WHY DO SOLDIERS DIE FOR THEIR COUNTRY?
Why Do Soldiers Fight?
In war, soldiers fight to stay alive. They fight to keep their friends (their fellow soldiers) alive. When they sacrifice their life, it is
to save the life of a friend. And when they are heros, it is because heroics were what was necessary to save their friends.
In war, soldiers are afraid or they are crazy, or perhaps it is a combination of the two which gives them the edge they need to
survive. It is not faith or patriotism or duty that drives them. It is their sharpened senses, the degree to which they are able to do
their (military) job, even with little or no sleep, and working together as a group. It is also the dream of escape from war to whatever
ambitions they may have: whether it is a dream or people they love, which become intangible when they fight to survive.
Soldiers have dreams because it is usually the lack of job opportunity in their community which motivates them to join the military.
Without the historical coercion of the law to draft people into the military or sentence them to military service in court as an
alternative to jail, the military is either perceived as a job opportunity or a way to get training for a job. Military recruiters take
advantage of the failures of the economic system (to provide jobs for those who want to work) by going into the high schools in
Working Class and rural communities and harassing young people with talk that their only hope for a future is to enlist. They will
make any promise it takes to get you to sign up and even promises in writing are made to be broken if the military decides it is
inconvenient or costly to deliver. And there are always things you won t find out until it is too late many that even the recruiters
don t know, so, they couldn t tell you if you asked them.
There was a time when soldiers went to war to fight for freedom, to defend their homes, or even for a romantic and idealistic
crusade. But most of that is Hollywood movie material now. Most people now join for economic reasons and because they don t
expect to have to go to war where their life will be endangered, or worse. They don t know that soldiers die, or are crippled or
sterilized by exposure to chemical weapons. They think bad things won t happen to them. They are gambling . . . when all they
have seen of war is what is on television. Since the Viet Nam War, media access to war has been tightly controlled by the military
so that little of the personal horror of war is ever seen on television or in photographs. The military screens pools of reporters then
just shows them what they are intended to see.
Why Do Officers Fight?
In war, officers fight because they follow orders. They equate morality with absolute obedience. Officers fight to satisfy their ego
and to convince themselves of their masculinity they try to camouflage this with a lot of patriotic, religious or macho rhetoric (men
try to prove their manliness while women try to prove that they measure-up and are as good as men). Officers fight because they
think they are superior. In their minds, this justifies the killing of other people, including the sacrifice of the lives of soldiers placed
under their authority by the military.
Most officers join the military out of a romantic attraction to authoritarianism, a totalitarian lifestyle and military machismo. They
are hoping that wearing a uniform will give them power and prestige (social privilege) which they did not have as a civilian. They
either think of themselves as superior to other people or their ambition is to dominate others. They want to be treated like heros
although they have no conception of what heroism, or even courage, is. They hope to be part of a romantic crusade.
Most officers are graduates of a military academy (West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs) of one of a handful of military colleges
which historically educated the sons of wealth families (like Virginia Military Institute or The Citadel). Reserve Officer Training Corp
(ROTC) students usually don t become officers in the regular military. The officer mentality begins at these schools. Academy
cadets must be selected by a U.S. Senator and military college cadets are selected by boards of alumni (rich people who are former
cadets). Most cadets are selected from Upper Middle Class and Upper Class families and from academic and cultural backgrounds
which suggest a receptiveness to regimentation and political indoctrination (faith in the government and authority figures).
Cadets are stripped of their freedom and told that they are superior when they obey orders without question, submit to verbal and
physical abuse, and memorize trivial pieces of information. Persons who do not adapt to regimentation, political indoctrination,
and military administrative doctrines are harassed until they quit or can be kicked out on trumped-up demerits by secret societies
of alumni and senior cadets.
Cadets are taught that an officer obeys orders absolutely; even at the expense of their life and those of soldiers under their
command. They are taught that they are only given information they need to know so it is O.K. if orders sound senseless, reckless
or irresponsible. Cadets are trained in infantry military doctrines left over from before the American Civil War which condoned
casualties of over 50% and killed thousands of soldiers unnecessarily in the Civil War, World War I and the Pacific Ocean battles
of World War II. Before a cadet is made into an officer, they swear an oath to obey orders absolutely.
Who Do Soldiers Fight For?
In war, soldiers fight for those who order them to fight. Out in the World (civilian life), you work for a boss and the system is run
by rich and powerful people you never see. The military rank system is no different except it is harder to quit your job and, if
soldiers break a rule or don t follow orders, they don t get fired they can go to jail! Out in the World, working people die on the
job all the time because of the carelessness of their bosses, or their boss failure to be concerned about workplace safety. The only
difference with military life is that it is illegal to sue the military if they get you maimed or killed. You may say, Well, soldiers are
supposed to get killed. Obviously, in a war, people get killed, but the fact that soldiers also routinely die in peace time more
accurately reflects who you are fighting for and their level of concern for the welfare of their troops.
The similarity with the outside World is no accident. The military rank structure was originally patterned after the European system
of social classes where rich people would actually buy a commission as an officer. Soldiers like to joke that officers have no
common sense , but the reality is that officers are concerned about other things before the welfare of their troops. If you look at
who is in charge of the military, officers are ultimately following orders from a bunch of politicians and the higher in rank an officer
gets, the more they have to act like a politician to keep their job. You see, most politicians are not elected by anyone a politician
is a person who lies, manipulates and trades favors in order to gain personal power. Ultimately, their power reflects how well they
serve the interests of people placed in authority above them. Elected officials are ultimately answerable to the rich people who
paid the bills which got them elected and politicians are ultimately answerable to the elected officials who give them their job and
tell them what to do.
