Just over 50 years ago, it was No Gun Ri. Then My Lai. And now Haditha � and, as headlines declare, even more mass murders. Most recently in the Iraqi villages of Ishaqi, Hamdaniya, Latifiyah, and Yusifiyah young men fresh out of high school, frustrated by life and with nothing better to do than to sign up as mercenaries, are ready and willing to kill for their country, afraid to die yet angry as hell as a result of buddies having been killed. Each of them has been thrown into a world of cultural confusion and death, wanting nothing more than an opportunity to return home, body and mind unimpaired. You see, for each of these young men and women, there will be two wars: the first, a physical battle to stay alive; the second, a psycho-spiritual effort, a struggle to live with what they had to do in order to stay alive. In war, there are no winners � only those who lose least.

Isn�t it ironic that just recently the commanders in charge of forces in Iraq, after having suffered the painful blowback, the natural consequences of having so punctiliously trained our children to kill, have found it necessary to reverse the harm they have done. They have tightened the slack in their leash on the troops, suggesting that it might be better if soldiers did begin to think before choosing to take the life of another human being. The new training program, technically referred to as �Core Warrior Values�, is an effort to enable soldiers to discriminate between who they should or should not be willing to kill. 

So many of our children, the vast majority of them Black, Hispanic, and poor, are cajoled into joining the ranks of the military, all in order to support our country�s mission to �right a world of wrongs�. However, these young folks are never told their primary job will be killing people, most often the enemy but sometimes even their own buddies. During the first Gulf War, nearly one out of four soldiers was shot and killed as a result of friendly fire. As part of their training (read: brainwashing), these young men and women will be taught: to stuff their conscience (to forget everything taught to them by their parents, elementary school teachers, preachers, priests, and/or rabbis); how to fire an automatic weapon with deadly accuracy; to loathe the adversary since such animosity will make it much easier to kill the enemy; and to trust the government, to have faith that once the soldier returns home all will be well. There is no talk that all of his/her memories, the recollections of a buddy�s head blown off, the old lady whose guts were splattered all over the wall, the insurgent who tried to smile as he lay dying on the street, and the little boy whose body he mistakenly blew apart while running to his mother arms. They won�t be told that the unending nightmares will vanish into thin air for no reason other than the soldier�s assurance that he did the right thing, that he was doing his duty, that he had done what he had been told to do, that he was simply following orders.

However, what the soldier is never told is that as a result of having gone to war there is a reasonable likelihood that he will struggle until the day he dies with nightmares depicting the horrors of war, the unrelenting grief, bitterness and resentment, despair, depression, and anger that will have taken possession of his life; a marriage in which his wife will never understand what he has gone through; attempts to keep a job amidst the chaos of a life still at battle within; and, if all goes awry, that of exile, soldiers having been banished for having found themselves unable to adapt to �the niceties� of a more civilized world, those damned to a world of losers, a sort of depository, a melting pot of homelessness for those who have given up on life.

Our children need to be told the truth. Our sons and daughters need to realize that choosing to be a soldier means a decision to place themselves among �the damned�, since no matter what they end up doing on the field of battle, they will eventually be damned for what they do or don�t do. They need to know that compliance with a superior�s order to kill the enemy may well lead to the damnation of one�s soul; non-compliance will lead to court-martial. However, regardless of the chaotic rigors of battle, regardless how terribly difficult it might be to figure out what one ought or ought not do, the lowest man on the totem pole, the grunt, will be the one held responsible. It is he or she most likely to spend time in prison, and in some cases, the one most likely to be put to death for having killed an innocent victim.

It is shameful that most recruits will never receive educational benefits, that their training in the military is usually irrelevant to civilian jobs. The military recruiter was always a salesman and never a friend, nothing more than �an advanced grunt� trying desperately, and too often dishonestly, to meet a quota set by a military needing more bodies to be placed on the battlefield. The recruit needs to understand that he is �an expendable�, that his life has little or no value, that he is mere cannon fodder, a redundant grunt filling a slot on the �front lines� of battle. He is there to enrich the military-industrial complex, a conglomeration of the transnational elite, felons whose prosperity depends upon the promise of more wars to come.

A new bill, HR 4752, The Universal National Service Act of 2006 (a bill that would bring back �the draft�), has been introduced to The House of Representatives. Because the United States government is on the verge of invading Iran, a conflict that might well lead to all out war in the Middle Est, the United States Congress is not taking any chances. Such a bill �on the table�, and ready to be enacted when necessary, will authorize the United States government to initiate a military draft for every man and woman aged 18 to 42. Although this might seem like political suicide, there is one thing that trumps the need to avoid political self-immolation: the need to have an adequate supply of soldiers on the ground to fight the next war. 

The war in Iraq is no doubt illegal and is destroying the social fabric of our people, the economic infrastructure of our nation. It has nothing to do with spreading of peace and democracy around the world. The fact that the president lied in regards to why we went to war has given the world even more reasons to hate us.

I am proposing that it is time for young folks to pull their heads out of the sand and realize that their brothers and sisters have been used by the government before it is too late. They need to tell the military establishment that they will not go to war. Our youth need to understand the tremendous power they have, that war is simply not possible if they refuse to fight, if they refuse to take up arms. Because our country has become the world�s leading producer and supplier of military weapons and technology, the world�s primary advocate of war, our children need not presume that they have a moral responsibility to support the military establishment. I realize that our time has not yet come, that the tipping point of the military draft has yet to become a reality. But when conscription into the military becomes unavoidable I expect young people, at least those able to comprehend the significance of their place in history, to take a stand against the tyranny of war.  

So many of our young folks have been brought up to believe that being a good person has something to do with that of having a good reputation, being liked by everyone, being held in high esteem by others, even that of being a patriotic citizen, but such has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that of being a truly decent person. I beg the young people of this nation to consider the days of Nuremberg, when the Nazis were held responsible for crimes against humanity, when the leaders of the German nation dressed their children in brown shirts to remind them of their moral obligation to fight for the Fatherland. It will be the same for the leaders of our country as well as for those who blindly allow themselves to follow.     

So someday when you reach the end of your days, realize that no one will ever ask if you were a good citizen, if you were a patriot, if you were loyal to your country. You will never be asked if you wore a uniform with distinction. The only thing for which you will be held accountable is having chosen to be a decent human being, of having chosen to live your life according to the laws of humanity, the principles of justice, peace, and love, the Law of God, which demands but one, and only one, thing � that we love one another.

Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.

Psychologist

Email: gdsoderstrom@yahoo.com