There never was a good war or a bad peace. ~Ben Franklin
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
Truth in Recruiting - "Don't Believe the Hype!"
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
Lead Story from the past month's news:
MILITARY FAMILIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY
PROTEST PRESIDENT OBAMA’S DECISION TO ESCALATE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
December 3, 2009 – Following President Obama’s announcement of increased troop levels in Afghanistan, members of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) and Gold Star Families Speak Out (GSFSO) expressed outrage and deep sadness
quote:
"We have lived in terror for over eight years now. Three of our sons and three grandchildren have served in the Army in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Our family has endured multiple deployments, extended deployments, stop loss, and the unconscionable practice of pressured reenlistment while in country. At present we have a grandson in Iraq and a granddaughter in Afghanistan. We believe all our sons suffer from some degree of PTSD, one more severe than the others. Our granddaughter is on all kinds of medication for PTSD, and yet is in Afghanistan on her 3rd deployment!"
~MFSO members Linda and Phil Waste of Shellman Bluff, Georgia
related story:
Military Mom Chastises Military Recruiters in NYC, Accuses Recruiters of Being Predators
--joins counter-recruiters to convince this generation of youth that joining this imperial military is not only bad for them, it's bad for humanity
quote:
"I am so against what you are doing. You strategically placed this recruiting center so that kids who are either coming out of high school with nowhere to go, or those who graduate college in lots of debt and no jobs because of the economy are enticed to join the military. You are taking full advantage of the bad economy and sending more of our youth off to die and kill for illegal, immoral and illegitimate wars. You should be ashamed of yourselves and I don't know how you sleep at night."
~MFSO member Elaine Brower, mother of U.S. Marine currently on his way to Iraq for a 3rd tour of duty
facts & figures:
Unemployment for young vets surpasses 20%.
The 20.8 percent unemployment rate for November 2009 for veterans ages 18 to 24 is an increase from the 17.3 percent rate for veterans in that age group reported for September 2009, indicating a deteriorating jobs picture for entry-level positions. The new numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal there are more than 1 million unemployed veterans.
source: Army Times
sidebar:
U.S. Military Families Struggle in Economic Downturn: 86% increase in request for food assistance
page 1
featured op/ed
Our Murderers in the Sky: Predator Drones violate Pakistan sovereignty, 80% civilian casualties
--Obama's extra-judicial remote-controlled assassinations are contrary to U.S. law & contrary to Int'l law
antiwar radio:
Some 50,000 soldiers have gone AWOL since the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan
--source: members of Forward March, including two veterans interviewed by Scott Horton for antiwar.com
related group:
The National Registry for Conscientious Objection
--civilian-run, based on religious or principled objection to violence
facts & figures:
In World War II, a total of nearly 43,000 Americans refused to fight for reasons of conscience.
During the Vietnam War more than 170,000 men were officially recognized as conscientious objectors. Thousands of other young men resisted by burning their draft cards, serving jail sentences or leaving the country.
file under: the militarization of civilian life
War and Military Spending Mean Fewer Jobs
--increase in war spending will cost the U.S. two million civilian jobs lost
US Military Is Meeting Recruitment Goals With Video Games - but at What Cost?
--The T for Teen rating was attained because designers were, as one Army spokesman said in 2002, “very careful on the blood thing.”
--Amid a soaring suicide rate among soldiers, it’s worth looking at how the Army’s aggressive video games distort our impressions of war.
Sgt. Jesse Hamilton, who served two tours in Iraq and nine total in the military, expressed disgust that the Army has “resorted to such a deceiving recruitment strategy.”
page 2
file under: New Way the Army Can Screw You
Recruitment of Immigrants into U.S. Army: No Guarantee of Citizenship
--You've got no documents. You immigrated here. You sign up to go kill people in Iraq or Afghanistan. You're promised citizenship. You manage to survive. You're deported.
file under: bringing the war home
Whistleblower Psychiatrist Warns of Soldier-on-Soldier Violence
--follow up on lamentable condition of treatment services for PTSD
facts & figures:
Some 37 % of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer mental-health issues. The Marine Corps Times reports that 915,000 unprocessed claims are waiting at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
file under: Military families breaking up
Study Gauges Toll on Military Children
facts & figures: The study comes as the U.S. military struggles with record numbers of both divorces and suicides.
backpage
epitaph for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting"
Phil Ochs - I aint marching anymore
an anti-war anthem, 1965
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5pgrKSwFJE&feature=player_embe...
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
lead story
MILITARY FAMILIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY
PROTEST PRESIDENT OBAMA’S DECISION TO ESCALATE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
December 3, 2009 – Following President Obama’s announcement of increased troop levels in Afghanistan, members of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) and Gold Star Families Speak Out (GSFSO) expressed outrage and deep sadness by speaking out and taking part in protest actions across the country. While the military community is frequently tight-lipped about policy decisions, these military families broke that code of silence to publicly decry the President’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan.
MFSO members Linda and Phil Waste of Shellman Bluff, Georgia, describe how their families’ sense of duty to serve this country and their faith in President Obama has been abused:
We have lived in terror for over eight years now. Three of our sons and three grandchildren have served in the Army in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Our family has endured multiple deployments, extended deployments, stop loss, and the unconscionable practice of pressured reenlistment while in country. At present we have a grandson in Iraq and a granddaughter in Afghanistan. We believe all our sons suffer from some degree of PTSD, one more severe than the others. Our granddaughter is on all kinds of medication for PTSD, and yet is in Afghanistan on her 3rd deployment!
We worked hard to get President Obama elected and sent money out of our retirement to support his election. His many words of ‘hope’ did indeed give us ‘hope’, however, his deeds dashed our hopes on the rocks of more death and destruction of continued wars. The only sane solution is to bring the troops home now!
GSFSO members Kevin and Joyce Lucey of Belchertown, Massachusetts, whose son Jeffrey suffered severe psychological injuries of war and committed suicide after being denied proper care from the Veteran’s Administration, questioned President Obama about this surge in a recent open letter:
You talk of war talk but what of veterans’ care? Our loved ones still lack the care they desperately need. What of the way you continue to treat families of suicides? You stated that you sign letters to all those who lose their lives due to this war. That is not true due to the fact that you continue to refuse to send letters to those loved ones' families who have committed suicide. The number of these families continues to grow as the military suicides rates rise to unprecedented levels, yet you ignore these families as your predecessor did. Where is the change?
You offer up not troops but citizens of this nation – our loved ones; you are sacrificing them. And for what? Have you any concept of the pain, grief, loss and destruction this policy will create and prolong?
MFSO and GSFSO members protested and responded to the President’s announcement Tuesday evening at venues across the country
http://mfso.org/article.php?id=1354
related story:
12/17/09
Marine Mom Makes Contact at Army Recruitment Center
By Elaine Brower
For the last year or so I have been watching the construction of a new "Army Career Center" located a block from my office in downtown Manhattan. ...
