MILITARY NEEDS MORE TROOPS

The Pentagon is going to need more troops as the U.S. is not likely to pull out of Iraq for another 5-10 years insiders are now predicting. Thus the boys inside the military are looking at innovative ways to reach younger people to get them emotionally committed early-on to a "life at war."

Click on the link in the headline above for a short bit from a recent episode of The Simpsons. Even though quite funny, it is also quite revealing.

All across the country recruiters are now throwing birthday parties for young elementary school kids by providing military tents and vehicles for the kiddies to crawl around on. Increasingly, as local school budgets are cut, military personnel are brought in to teach kids or even take classes out to training centers for extended "camps" where they run the kids through military exercises. This is usually being done under the guise of anti-drug programs or "behavior modification" programs.

In the 1930's Mussolini trained a whole generation of Italian boys in the ways of fascism by these methods. In Rome they had the Central Military School of Physical Education and the Fascist Academy of Physical Education. These two schools were the cornerstone of the fascist system of indoctrination - rather than education - of the youths. They recruited boys from the age of 6-18 for weekly meetings, where they practiced physical exercise, received paramilitary training and performed drills and parades.

A peace activist woman I know from Maine told me a story last week. She went to visit her grandchild who is in elementary school. She thought it would be fun to go out into nature and while playing she shared with her grandchild her feelings about the Iraq war. Her grandkid immediately snapped to attention and recited the pledge of alliegiance.

The way I see it is the "war on terror" is now being transformed into the war on Islam. And this war will have no end as the corporations and the Pentagon know that in order to control the oil in the Middle East and Central Asia the U.S. permanent bases in Iraq and Afghanistan must remain open. And they must be expanded into Iran, maybe Syria, and more.

All of this will require several more generations of troops. On the homefront the powers that be know that a worsening economic situation will help steer working class kids into the military because they will have few other job options. But the best recruitment tool for the military is to create a greater war culture in the U.S. and that plan appears to me to now be well underway.

It is our job to see this developing and to stand in resistance to it at every turn. We must call America on its addiction to war and violence.