Anyone in the Denver area?
I guess the sacrifices of the Federal soldiers retained on active duty after their initial enlistments in 1863 were "slaves" as well, and the author would have preferred that the Armed Forces not intervene in that action as "slaves" either?
TR
Article Published: Friday, May 28, 2004
Keep our slaves safe
By Reggie Rivers
regrivers@msn.com
Our military is one of the last bastions of slavery in the United States. At the moment, our slaves are stuck in a combat zone, getting killed and maimed, and there's nothing they can do about it except hunker down and pray.
Yes, our slaves signed up of their own free will, but most of them were as misled about their job as the rest of us were about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
And I don't think "slave" is too strong a word to describe someone who is not permitted to quit his job no matter how dangerous it becomes or how much he hates it. For most of us, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery and guaranteed that we have the right to withhold our labor. It doesn't protect soldiers.
Our armed forces recruiters are quite adept at making military service appear beneficial (it mostly is) and safe (it's not). The threat of war is minimized, because few rational people actually want to fight.
According to Chalmers Johnson, author of "The Sorrows of Empire," almost half of our enlisted forces are between 17 and 24 years of age, and they were lured into military service with promises of education, job training, escape from poverty, medical benefits and the chance to operate some cool, high-tech equipment.
Johnson wrote: "A real deterrent to recruitment is the possibility that a new soldier will find himself or herself in combat. Roughly four out of five young Americans who enlist in our all-volunteer armed forces specifically choose non-combat jobs ... ."
The U.S. Army has an official video game that can be downloaded at
www.americasarmy.com <
http://www.americasarmy.com> It's a recruiting tool aimed to win the hearts and minds of children of all ages. The goal is catch them before they develop critical thinking skills that might lead them to question the wisdom of volunteering for slavery.
The site's FAQ section includes this encouragement for parents: "In elementary school kids learn about the actions of the Continental Army that won our freedoms under George Washington. Today, they need to know that the Army is engaged around the world to defeat terrorist forces bent on the destruction of America and our freedoms."
Parents are further assured that the brainwashing of their kids will be conducted without undue exposure to the horrific reality of warfare. "The game does not include any dismemberment or disfigurement. When a soldier is killed, that soldier simply falls to the ground and is no longer part of the on-going mission."
The recruitment effort gets more aggressive at the high school level.
Johnson wrote, "Complaints about harassment by military recruiters in San Diego became so numerous in 1993 that the San Diego Unified School district adopted a policy against releasing student information to recruiters of any kind."
Bans on overbearing campus recruiters became so common that President Bush addressed the issue in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The bill stated: "Any secondary school that receives federal funds under this Act shall permit regular United States Armed Services recruitment activities on school grounds, in a manner reasonably accessible to all students of such school."
So our kids get bombarded with formal and informal recruiting messages - and they sign up. One day, they find themselves sitting in a Humvee in Iraq, with their best friend lying dead on the floor next to them, and they suddenly realize the deception of their recruitment and the shackles of their slavery.
They just want to go home, but they can't. And domestically, we continue to trot out the tired mantra that supporting the troops means supporting the war.
If we truly care about our young slaves, we should do everything we can to get them out of harm's way.
Former Denver Bronco Reggie Rivers (regrivers@msn.com) is the host of "Drawing the Line" Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on KBDI Channel 12. His column appears every Friday.