I asked them about the local schools that they were so strategically placed next to, like the High School down the street, and Borough of Manhattan Community College. I said, "this is a good location for recruiting. You are so close to the schools and students pass your doors all day long. Do you plan on gaining entrance to the schools to do recruiting in the classes?" Sgt. Castillo said that they had asked permission and were awaiting approval, which he didn't think would be a problem. I thought to myself nor do I, of course. The war machine is more than welcome in our schools, at every level. But I continued. "I work right down the street." Sgt. Castillo asked where and who I worked for and I told him. He smiled and said "Wow, that's great."
I was sitting there in the back office, and then stated "I would like you to know that I am a member of a national organization called 'Military Families Speak Out' and it has about 4,000 members who all have loved ones who are serving or served in Iraq and Afghanistan. We oppose the wars vehemently and are doing everything in our power to stop them."
I thought they would choke on their food at that point. Then I proceeded to say, "Since I work right here, I, along with hundreds of my activist friends, will be your worst nightmare!"
As you could hear a pin drop and confusion spread all over their faces, I continued. "I am so against what you are doing. You strategically placed this recruiting center so that kids who are either coming out of high school with nowhere to go, or those who graduate college in lots of debt and no jobs because of the economy are enticed to join the military." "You are taking full advantage of the bad economy and sending more of our youth off to die and kill for illegal, immoral and illegitimate wars. You should be ashamed of yourselves and I don't know how you sleep at night."
I stood up, took a button off my handbag that I received while protesting at West Point. I said, "This button is for you." I slammed it on the desk. "I got it when I was protesting at West Point when Obama was giving his "escalation speech." It demands all troops home now, you can keep it as a reminder."
At that point I thought they would stand up and escort me out. But they were in such shock, after spending the morning celebrating their existence, to hear that now they would be up against an angry mom, and counter-recruiters, put their small pea brains on overload.
In the new age of Obama, recruiting is a cushy job. This place had it's doors open for a few days and already they are touting 11 new recruits. Those who would not fight and die for Bush, will do so under Obama which makes it extremely difficult to convince this generation of youth that joining this imperial military is not only bad for them, it's bad for humanity.
And so it goes, I know where to have lunch every day now. Getting in the way of the war machine is what I like to do best, and they couldn't have put this place in a better location, for me anyway!
www.elainebrower.com
byline: Anti-war activist, mother of U.S. Marine currently on his way to Iraq for a 3rd tour of duty, Elaine Brower is a member of Steering Committee for the "World Can't Wait, Drive Out the Bush Regime" and Military Families Speak Out (MFSO).
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Marine-Mom-Makes-Contact-a-by-Elai...
sidebar:
In Economic Downturn, Military Families Request Food Assistance: 86% Increase in Requests
Groups that help military families are reporting a drop in cash donations at a time of greater need for those struggling in a down economy while one or more parents fight in Iraq or Afghanistan.
"We're seeing an increase in requests for assistance this year over the same time last year," says Jim Knotts, chief executive of Operation Homefront, a charitable organization that helps military families. Knotts cited an 86% increase in requests for food assistance over last year. "We attribute that to the effects of the economy."
Many military families face the same pressures affecting other Americans during this downturn: Spouses are having difficulty finding work, and mounting debts and foreclosures are forcing them out of rental homes, says John Alexander of the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-12-03-military-families_...
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
page 1
Our Murderers in the Sky
Posted on Dec 10, 2009
By Scott Ritter
The “war on terror” has shredded the concept of the rule of law, at least as applied by the United States within the context of this struggle. While Obama has made moves to fix some of the symptoms of the flawed policies of his predecessor, the underlying foundation of American arrogance and exceptionalism from which such policies emerged remains unchanged. There is no more telling example of this than the current program of targeted assassination taking place under the guise of armed unmanned aerial drones (also known as remotely piloted vehicles, or RPVs) operating in the Af-Pak theater of operations.
All pretense of either Afghan or Pakistani sovereignty disappears when these drones take to the air. Ostensibly used for intelligence gathering and lethal direct-action operations against so-called high-value targets (i.e., senior al-Qaida or Taliban leadership), RPV missions have become increasingly popular within the U.S. military and intelligence communities as a risk-free means of bringing maximum harm, in highly discriminatory fashion, to the enemy. Expansion of the United States’ RPV effort in Af-Pak has become a central part of the surge ordered by Obama, complementing the 30,000 combat troops he has ordered deployed to the region. But exactly who is targeted by these RPV operations? While the U.S. military and intelligence community maintains that every effort is made to positively identify a target as hostile before the decision to fire a missile or drop a bomb is made, the criteria for making this call are often left in the hands of personnel ill-equipped to make it.
In the ideal world, one would see the fusion of real-time imagery, real-time communications intercept and human sources on the ground before making such a call. But in reality this “perfect storm” of intelligence intersection rarely occurs. In its stead, one is left with fragmentary pieces of data that are cobbled together by personnel far removed from the point of actual conflict whose motivations are geared more toward action than discretion. Often, the most critical piece of intelligence comes from a human source who is using the U.S. military as a means of settling a local score more than furthering the struggle against terror. The end result is dead people on the ground whose demise has little, if any, impact on the “war on terror,” other than motivating even more people to rise up and struggle against the American occupiers and their Afghan or Pakistani cohorts.
Supporters of the RPV program claim that these strikes have killed over 800 “bad guys,” with a loss of only about 20 or so civilians whose proximity to the targets made them suspect in any case. Detractors flip these figures around, noting that only a score or more kills of “high-value targets” can be confirmed, and that the vast majority of those who have died or have been wounded in these attacks were civilians. In a conflict that is being waged in villages and towns in regions traditionally prone to intense independence and religious fundamentalism, distinguishing good from bad can be a daunting task. Given the U.S. track record, under which tribal gatherings and family functions such as weddings have been frequently misidentified as “hostile” gatherings and thus attacked with tragic results, one is inclined to doubt the official casualty figures associated with the RPV strikes.
Rather than furthering the U.S. cause in the “war on terror,” the RPV program, which President Obama seeks to expand in the Af-Pak theater, in reality represents a force-enhancement tool for the Taliban. Its indiscriminate application of death and destruction serves as a recruitment vehicle, with scores of new jihadists rising up to replace each individual who might have been killed by a missile attack. Like the surge that it is designed to complement, the expanded RPV program plays into the hands of those whom America is ostensibly targeting. While the U.S. military, aided by a fawning press, may seek to disguise the reality of the RPV program through catchy slogans such as “warheads through foreheads,” in reality it is murder by another name. And when murder represents the centerpiece of any national effort, yet alone one that aspires to win the “hearts and minds” of the targeted population, it is doomed to fail.
Scott Ritter was a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page3/our_murderers_in_the_sky_20091...
--The above is an excerpt from a longer editorial piece--
further context for the above:
In 1977, an executive order by President Gerald Ford commanded that “no employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.”
