Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Structured Cruelty

Over at CounterPunch, a Sgt. Martin Smith, USMC, Ret writes an essay about enlisting in the marines and going to boot camp. His tales of mistreatment at the mercy of a regimen determined to break him and them remold him are familiar enough, but in his story there's a paragraph that stuck out.
We were set up for war in the middle east for a long, long time. When the worldwide communist menace lost it's usefulness to manipulate and control us, it's replacement was being groomed in the wings. That peace dividend when the Berlin wall came down was never going to be used to enrich our lives; our overlords would never allow that. It was written in the agenda that we were about to subsidize the solidification of an empire that would embark on world conquest and resource rape.
The Iraq wars were sold to a gullible public based on total fabrication. Desert Storm was marketed as feigned outrage about Kuwait. Iraq was made to starve and decay for over a decade to make it an easier target. The latest invasion was based on an ever shifting pack of lies.
It was all planned. Bear in mind this guy was in basic 6 years before the 2003 invasion.

"Even in 1997, we were being brainwashed to accept the coming Iraq War. Abruptly interrupting a class, one of numerous courses we attended on military history, first aid, and survival skills, a Series Chief DI excitedly announced that all training was coming to a halt. We were to be shipped immediately to the Gulf, because Saddam had just fired missiles into Israel. Given that we lived with no knowledge of the outside world, with neither TV nor newspapers, and that we experienced constant high levels of stress and a discombobulating environment, the DI's false assertion seemed all too believable. After a half-hour panic, we were led out of the auditorium to face the rebuke and scorn of our platoon DIs. It turned out that the interruption was a skit planned to scare us into the realization that we could face war at any moment. The trick certainly had the planned effect on me, as I pondered what the hell I had gotten myself into. I also now realize that we were being indoctrinated with schemes for war in the Middle East. Our hatred of the Arab "other" was crafted from the very beginning of our training through fear and hate."

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