VETS FOR PEACE What They Don't Tell You About War

[Guest guest]

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/What_they_dont_092703.htmhttp://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/040202/2states.htmVETERANS FOR PEACE Veterans Working Together for Peace & Justice Through Non-violence. Wage Peace! VFP is a 501©3 organ-ization. All contributionsare tax deductible.Veterans for PeaceWilson "Woody" PowellExecutive DirectorWorld Community Center438 North SkinkerSt. Louis MO 63130(314) 725-6005Chapter Contacts WHAT THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT WARJane NewtonjanenSouthern Vermont Veterans For Peace Chapter 88Presented at a teach-in in Brattleboro VT, September 9, 2003 They don’t tell you that war is organized mass murder and that, first and foremost, you will be taught to kill. In Dick Cheney’s words, “It’s not a job program; it’s to fight and win!” They don’t tell you that you may be killed, or that, since 1950, more than 100,000 soldiers and sailors have died in foreign wars. They don’t tell you that if you are not killed, that many more men and women come back wounded mentally or physically or both, and have a good chance of being disabled for life. Presently, the government is underreporting the wounded in Iraq. About 6000 have been wounded. About 1,500 of those have been wounded seriously, many of their wounds requiring amputations. A frightening example of someone scarred for life was Timothy McVeigh, who, during the 1991 Gulf war, buried Iraqi soldiers alive with a giant bulldozer, and then, after he blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma City, called the children who died “collateral damage”. They don’t tell you that depleted uranium which has been used in every sort of artillery shell everywhere the U.S. military has been fighting since 1991, has caused what is known as “Gulf War Syndrome” in hundreds of thousands of veteran, and that this particular kind of uranium has been found in veterans on 8000 autopsies. Therefore, since depleted uranium is now all over the ground in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, your chances of getting sick and dying, or of having deformed children, are greater than they were 12 years ago. They don’t tell you that George Bush was a deserter from the Texas air Guard. They don’t tell you that the present occupation of Iraq is costing us the taxpayer 4 billion dollars a month; that 52% of our tax money is spent on the military; that there is a U.S. military presence in 158 countries or 80% of the world, and that, since 1890, that U.S. has intervened militarily, someplace or other, and usually where people were defenseless,125 times. They don’t tell you that the suicide rate among veterans is so high that the number of Vietnam veterans who have killed themselves outnumbers those who were killed during that war; that there are more vets than non-vets in prison; that one-third of the homeless are vets; that the unemployment rate is 35 % higher among vets than the rest of the population and that veterans are paid less than the rest of the population; that one out of four veterans gets a less than honorable discharge; that every year at least a 1000 military personnel are killed in accidents; that the government is spending less, not more, on the Veterans Administration, so that men and women who suffer from, say, exposure from agent orange or post traumatic stress disorder, will find it even more difficult to get help, and finally, that now that 65% of our troops are deployed around the world in dangerous situations, congress is discussing reducing their pay. They don’t tell you that the military trains you to suit their needs, much of which is killing, and much of which cannot be applied to work when you get home. They don’t tell you that the Montgomery G.I Bill, which is nothing like the old G.I. Bill, is a program in which 50,000 dollars is promised, but from which only 35% of those who joined the program get any help, and on average that help consists of only 8000 dollars, hardly enough for one term of college. Not only that, since each person in the program must pay $1200.00 non-refundable into the program and 65% of those get nothing at all, the military actually makes money! They don’t tell you that thus far there has not been an active draft because unemployment and poverty, along with legal and illegal immigrants, have provided a steady supply of cannon fodder for the military. It is called “the poverty draft”. The kids who end up on the front lines are mostly those who can’t find jobs or can’t go to college, and, as you can probably guess, a disproportionate number of those are minorities. Those who start the wars don’t fight them. Mostly the poor die on the battlefields. They don’t tell you that this time, if the death toll in Iraq slows down the poverty draft and they start up the real one, college will no longer protect you; nor do they tell you that until this happens, there are unused loans, unused scholarships and, if carefully researched, unused job opportunities. And they don’t tell you that, in spite of what you have been led to believe for most of your life, you will not be dying for some noble cause like freedom, your loved ones, your flag or your country; instead you will be dying for a corrupt government that is firmly in the hands of a few obscenely rich men and a lot of giant corporations, and that these people and these corporations, grown even more powerful through globalization, cannot and never could exist without wars and exploitation. Howard Zinn, in the June 16th Progressive magazine, wrote, in an article called “Dying For The Government”: “Those who died in this war did not die for their country. They died for their government. They died for Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. And yes, they died for the greed of the oil cartels, for the expansion of the American empire, for the political ambitions of the president. They died to cover up the theft of the nation’s wealth to pay for the machines of death.” Smedley Butler, a major general in the U.S. Marines, wrote a book called “War Is A Racket” In the introduction there are these words: “Smedley Butler died in 1940. He spent the last years of his life in bitter reflection on his military career. He believed that he had spent his entire adult life fighting dirty little wars in remote and poverty-stricken parts of the world. Speaking just before his death, Butler said, ‘I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

 

 

I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit interests in 1916. In China in 1927,I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested’”© 2003 Veterans for Peace Updated September 28, 2003 06:58 AM E.S.T