In 1981, acting on his own executive order, President Ronald Reagan ordered: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” Before Reagan, President Jimmy Carter had expanded the Gerald Ford order to include all assassinations.
antiwar radio:
Some 50,000 soldiers have gone AWOL since the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan
--source: members of Forward March, including two veterans interviewed by Scott Horton for antiwar.com
--online streaming audio available on demand as .mp3 stream (see link below)
Interview with Michael Prysner and James Circello
by Scott Horton, December 20, 2009
Michael Prysner and James Circello, staff members of March Forward!, an antiwar organization for active duty soldiers and veterans, discuss the bigotry ingrained in military culture that dehumanizes the enemy du jour, the class struggle between enlisted soldiers and officers, the intentional “draw fire” missions that boost an officer’s career while endangering troops, double-dipping retired generals who get paid to propagandize for more war, the continued deployment of soldiers with PTSD and the Pentagon’s fear of a mass GI desertion.
Of his experience with the initial invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, Michael wrote:
“Once in Iraq, there was no computer screen separating me from the suffering civilian population. Because of the Bush administration’s failure to anticipate the resistance of the Iraqi people, there was an inadequate number of soldiers in my unit, and I ending up having to do a myriad of different jobs. I spent 12 months in Iraq, doing everything from prisoner interrogations, to ground surveillance missions, to home raids. It was my firsthad experiences in Iraq that radicalized me. I believed I was going to Iraq to help liberate and better the lives of an oppressed people, but I soon realized that my purpose in Iraq was to be the oppressor, and to clear the way for U.S. corporations with no regard for human life.
“I separated from the Army in 2005, by which time I had begun to make sense of my experiences in Iraq, and understood that the occupation I was a part of was a crime against humanity. I understood that illegal conquering of Iraq was for profit, carried out by a system that serves a tiny class of superrich whose endless drive for wealth is at the expense of working people in the United States and abroad.
“I left this Army with a new understanding of the system under which we all live, and the nature of U.S. foreign policy. But, I still had the same drive to fight for freedom, justice and equality as I did when I joined, and I understood that fighting for those things meant fighting against the U.S. government, not on behalf of it.”
Of his experience with the initial invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, James writes:
“During the occupation of Iraq, the truth about what the United States government has done to the country of Iraq became more apparent. Open waste water flowed through neighborhood streets where children played soccer. Families were thrown out of their homes with simple accusations from others. Vehicles were taken on sight by the military if individuals couldn’t provide proper documents claiming they own the vehicle. These events and others helped in strengthening my opposition to the so-called ‘War on Terror.’”
In April 2007, while his unit was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, James Circello deserted the military. Months later, he issued an open letter to the U.S. government declaring he had officially resigned from the military.
http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/12/20/michael-prysner-and-james-circe...
More from Michael Prysner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
related group:
The National Registry for Conscientious Objection
The National Registry for Conscientious Objection was created at The Peace Abbey following the war in the Persian Gulf in early 1991. The National Registry provides men and women of all ages with an opportunity to register their objection to personal, national, and international violence.
Objection to violence and courage of conscience are characteristics of a life committed to peace.
The National Registry is a national campaign to promote peacemaking as a practical ideal: a way of living in the present that represents our best hope for the future. It seeks to inspire peace and justice in society by inviting peacemakers everywhere to "register" their conscientious objection to violence, and in so doing, to share with others their commitment to a peaceful world.
The intent of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection is to emphasize one's absolute dedication to peaceful living and to peaceful resolution of conflict. It is only by striving for perfection that we approach perfection. Likewise, it is only by committing ourselves absolutely to peaceful living that peace will in fact prevail, in our lives and on the planet.
Conscientious objection has a unique place in United States history. In fact, the tradition of refusing military service - and the recognition of that right - can be traced back to America's founding fathers, some of whom were pacifists fleeing oppression for their beliefs in Europe. Several of the original colonies, including Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, were founded by the Quaker pacifist William Penn. The framers of the U.S. Constitution even considered including an exemption from military service for conscientious objectors in the Second Amendment. This clause was omitted because they did not envision the need for creating a standing army. At the onset of the Revolutionary War, George Washington issued a draft order, which was a call to "all young men of suitable age to be drafted, except those with conscientious scruples against war.”
In World War II, a total of nearly 43,000 Americans refused to fight for reasons of conscience. During the Vietnam War more than 170,000 men were officially recognized as conscientious objectors. Thousands of other young men resisted by burning their draft cards, serving jail sentences or leaving the country.
Signing the Registry
We welcome you to sign The National Registry for Conscientious Objection in person, and join us in this initiative for peace. Or you can download the National Registry form and send the signed original back to: The Peace Abbey, Two North Main Street, Sherborn, MA. 01770. We encourage you to keep a copy for your personal records, perhaps framed and displayed as a sign of your commitment to peace. If you would like to have a form that several individuals can sign, download the National Registry Page for Groups.
http://www.peaceabbey.org/confcenter/coregistry.htm
War and Military Spending Mean Fewer Jobs
--increase in war spending will cost the U.S. two million jobs lost
A wonderful 39-page report from the National Priorities Project (PDF) contains on pages 23 and 24 a summary of research supporting these basic and well documented facts:
Investing public dollars in the military produces fewer jobs than cutting taxes.
Cutting taxes produces fewer jobs than investing public dollars in any of these areas: healthcare, education, mass transit, construction for home weatherization and infrastructure.
Investing public dollars in mass transit or education produces over twice as many jobs as investing in the military.
Investing public dollars in education produces better paying jobs than investing in the military or cutting taxes.
Investing public dollars in any of these areas: healthcare, education, mass transit, construction for home weatherization and infrastructure has a larger direct and indirect economic impact than investing in the military or cutting taxes.
On the basis of the above evidence alone, we have a clear choice. If we decide to cut taxes or spend money on the military, we are hurting the economy and actually creating more unemployment, because we are choosing not to invest our money where it can do the most good. Every dollar invested in killing is a dollar taken away from areas where it would create more jobs.
The case against military investment is even stronger if some additional factors are considered.
First, the above comparisons are based on military spending and non-military spending domestically. When the military spending is on distant foreign wars, or for that matter the $140 billion a year we spend to station troops in 177 nations, the contrast in terms of economic impact at home grows.
Second, there are long-term costs, some of them difficult to calculate, that need to be considered. Joseph Stiglitz' and Linda Bilmes' book on the cost of the Iraq War presents a guide to calculation the financial costs of any war. These include long-term care for veterans, the economic value of lost lives, serious injuries, and mental health disabilities, and various macroeconomic costs including a war's impact on the cost of oil. When these very real factors are considered, the price of not investing in nonviolent industries skyrockets.
"According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the sharp increase in war spending is taking up a greater portion of our Gross Domestic Product, which will cost the U.S. about two million jobs because such spending ‘is a direct drain on the economy, reducing efficiency, slowing growth and costing jobs.’ Contrary to popular assumptions, massive spending for war does not create jobs. It costs jobs. War spending is capital-intensive, not labor-intensive. War creates unemployment.
byline: David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. 2009
http://www.davidswanson.org/node/2349
US Military Is Meeting Recruitment Goals With Video Games - but at What Cost?
--Amid a soaring suicide rate among soldiers, it’s worth looking at how the Army’s aggressive video games distort our impressions of war.
Though the record suicide rate cannot be traced to a single causal factor, specialists cite the psychological trauma of killing, an American culture of denial, financial difficulties, failed relationships, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder as main contributors to the trend.