All this means that soldiers are really fighting for a bunch of politicians and things which have importance to those politicians. So,
when the individual soldier is thinking about how to survive another day, the politician sees the soldier as just a resource which can
be used to help the rich people who put them into office.
Why Do Politicians Start Wars?
The only thing more important to rich people than money, property, and social privileges is getting more money, property, and social
privileges. In their minds, the primary functions of the government are: (1) To protect their property, (2) To help them get more
money and property, and (3) To pass laws which protect their social privileges, including their influence over the government.
When nations go to war, they are almost always protecting economic interests or promoting economic ambitions. Politicians use
military force when they can t get what they want by more secret means. What politicians tell us are national interests are, in truth,
the interests of the rich people who put them into office. Most of the hardships of war are borne by ordinary people whose children
are soldiers while rich people get richer from wars, even using the money of ordinary people to get richer through government sales
of war bonds. Politicians claim that war is about ideology, but that is all eyewash to persuade ordinary people that they should
sacrifice their lives for the economic interests of the rich and their pet politicians. Profit is the only real ideology behind war.
The American Civil War was fought over who would control the government: rich landowners (the South) or rich industrialists (the
North). World Wars I and II and the wars of the Cold War were fought to control natural resources and enable the rich to move
good paying jobs overseas where they could force people to work for less. The U.S. entered WWI to protect the profits of New York
banks who got rich lending money to the British and French so they could buy American armaments. Since the Cold War, the rich
want stability : They want the military to be a police officer ready to beat-up anyone who might hurt their profit regional conflicts,
rebellion against governments who support them, immigration (international migration caused by corporations taking away poor
peoples ability to feed their families; forcing them to go to cities to look for work), the underground economy (economic competition
they can t control like the so-called War on Drugs ), and even economic competition. Peacekeeping has little to do with a love
for peace and everything to do with suppressing conflict which interferes with corporate profiteering. Most people know that the
Middle East/Gulf Wars are about controlling oil for use by Europe and the United States. The mystery of the recent Balkans war
is that it is about supporting Western European colonization of eastern Europe while stopping Eastern European refugees from
immigrating into Western Europe who has double-digit unemployment because they are exporting jobs to eastern Europe.
What is Patriotism?
Politicians treat war like a football game where it is important to support the home team and armchair patriots can kick back in
their houses while soldiers put their lives on the line. Politicians will tell you that anyone who is not patriotic about their wars is
the enemy, but this calls into question what is patriotism? and WHO is the enemy.
To the ordinary soldier, patriotism is an abstraction which they associate with those things which they dream about while they are
being shot at: Their freedom, people they love, their hopes for the future . . . . . . Patriotism to them is all the good things in
life that have nothing to do with war all the things they would rather be doing than risking their lives.
Patriotism to the rich is not a love of freedom or democracy. It is a love of social privilege. They love to look down their noses
at the rest of us and consider themselves superior. They spend money like water that would take the rest of us a year to earn. They
compete with each other to see who can have the biggest house and the fanciest car because they think possessing these things
demonstrates their superiority. When they talk of patriotism and war, they talk about preserving our way of life (or the American
way of life ), but what they really mean is THEIR way of life!
The rich idea of freedom is not the same as for the rest of us. In the English Civil War and the American Revolution the rich
wanted freedom from the king so that they would be free to exploit the rest of us for profit. The American Revolution was actually
won by guerilla warfare by ordinary citizen armies who attacked the British colonial economy. The aristocratic writers of the U.S.
Constitution were so afraid of the desire of ordinary people for social equality that they designed the American form of government
to protect the property of the rich and make sure they could determine who was elected. Rich people run the world through
bureaucracy, a theory of dictatorship perfected by Max Weber in Nazi Germany!
Soldiers fighting and dying for their country are in truth fighting to preserve the wealth, property and social privileges of the rich
and the corporations they use to get rich off of our hard work. They are fighting for the very people who are busy destroying their
communities by attacking family businesses, putting people out of work, and disinvesting public education. Think about why it is
that there are no jobs back on the block which pay enough to pay for rent and food. Why can the government afford to hire cops
and build prisons, but not hire teachers and build schools? Why is it that you need a military college fund to afford an education?
Where is your tax money spent if it isn t spend on ordinary people like those you know? The fact that you are risking your life rather
than living it, isn t because of something you did, but it is a result of something someone else did. Who has the power to decide
who gets jobs and where tax money is spent? It is the same people that are sending you off to war where you could be crippled
by a land mine, permanently sterilized by chemical weapons or killed. If you want to fight for your community, you ve got to do
that IN your community not in some far away land where you only fight for rich people. If you believe in freedom and protecting
those you care about, you don t need to look overseas for cruel dictators who are conspiring to abuse ordinary people. There is
plenty of that sort of thing going on now in this country. There are two classes of people in this World: The ordinary people who
work and try to survive and the rich people who make money from our work and send us off to war to fight for them. The only way
we can help our community is to take control of it and our lives and not be ruled by rich people. You can t do that as a soldier, but
you can do it if you bring the war home and fight for your freedom and those you care about against your real enemies: Those
who run the current system. Semper Repugnare! ( Always Fight Back! ) NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR!
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