarchic banking institutions collect all the profits only to waint and do it again when then feel it is needed.
Really then, is money a great thing or what?
24 May 2005, 03:25
Very good comment. All human beings are equal.