Despite the five-year span, Army Vice Chief of Staff Peter Chiarelli admitted recently the US Army was still short the 300 substance abuse counselors and 800 behavioral specialists needed to cope with the problem.
Though the US military professes concern for the psychological health of its service members, this personnel gap is just one example of the strong evidence to the contrary. The current recruiting tactics aimed at America’s youth are especially concerning. Not only do the very tactics that have been boosting recruitment sanitize war and create false expectations, they prey upon the vulnerable imaginations of children.
Throughout 2009 the military has aggressively expanded its marketing campaign targeting teenagers. Efforts include the release of the third version of a taxpayer-sponsored video game, two graphic novels that look and read like comic books, and a unique 14,500-sq.-ft. arcade, in a shopping mall, that is filled with simulators and shooter video games.
One reason for the armed forces’ recruiting success is the economic collapse and the ongoing jobs crisis. But this year’s record recruitment can only be fully understood in the context of the remarkable shift in tactics that began a decade ago. In 1999, the military had its worst recruiting year in 30 years.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/1228/US-military-i...
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
page 2
New Ways the Army Can Screw You
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2009-12-22 18:55.
You've got no documents. You immigrated here. You sign up to go kill people in Iraq or Afghanistan. You're promised citizenship. You manage to survive. You're deported.
Thousands of U.S. Military Veterans are facing deportation. There are more than 30,000 non-citizens currently serving in the US army. Anslem Ifill, a native of Trinidad and legal US resident, served in the first Gulf War. He was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD. After his service, he got in trouble with the law and spent a number of years in prison. His story is not that unusual because almost half of the Vietnam veterans with PTSD have been arrested or jailed. What is unusual is that after serving his time he was detained by the immigration service for an additional three years and finally told he was to be deported. Anslem Ifill has spent 25 years in the US and served this country by putting his life on the line.
For more such stories go to: http://banishedveterans.intuitwebsites.com/donations.html
Whistleblower Psychiatrist Warns of Soldier-on-Soldier Violence
by Dahr Jamail, December 08, 2009
MARFA, Texas – Kernan Manion, a psychiatrist who was hired last January to treat Marines returning from war who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other acute mental health problems borne from their deployments, fears more soldier-on-soldier violence without radical changes in the current soldier health care system.
Working for a personnel-recruiting company which was contracted by the Defense Department at Camp Lejeune, Manion became alarmed at the military’s inability to give sufficient treatment to returning soldiers. He was also concerned by their reports of outright abuse meted out by some commanders against lower-ranking soldiers who sought help.
Manion told IPS that last April two Marines urgently sought his help soon after the clinic opened at 7 a.m. They told him, "One of these guys is liable to come back [from Iraq or Afghanistan] with a loaded weapon and open fire."
This episode is just one that is indicative of pervasive and worsening systemic problems afflicting a military mental health care system that is overburdened, overstressed, understaffed, and ill equipped, according to Manion. Care is also administered by career military officers who are "ill- trained to provide the complex psychiatric expertise necessary to effectively treat psychologically impaired soldiers."
Manion explained to IPS that upon returning home, troops suffering from myriad new-onset deployment-related mental health problems were flooding the available resources. When they did come in, they had to bear the brunt of pervasive harassment and often outright psychological abuse from Marine Corps superiors who refused to acknowledge the validity, much less the severity of their problems.
"I saw previously strong Marines, people who were now very fragile – who were broken by two or more deployments – come back to be squashed by their commanders, who told them they were ‘goddamn losers,’" Manion told IPS.
Manion went on to warn his superiors of the widespread systemic problems – he informed them that he was alarmed at the possibility of these leading to violence on the base.
Rather than being praised for his series of increasingly urgent memos on the impending disaster, Manion was fired.
http://original.antiwar.com/jamail/2009/12/07/whistleblower-psychia...
Study Gauges Toll on Military Children
December 7, 2009
By Stephen Power
WASHINGTON -- Children of military parents deployed to serve abroad have a greater number of emotional or behavioral difficulties than children of civilians, according to a new study. The study comes as the U.S. military struggles with record numbers of both divorces and suicides.
The new study covers children between the ages of 11 and 17.
The study was based on interviews with about 1,500 military families in which a parent had been or was currently deployed and was carried out by researchers at Rand Corp. with funding from the National Military Family Association.
It found that children of such families were twice as likely as those from civilian families to report experiencing elevated anxiety symptoms, such as getting frightened for no apparent reason or feeling that they couldn't be alone. Some 30% of children from military families reported experiencing such symptoms, compared with 15% of children from civilian families, according to the study.
Results of the study, set to be published Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics, come in the wake of President Barack Obama's decision last week to deploy at least 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126016018519979597.html?mod=WSJ_hps...
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
backpage
epitaph for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting"
Phil Ochs - I aint marching anymore
an anti-war anthem, 1965
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5pgrKSwFJE&feature=player_embe...
Of this song, Ochs wrote: "The fact that you won't be hearing this song on the radio is more than enough justification for the writing of it." In August 1968, Ochs performed "I Ain't Marching Anymore" during the protests outside the Democratic National Convention, inspiring hundreds of young men to burn their draft cards. Ochs described it as the highlight of his career.
Artist: Ochs Phil
Song: I Ain't Marching Anymore
Album: There But for Fortune
Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
At the end of the early British war
The young land started growing
The young blood started flowing
But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I've killed my share of Indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the Little Big Horn
I heard many men lying I saw many more dying
But I ain't marchin' anymore
chorus)
It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all
For I stole California from the Mexican land
Fought in the bloody Civil War
Yes I even killed my brothers
And so many others But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I marched to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain't marchin' anymore
(chorus)
For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning
That I ain't marchin' anymore
Now the labor leader's screamin'
when they close the missile plants,
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore,
Call it "Peace" or call it "Treason,"
Call it "Love" or call it "Reason,"
But I ain't marchin' any more,
No I ain't marchin' any more
who we are:
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship is the activist wing of the peace movement in Eastern Oklahoma. TPF offers citizens and community groups tools and resources to participate personally in our democracy, to help shape federal budget and policy priorities, and to promote peace, social and economic justice, and human rights. TPF is a registered non-profit organization and a non-partisan civic-sector organization, loosely affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration, north side of Tulsa.
"Waging Peace One Person at a Time".
Through its counter-recruitment task force, TPF is a member of the National Network in Opposition to the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) representing some 188 counter-recruitment groups in cities and towns across the country. On the web: http://www.nnomy.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=v...
The information provided in this digest/update herein is for non-profit use only, according to "fair use" doctrine. Copyright and all commercial exploitation rights remain with the various authors/publishers cited above. The Tulsa Peace Fellowship does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the articles appearing herein.
