Don’t Join The Army 3-4-2009

4, March 2009            Don’t Join The Army

Corporate immigration attorney, Indu Liladhar –Hathi (I-West, Feb 20), offers appalling advice to Indian immigrants encouraging them to join the military to expedite their citizenship. Americans are geniuses at conjuring up new acronyms to hide sinister intentions.  Desperate to make up their declining quotas, the Pentagon is now targeting immigrant communities with their latest carrot dubbed, Military Accessions Interest Pilot Recruiting Program or MANVI. It is very likely that these sacrificial lambs will serve eight long years in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the violence and U.S. fatalities have declined in Iraq, US combat forces have encountered escalating violence in Afghanistan. Both wars were launched by the thoroughly disgraced Bush administration on flimsy and often manufactured intelligence and contravene international law. There is no honor fighting these modern day colonial wars to gain citizenship, especially if your loved ones return in US flagged coffins.

 In a recent article, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported an alarming escalation of US military suicides. Last year, the Pentagon reported 143 soldiers took their own lives. The actual number may be significantly higher. According to Salon.com reporters, Mark Benjamin and Michael de Yoanna, “The soldiers seemed to be suffering classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder: explosions of anger, suicidal and homicidal ideation, flashbacks, nightmares and insomnia. Predictably, the Army was responding, for the most part, with disciplinary action rather than treatment, evincing little concern for possible underlying problems. The soldiers self-medicated further with predictable outcomes.” These soldiers have paid the ultimate price for the failed policies of Bush and Cheney who had little concern for the outcome of their failed policies. Instead of encouraging Indians to enroll in the US Army and participate in these immoral acts of warfare and conquest, we should call on the new Obama administration to halt these foreign adventures which is depleting our treasury of billions of dollars and sending our young to their early graves. Our bloated military budget only encourages us to build and use more terrifying weapons of human destruction while our nation is drowning in a sea of debt.  The planned escalation of troops in Afghanistan is a tragic mistake. Failure to act will sink us deeper into another Vietnam-type quagmire. I urge families to discourage their loved ones enrolling in the military. Google to ‘Winter Soldiers’ to hear riveting testimonies of veterans who have confessed to the most horrific war crimes while serving in the US military. We need to celebrate the gift of life our creator has endowed and not build more and more terrifying weapons to destroy God’s beautiful creation and his people.