SOLDIER SAYS............I SERVE IN SHAME! I AM A MANIPULATED STOOGE!

[Guest guest]

" This war is about money. The money is only making the rich man

richer. "

 

I am a manipulated stooge who sold his soul to exploit the ignorant

with the proud lies our own leaders.

 

I am told on a regular basis " The Army is not like it used to be. "

Most of the lifers think that the military lacks discipline and blame

the new " Nintendo generation " soldiers for the weakness.

 

However, I think a hard look should be given at the uses of America's

advanced military in the modern era. Due to the operations the

military has been tasked in the last forty years, the nobility of the

professional soldier has been destroyed.

 

From Vietnam to Iraq the Armed Forces has been a chess piece in a

game for money and power by elite Americans. Back in the world wars

the military represented every citizen's will. Today the people are

duped with lies and phony values to support imperial progress.

 

Weapons of mass destruction, links to the two towers tragedy, and the

ousting of an oppressive dictatorship are all bait for a revenge

hungry over-patriotic American.

 

I doubt that the men in power are as incompetent as the world

imagines. For that reason I dismiss the apparent failures in Iraq as

not the true goals of this war. After these errors are eliminated you

are left with the truth behind the media smoke screens.

 

This war is about money.

 

Most people believe that dollars are being handed over to Iraq to

rebuild their country on the backs of the American tax payers and

under the protection of US troops.

 

However, the money never sees Iraq. It leaves your wallet and goes

through the system in DC and ends up in a corporation with the

sizeable government contract. Sure the product is a new road, a

school house or AK-47s for the Iraqi National Guard, but the money is

only making a rich man richer.

 

Even the soldiers are brain washed into hating the " rag heads " .

 

I have overheard soldiers telling racist jokes like " Why do Iraqis

smell so bad? So blind people can hate them too. " It becomes easy to

hate the Arab people. We don't understand their culture, their

religion and their language. They are a poor people with a lesser

quality of lifestyle and standard of living. The average soldier can

not relate to living without electricity, plumbing, and toilet paper.

 

If we see them as inferior it makes it easier to kill them. Just as

one might kill a dog that digs through his trash. As a soldier gets

into combat situations the prejudice grows as they blame every Middle-

Easterner for the conflict.

 

The Joes hate Iraqis because the command hypes about being in Iraqi

to stabilize a democracy and fight terrorists on their own ground.

The leadership never explains the fact that a majority of Iraqis

don't want a republic that is just a branch of the Western

materialistic culture and that they see America as a tyrant equal to

the fallen Saddam's Baath Party.

 

Most soldiers mistake the word insurgent to mean a person that is

inserted. As if we are fighting men from other countries than Iraq.

When, insurgent means rebel.

 

The common GI won't investigate why the insurgent will sacrifice

himself, because most soldiers would never do the same. But somewhere

in the back of the GI's mind he has a sense that what he is doing

here is wrong. It gives him doubt and discourages his morale.

 

The lifers hold on to the lies of the system because the truth would

destroy the core of their beliefs. The fact that the stars and bars

is only an illusion for the real power behind the throne could ruin

their psyche and crash their egos. They will never let go of their

pride and use it as an excuse to cover their fear.

 

A war backed by our nation's cowards. What else would a preemptive

strike be good for. Americans get so afraid they will kill in cold

blood and thump their chests to claim it for a good cause.

 

History is written by the victors and might makes right. After all is

said and done it will go down that way in the books. We will kill

communists, drug dealers and terrorists. Next will be homosexuals and

atheists. Then full circle back to Jews and Blacks. Fear and

prejudice is destructive and we dominate using it. Every country

folds to American policies afraid their homes will become the next

Baghdad.

 

And, our leaders use media to force the United States people into

anxiety using colored threat levels, video of violence, and worse

case scenarios presented as emergency updates. We even had Colin

Powell lie to the world's most powerful council, the U.N., about

Iraq's malicious intent with nuclear, biological, and chemical

weapons. America intimidates the world while calling the insurgent

freedom fighters terrorists.

 

So Americans can't let go of their fear. Like it is a security

blanket from a childhood memory. Just as most people can't relax

their guard, in Nam lifers couldn't relate to the men that was turned

on to marijuana.

 

To let your mind and body go and become open to the chaos of the

world is impossible for a person who lives in constant fear of the

unknown truth. Drug usage isn't as much of a problem here in Iraq

amongst the soldiers, yet. However with a draft, the inactive reserve

and more stop-loss it won't be long before more soldiers discover the

potency of Arab hashish and opium based narcotics.

 

There will be a division between lifers and the heads again. It has

already started with the stop-lossed soldier obviously not wanting to

be in service any longer. Many of them get court marshaled or

chaptered out with dishonorables saving the military from paying an

already deserved Collage GI Bill and other veterans benefits.

 

As war here in the middle-east gets more violent the soldiers will

become less afraid of punishment. Prison will become a more sane

option than trying to take Fallujah for the fourth time.

 

Most the soldiers I have talked to have joined for selfish reasons.

They wanted money for collage, travel the world, get out of a dead

end, avoid going to prison, or had no direction in life.

 

The boys who joined up to defend the red white and blue are few and

far between. I met some soldiers that were motivated by September

11th, but not many. It is a need in today's society to find alternate

advantages to enlist, and when kids learn what they really signed

themselves up for it is a rude awakening. Many soldiers are counting

down to their last day in the military from the first few hours at

basic training.

 

For all these reasons, whether the G.I.s are conscious of it or not,

the military personal have a decreased motivation and intensity.

 

We fight for lies, are alienated by our chain of command and are only

trying to ride out the clock until we can finish our contracts

without losing what we have worked for or seeing the inside of a

prison cell.

 

The Armed Forces will never have a loyal troop base until its goals

change. If there was something worth fighting for, something the

common man can gain, rather than just being underpaid mercenaries for

some elitist, then the soldiers would have more encouragement to join

in work hard.

 

I myself find it difficult to have discipline in an Army full of ass-

kissing lying hypocrites who enforce a wicked US policy with a

violent war I disagree with.

 

I serve in shame,

A soldier in Iraq

Name withheld