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
Lead Story from the past month's news:
MILITARY FAMILIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY
PROTEST PRESIDENT OBAMA’S DECISION TO ESCALATE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
December 3, 2009 – Following President Obama’s announcement of increased troop levels in Afghanistan, members of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) and Gold Star Families Speak Out (GSFSO) expressed outrage and deep sadness
quote:
"We have lived in terror for over eight years now. Three of our sons and three grandchildren have served in the Army in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Our family has endured multiple deployments, extended deployments, stop loss, and the unconscionable practice of pressured reenlistment while in country. At present we have a grandson in Iraq and a granddaughter in Afghanistan. We believe all our sons suffer from some degree of PTSD, one more severe than the others. Our granddaughter is on all kinds of medication for PTSD, and yet is in Afghanistan on her 3rd deployment!"
~MFSO members Linda and Phil Waste of Shellman Bluff, Georgia
related story:
Military Mom Chastises Military Recruiters in NYC, Accuses Recruiters of Being Predators
--joins counter-recruiters to convince this generation of youth that joining this imperial military is not only bad for them, it's bad for humanity
quote:
"I am so against what you are doing. You strategically placed this recruiting center so that kids who are either coming out of high school with nowhere to go, or those who graduate college in lots of debt and no jobs because of the economy are enticed to join the military. You are taking full advantage of the bad economy and sending more of our youth off to die and kill for illegal, immoral and illegitimate wars. You should be ashamed of yourselves and I don't know how you sleep at night."
~MFSO member Elaine Brower, mother of U.S. Marine currently on his way to Iraq for a 3rd tour of duty
facts & figures:
Unemployment for young vets surpasses 20%.
The 20.8 percent unemployment rate for November 2009 for veterans ages 18 to 24 is an increase from the 17.3 percent rate for veterans in that age group reported for September 2009, indicating a deteriorating jobs picture for entry-level positions. The new numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal there are more than 1 million unemployed veterans.
source: Army Times
sidebar:
U.S. Military Families Struggle in Economic Downturn: 86% increase in request for food assistance
page 1
featured op/ed
Our Murderers in the Sky: Predator Drones violate Pakistan sovereignty, 80% civilian casualties
--Obama's extra-judicial remote-controlled assassinations are contrary to U.S. law & contrary to Int'l law
antiwar radio:
Some 50,000 soldiers have gone AWOL since the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan
--source: members of Forward March, including two veterans interviewed by Scott Horton for antiwar.com
related group:
The National Registry for Conscientious Objection
--civilian-run, based on religious or principled objection to violence
facts & figures:
In World War II, a total of nearly 43,000 Americans refused to fight for reasons of conscience.
During the Vietnam War more than 170,000 men were officially recognized as conscientious objectors. Thousands of other young men resisted by burning their draft cards, serving jail sentences or leaving the country.
file under: the militarization of civilian life
War and Military Spending Mean Fewer Jobs
--increase in war spending will cost the U.S. two million civilian jobs lost
US Military Is Meeting Recruitment Goals With Video Games - but at What Cost?
--The T for Teen rating was attained because designers were, as one Army spokesman said in 2002, “very careful on the blood thing.”
--Amid a soaring suicide rate among soldiers, it’s worth looking at how the Army’s aggressive video games distort our impressions of war.
Sgt. Jesse Hamilton, who served two tours in Iraq and nine total in the military, expressed disgust that the Army has “resorted to such a deceiving recruitment strategy.”
page 2
file under: New Way the Army Can Screw You
Recruitment of Immigrants into U.S. Army: No Guarantee of Citizenship
--You've got no documents. You immigrated here. You sign up to go kill people in Iraq or Afghanistan. You're promised citizenship. You manage to survive. You're deported.
file under: bringing the war home
Whistleblower Psychiatrist Warns of Soldier-on-Soldier Violence
--follow up on lamentable condition of treatment services for PTSD
facts & figures:
Some 37 % of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer mental-health issues. The Marine Corps Times reports that 915,000 unprocessed claims are waiting at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
file under: Military families breaking up
Study Gauges Toll on Military Children
facts & figures: The study comes as the U.S. military struggles with record numbers of both divorces and suicides.
backpage
epitaph for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting"
Phil Ochs - I aint marching anymore
an anti-war anthem, 1965
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5pgrKSwFJE&feature=player_embe...
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
lead story
MILITARY FAMILIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY
PROTEST PRESIDENT OBAMA’S DECISION TO ESCALATE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
December 3, 2009 – Following President Obama’s announcement of increased troop levels in Afghanistan, members of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) and Gold Star Families Speak Out (GSFSO) expressed outrage and deep sadness by speaking out and taking part in protest actions across the country. While the military community is frequently tight-lipped about policy decisions, these military families broke that code of silence to publicly decry the President’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan.
MFSO members Linda and Phil Waste of Shellman Bluff, Georgia, describe how their families’ sense of duty to serve this country and their faith in President Obama has been abused:
We have lived in terror for over eight years now. Three of our sons and three grandchildren have served in the Army in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Our family has endured multiple deployments, extended deployments, stop loss, and the unconscionable practice of pressured reenlistment while in country. At present we have a grandson in Iraq and a granddaughter in Afghanistan. We believe all our sons suffer from some degree of PTSD, one more severe than the others. Our granddaughter is on all kinds of medication for PTSD, and yet is in Afghanistan on her 3rd deployment!
We worked hard to get President Obama elected and sent money out of our retirement to support his election. His many words of ‘hope’ did indeed give us ‘hope’, however, his deeds dashed our hopes on the rocks of more death and destruction of continued wars. The only sane solution is to bring the troops home now!
GSFSO members Kevin and Joyce Lucey of Belchertown, Massachusetts, whose son Jeffrey suffered severe psychological injuries of war and committed suicide after being denied proper care from the Veteran’s Administration, questioned President Obama about this surge in a recent open letter:
You talk of war talk but what of veterans’ care? Our loved ones still lack the care they desperately need. What of the way you continue to treat families of suicides? You stated that you sign letters to all those who lose their lives due to this war. That is not true due to the fact that you continue to refuse to send letters to those loved ones' families who have committed suicide. The number of these families continues to grow as the military suicides rates rise to unprecedented levels, yet you ignore these families as your predecessor did. Where is the change?
You offer up not troops but citizens of this nation – our loved ones; you are sacrificing them. And for what? Have you any concept of the pain, grief, loss and destruction this policy will create and prolong?
MFSO and GSFSO members protested and responded to the President’s announcement Tuesday evening at venues across the country
http://mfso.org/article.php?id=1354
related story:
12/17/09
Marine Mom Makes Contact at Army Recruitment Center
By Elaine Brower
For the last year or so I have been watching the construction of a new "Army Career Center" located a block from my office in downtown Manhattan. ...
I asked them about the local schools that they were so strategically placed next to, like the High School down the street, and Borough of Manhattan Community College. I said, "this is a good location for recruiting. You are so close to the schools and students pass your doors all day long. Do you plan on gaining entrance to the schools to do recruiting in the classes?" Sgt. Castillo said that they had asked permission and were awaiting approval, which he didn't think would be a problem. I thought to myself nor do I, of course. The war machine is more than welcome in our schools, at every level. But I continued. "I work right down the street." Sgt. Castillo asked where and who I worked for and I told him. He smiled and said "Wow, that's great."
I was sitting there in the back office, and then stated "I would like you to know that I am a member of a national organization called 'Military Families Speak Out' and it has about 4,000 members who all have loved ones who are serving or served in Iraq and Afghanistan. We oppose the wars vehemently and are doing everything in our power to stop them."
I thought they would choke on their food at that point. Then I proceeded to say, "Since I work right here, I, along with hundreds of my activist friends, will be your worst nightmare!"
As you could hear a pin drop and confusion spread all over their faces, I continued. "I am so against what you are doing. You strategically placed this recruiting center so that kids who are either coming out of high school with nowhere to go, or those who graduate college in lots of debt and no jobs because of the economy are enticed to join the military." "You are taking full advantage of the bad economy and sending more of our youth off to die and kill for illegal, immoral and illegitimate wars. You should be ashamed of yourselves and I don't know how you sleep at night."
I stood up, took a button off my handbag that I received while protesting at West Point. I said, "This button is for you." I slammed it on the desk. "I got it when I was protesting at West Point when Obama was giving his "escalation speech." It demands all troops home now, you can keep it as a reminder."
At that point I thought they would stand up and escort me out. But they were in such shock, after spending the morning celebrating their existence, to hear that now they would be up against an angry mom, and counter-recruiters, put their small pea brains on overload.
In the new age of Obama, recruiting is a cushy job. This place had it's doors open for a few days and already they are touting 11 new recruits. Those who would not fight and die for Bush, will do so under Obama which makes it extremely difficult to convince this generation of youth that joining this imperial military is not only bad for them, it's bad for humanity.
And so it goes, I know where to have lunch every day now. Getting in the way of the war machine is what I like to do best, and they couldn't have put this place in a better location, for me anyway!
www.elainebrower.com
byline: Anti-war activist, mother of U.S. Marine currently on his way to Iraq for a 3rd tour of duty, Elaine Brower is a member of Steering Committee for the "World Can't Wait, Drive Out the Bush Regime" and Military Families Speak Out (MFSO).
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Marine-Mom-Makes-Contact-a-by-Elai...
sidebar:
In Economic Downturn, Military Families Request Food Assistance: 86% Increase in Requests
Groups that help military families are reporting a drop in cash donations at a time of greater need for those struggling in a down economy while one or more parents fight in Iraq or Afghanistan.
"We're seeing an increase in requests for assistance this year over the same time last year," says Jim Knotts, chief executive of Operation Homefront, a charitable organization that helps military families. Knotts cited an 86% increase in requests for food assistance over last year. "We attribute that to the effects of the economy."
Many military families face the same pressures affecting other Americans during this downturn: Spouses are having difficulty finding work, and mounting debts and foreclosures are forcing them out of rental homes, says John Alexander of the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-12-03-military-families_...
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
page 1
Our Murderers in the Sky
Posted on Dec 10, 2009
By Scott Ritter
The “war on terror” has shredded the concept of the rule of law, at least as applied by the United States within the context of this struggle. While Obama has made moves to fix some of the symptoms of the flawed policies of his predecessor, the underlying foundation of American arrogance and exceptionalism from which such policies emerged remains unchanged. There is no more telling example of this than the current program of targeted assassination taking place under the guise of armed unmanned aerial drones (also known as remotely piloted vehicles, or RPVs) operating in the Af-Pak theater of operations.
All pretense of either Afghan or Pakistani sovereignty disappears when these drones take to the air. Ostensibly used for intelligence gathering and lethal direct-action operations against so-called high-value targets (i.e., senior al-Qaida or Taliban leadership), RPV missions have become increasingly popular within the U.S. military and intelligence communities as a risk-free means of bringing maximum harm, in highly discriminatory fashion, to the enemy. Expansion of the United States’ RPV effort in Af-Pak has become a central part of the surge ordered by Obama, complementing the 30,000 combat troops he has ordered deployed to the region. But exactly who is targeted by these RPV operations? While the U.S. military and intelligence community maintains that every effort is made to positively identify a target as hostile before the decision to fire a missile or drop a bomb is made, the criteria for making this call are often left in the hands of personnel ill-equipped to make it.
In the ideal world, one would see the fusion of real-time imagery, real-time communications intercept and human sources on the ground before making such a call. But in reality this “perfect storm” of intelligence intersection rarely occurs. In its stead, one is left with fragmentary pieces of data that are cobbled together by personnel far removed from the point of actual conflict whose motivations are geared more toward action than discretion. Often, the most critical piece of intelligence comes from a human source who is using the U.S. military as a means of settling a local score more than furthering the struggle against terror. The end result is dead people on the ground whose demise has little, if any, impact on the “war on terror,” other than motivating even more people to rise up and struggle against the American occupiers and their Afghan or Pakistani cohorts.
Supporters of the RPV program claim that these strikes have killed over 800 “bad guys,” with a loss of only about 20 or so civilians whose proximity to the targets made them suspect in any case. Detractors flip these figures around, noting that only a score or more kills of “high-value targets” can be confirmed, and that the vast majority of those who have died or have been wounded in these attacks were civilians. In a conflict that is being waged in villages and towns in regions traditionally prone to intense independence and religious fundamentalism, distinguishing good from bad can be a daunting task. Given the U.S. track record, under which tribal gatherings and family functions such as weddings have been frequently misidentified as “hostile” gatherings and thus attacked with tragic results, one is inclined to doubt the official casualty figures associated with the RPV strikes.
Rather than furthering the U.S. cause in the “war on terror,” the RPV program, which President Obama seeks to expand in the Af-Pak theater, in reality represents a force-enhancement tool for the Taliban. Its indiscriminate application of death and destruction serves as a recruitment vehicle, with scores of new jihadists rising up to replace each individual who might have been killed by a missile attack. Like the surge that it is designed to complement, the expanded RPV program plays into the hands of those whom America is ostensibly targeting. While the U.S. military, aided by a fawning press, may seek to disguise the reality of the RPV program through catchy slogans such as “warheads through foreheads,” in reality it is murder by another name. And when murder represents the centerpiece of any national effort, yet alone one that aspires to win the “hearts and minds” of the targeted population, it is doomed to fail.
Scott Ritter was a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page3/our_murderers_in_the_sky_20091...
--The above is an excerpt from a longer editorial piece--
further context for the above:
In 1977, an executive order by President Gerald Ford commanded that “no employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.”
In 1981, acting on his own executive order, President Ronald Reagan ordered: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” Before Reagan, President Jimmy Carter had expanded the Gerald Ford order to include all assassinations.
antiwar radio:
Some 50,000 soldiers have gone AWOL since the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan
--source: members of Forward March, including two veterans interviewed by Scott Horton for antiwar.com
--online streaming audio available on demand as .mp3 stream (see link below)
Interview with Michael Prysner and James Circello
by Scott Horton, December 20, 2009
Michael Prysner and James Circello, staff members of March Forward!, an antiwar organization for active duty soldiers and veterans, discuss the bigotry ingrained in military culture that dehumanizes the enemy du jour, the class struggle between enlisted soldiers and officers, the intentional “draw fire” missions that boost an officer’s career while endangering troops, double-dipping retired generals who get paid to propagandize for more war, the continued deployment of soldiers with PTSD and the Pentagon’s fear of a mass GI desertion.
Of his experience with the initial invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, Michael wrote:
“Once in Iraq, there was no computer screen separating me from the suffering civilian population. Because of the Bush administration’s failure to anticipate the resistance of the Iraqi people, there was an inadequate number of soldiers in my unit, and I ending up having to do a myriad of different jobs. I spent 12 months in Iraq, doing everything from prisoner interrogations, to ground surveillance missions, to home raids. It was my firsthad experiences in Iraq that radicalized me. I believed I was going to Iraq to help liberate and better the lives of an oppressed people, but I soon realized that my purpose in Iraq was to be the oppressor, and to clear the way for U.S. corporations with no regard for human life.
“I separated from the Army in 2005, by which time I had begun to make sense of my experiences in Iraq, and understood that the occupation I was a part of was a crime against humanity. I understood that illegal conquering of Iraq was for profit, carried out by a system that serves a tiny class of superrich whose endless drive for wealth is at the expense of working people in the United States and abroad.
“I left this Army with a new understanding of the system under which we all live, and the nature of U.S. foreign policy. But, I still had the same drive to fight for freedom, justice and equality as I did when I joined, and I understood that fighting for those things meant fighting against the U.S. government, not on behalf of it.”
Of his experience with the initial invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, James writes:
“During the occupation of Iraq, the truth about what the United States government has done to the country of Iraq became more apparent. Open waste water flowed through neighborhood streets where children played soccer. Families were thrown out of their homes with simple accusations from others. Vehicles were taken on sight by the military if individuals couldn’t provide proper documents claiming they own the vehicle. These events and others helped in strengthening my opposition to the so-called ‘War on Terror.’”
In April 2007, while his unit was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, James Circello deserted the military. Months later, he issued an open letter to the U.S. government declaring he had officially resigned from the military.
http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/12/20/michael-prysner-and-james-circe...
More from Michael Prysner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
related group:
The National Registry for Conscientious Objection
The National Registry for Conscientious Objection was created at The Peace Abbey following the war in the Persian Gulf in early 1991. The National Registry provides men and women of all ages with an opportunity to register their objection to personal, national, and international violence.
Objection to violence and courage of conscience are characteristics of a life committed to peace.
The National Registry is a national campaign to promote peacemaking as a practical ideal: a way of living in the present that represents our best hope for the future. It seeks to inspire peace and justice in society by inviting peacemakers everywhere to "register" their conscientious objection to violence, and in so doing, to share with others their commitment to a peaceful world.
The intent of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection is to emphasize one's absolute dedication to peaceful living and to peaceful resolution of conflict. It is only by striving for perfection that we approach perfection. Likewise, it is only by committing ourselves absolutely to peaceful living that peace will in fact prevail, in our lives and on the planet.
Conscientious objection has a unique place in United States history. In fact, the tradition of refusing military service - and the recognition of that right - can be traced back to America's founding fathers, some of whom were pacifists fleeing oppression for their beliefs in Europe. Several of the original colonies, including Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, were founded by the Quaker pacifist William Penn. The framers of the U.S. Constitution even considered including an exemption from military service for conscientious objectors in the Second Amendment. This clause was omitted because they did not envision the need for creating a standing army. At the onset of the Revolutionary War, George Washington issued a draft order, which was a call to "all young men of suitable age to be drafted, except those with conscientious scruples against war.”
In World War II, a total of nearly 43,000 Americans refused to fight for reasons of conscience. During the Vietnam War more than 170,000 men were officially recognized as conscientious objectors. Thousands of other young men resisted by burning their draft cards, serving jail sentences or leaving the country.
Signing the Registry
We welcome you to sign The National Registry for Conscientious Objection in person, and join us in this initiative for peace. Or you can download the National Registry form and send the signed original back to: The Peace Abbey, Two North Main Street, Sherborn, MA. 01770. We encourage you to keep a copy for your personal records, perhaps framed and displayed as a sign of your commitment to peace. If you would like to have a form that several individuals can sign, download the National Registry Page for Groups.
http://www.peaceabbey.org/confcenter/coregistry.htm
War and Military Spending Mean Fewer Jobs
--increase in war spending will cost the U.S. two million jobs lost
A wonderful 39-page report from the National Priorities Project (PDF) contains on pages 23 and 24 a summary of research supporting these basic and well documented facts:
Investing public dollars in the military produces fewer jobs than cutting taxes.
Cutting taxes produces fewer jobs than investing public dollars in any of these areas: healthcare, education, mass transit, construction for home weatherization and infrastructure.
Investing public dollars in mass transit or education produces over twice as many jobs as investing in the military.
Investing public dollars in education produces better paying jobs than investing in the military or cutting taxes.
Investing public dollars in any of these areas: healthcare, education, mass transit, construction for home weatherization and infrastructure has a larger direct and indirect economic impact than investing in the military or cutting taxes.
On the basis of the above evidence alone, we have a clear choice. If we decide to cut taxes or spend money on the military, we are hurting the economy and actually creating more unemployment, because we are choosing not to invest our money where it can do the most good. Every dollar invested in killing is a dollar taken away from areas where it would create more jobs.
The case against military investment is even stronger if some additional factors are considered.
First, the above comparisons are based on military spending and non-military spending domestically. When the military spending is on distant foreign wars, or for that matter the $140 billion a year we spend to station troops in 177 nations, the contrast in terms of economic impact at home grows.
Second, there are long-term costs, some of them difficult to calculate, that need to be considered. Joseph Stiglitz' and Linda Bilmes' book on the cost of the Iraq War presents a guide to calculation the financial costs of any war. These include long-term care for veterans, the economic value of lost lives, serious injuries, and mental health disabilities, and various macroeconomic costs including a war's impact on the cost of oil. When these very real factors are considered, the price of not investing in nonviolent industries skyrockets.
"According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the sharp increase in war spending is taking up a greater portion of our Gross Domestic Product, which will cost the U.S. about two million jobs because such spending ‘is a direct drain on the economy, reducing efficiency, slowing growth and costing jobs.’ Contrary to popular assumptions, massive spending for war does not create jobs. It costs jobs. War spending is capital-intensive, not labor-intensive. War creates unemployment.
byline: David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. 2009
http://www.davidswanson.org/node/2349
US Military Is Meeting Recruitment Goals With Video Games - but at What Cost?
--Amid a soaring suicide rate among soldiers, it’s worth looking at how the Army’s aggressive video games distort our impressions of war.
Though the record suicide rate cannot be traced to a single causal factor, specialists cite the psychological trauma of killing, an American culture of denial, financial difficulties, failed relationships, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder as main contributors to the trend.
Despite the five-year span, Army Vice Chief of Staff Peter Chiarelli admitted recently the US Army was still short the 300 substance abuse counselors and 800 behavioral specialists needed to cope with the problem.
Though the US military professes concern for the psychological health of its service members, this personnel gap is just one example of the strong evidence to the contrary. The current recruiting tactics aimed at America’s youth are especially concerning. Not only do the very tactics that have been boosting recruitment sanitize war and create false expectations, they prey upon the vulnerable imaginations of children.
Throughout 2009 the military has aggressively expanded its marketing campaign targeting teenagers. Efforts include the release of the third version of a taxpayer-sponsored video game, two graphic novels that look and read like comic books, and a unique 14,500-sq.-ft. arcade, in a shopping mall, that is filled with simulators and shooter video games.
One reason for the armed forces’ recruiting success is the economic collapse and the ongoing jobs crisis. But this year’s record recruitment can only be fully understood in the context of the remarkable shift in tactics that began a decade ago. In 1999, the military had its worst recruiting year in 30 years.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/1228/US-military-i...
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
page 2
New Ways the Army Can Screw You
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2009-12-22 18:55.
You've got no documents. You immigrated here. You sign up to go kill people in Iraq or Afghanistan. You're promised citizenship. You manage to survive. You're deported.
Thousands of U.S. Military Veterans are facing deportation. There are more than 30,000 non-citizens currently serving in the US army. Anslem Ifill, a native of Trinidad and legal US resident, served in the first Gulf War. He was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD. After his service, he got in trouble with the law and spent a number of years in prison. His story is not that unusual because almost half of the Vietnam veterans with PTSD have been arrested or jailed. What is unusual is that after serving his time he was detained by the immigration service for an additional three years and finally told he was to be deported. Anslem Ifill has spent 25 years in the US and served this country by putting his life on the line.
For more such stories go to: http://banishedveterans.intuitwebsites.com/donations.html
Whistleblower Psychiatrist Warns of Soldier-on-Soldier Violence
by Dahr Jamail, December 08, 2009
MARFA, Texas – Kernan Manion, a psychiatrist who was hired last January to treat Marines returning from war who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other acute mental health problems borne from their deployments, fears more soldier-on-soldier violence without radical changes in the current soldier health care system.
Working for a personnel-recruiting company which was contracted by the Defense Department at Camp Lejeune, Manion became alarmed at the military’s inability to give sufficient treatment to returning soldiers. He was also concerned by their reports of outright abuse meted out by some commanders against lower-ranking soldiers who sought help.
Manion told IPS that last April two Marines urgently sought his help soon after the clinic opened at 7 a.m. They told him, "One of these guys is liable to come back [from Iraq or Afghanistan] with a loaded weapon and open fire."
This episode is just one that is indicative of pervasive and worsening systemic problems afflicting a military mental health care system that is overburdened, overstressed, understaffed, and ill equipped, according to Manion. Care is also administered by career military officers who are "ill- trained to provide the complex psychiatric expertise necessary to effectively treat psychologically impaired soldiers."
Manion explained to IPS that upon returning home, troops suffering from myriad new-onset deployment-related mental health problems were flooding the available resources. When they did come in, they had to bear the brunt of pervasive harassment and often outright psychological abuse from Marine Corps superiors who refused to acknowledge the validity, much less the severity of their problems.
"I saw previously strong Marines, people who were now very fragile – who were broken by two or more deployments – come back to be squashed by their commanders, who told them they were ‘goddamn losers,’" Manion told IPS.
Manion went on to warn his superiors of the widespread systemic problems – he informed them that he was alarmed at the possibility of these leading to violence on the base.
Rather than being praised for his series of increasingly urgent memos on the impending disaster, Manion was fired.
http://original.antiwar.com/jamail/2009/12/07/whistleblower-psychia...
Study Gauges Toll on Military Children
December 7, 2009
By Stephen Power
WASHINGTON -- Children of military parents deployed to serve abroad have a greater number of emotional or behavioral difficulties than children of civilians, according to a new study. The study comes as the U.S. military struggles with record numbers of both divorces and suicides.
The new study covers children between the ages of 11 and 17.
The study was based on interviews with about 1,500 military families in which a parent had been or was currently deployed and was carried out by researchers at Rand Corp. with funding from the National Military Family Association.
It found that children of such families were twice as likely as those from civilian families to report experiencing elevated anxiety symptoms, such as getting frightened for no apparent reason or feeling that they couldn't be alone. Some 30% of children from military families reported experiencing such symptoms, compared with 15% of children from civilian families, according to the study.
Results of the study, set to be published Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics, come in the wake of President Barack Obama's decision last week to deploy at least 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126016018519979597.html?mod=WSJ_hps...
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Jan 2010
backpage
epitaph for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting"
Phil Ochs - I aint marching anymore
an anti-war anthem, 1965
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5pgrKSwFJE&feature=player_embe...
Of this song, Ochs wrote: "The fact that you won't be hearing this song on the radio is more than enough justification for the writing of it." In August 1968, Ochs performed "I Ain't Marching Anymore" during the protests outside the Democratic National Convention, inspiring hundreds of young men to burn their draft cards. Ochs described it as the highlight of his career.
Artist: Ochs Phil
Song: I Ain't Marching Anymore
Album: There But for Fortune
Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
At the end of the early British war
The young land started growing
The young blood started flowing
But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I've killed my share of Indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the Little Big Horn
I heard many men lying I saw many more dying
But I ain't marchin' anymore
chorus)
It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all
For I stole California from the Mexican land
Fought in the bloody Civil War
Yes I even killed my brothers
And so many others But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I marched to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain't marchin' anymore
(chorus)
For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning
That I ain't marchin' anymore
Now the labor leader's screamin'
when they close the missile plants,
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore,
Call it "Peace" or call it "Treason,"
Call it "Love" or call it "Reason,"
But I ain't marchin' any more,
No I ain't marchin' any more
who we are:
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship is the activist wing of the peace movement in Eastern Oklahoma. TPF offers citizens and community groups tools and resources to participate personally in our democracy, to help shape federal budget and policy priorities, and to promote peace, social and economic justice, and human rights. TPF is a registered non-profit organization and a non-partisan civic-sector organization, loosely affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration, north side of Tulsa.
"Waging Peace One Person at a Time".
Through its counter-recruitment task force, TPF is a member of the National Network in Opposition to the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) representing some 188 counter-recruitment groups in cities and towns across the country. On the web: http://www.nnomy.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=v...
The information provided in this digest/update herein is for non-profit use only, according to "fair use" doctrine. Copyright and all commercial exploitation rights remain with the various authors/publishers cited above. The Tulsa Peace Fellowship does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the articles appearing herein.
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Who We Are - The TPF Steering Committee
TPF is a registered non-profit organization in the State of Oklahoma, a non-partisan and non-sectarian civic sector organization, devoted to peace, social uplift, and nonviolence.
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Book Reviews, Film Reviews, Review Articles
TPF members post reviews, as part of a previously organized monthly book/dvd exchange or other occasional reading circles
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Peace Building, Mutual Aid, and Local Grassroots Community Efforts
People to come together to solve shared challenges at the grassroots level. This discussion forum is for events, plans, strategies and tactics to support sustainability and justice, including mutual aid and self-bootstrapping. Put your reviews of peace-promoting games and nonviolent disobedience training here as well.
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