Pentagon Helps Security Moms Prepare Toddlers for Future as "War-Fighters"

[DuctapeFatwa]

Where will these tots be sent? Iraq? Iran? Syria? Afghanistan? Africa?



American parents, even those whose kids aren't quite comfortable in bigboy pants yet, are facing up to the fact that those cute little tykes will be trading in their Lion King jammies for battle fatigues in just a few short years.

Moms and Dads won't have to go it alone, though. Washington is already on the case, with programs well underway to help parents revise their plans for their child's future.

With existing expendable troops already stretched to the breaking point, and occupation areas widening, whether it's called a draft or Empowering Youth with the Privilege of the Highest Form of National Service, one way or another, today's toddlers have a lot better chance of spending their teen years in a barracks than on a campus.

While it's true that at least for the first few years, the heaviest burden will be drawn from America's urban slums and barrios, the rural backwaters and dying little townvilles, it is inevitable that the concurrent transitions to a 2-class, single-industry society will impact the suburbs before today's avid Yu-gi-oh aficionado proudly picks up a can of Foamy for his first shave.

Even if mom and dad manage somehow to hold on to the dwindling available spaces in America's legendary Promised Land of dental insurance and savings accounts and Dad's special English muffin pizzas on Sunday night, the necessary consolidation and downsizing of non-defense-related business endeavors will leave even the most fortunate of sons with a choice of battle theatre, not a choice of careers.

He will, however, still be better off than his less fortunate neighbor, who will go where he is sent.

A cursory glance at a world map tells the story. In order to secure natural resources and transport thereof, it will be necessary to occupy quite a large land mass, all of it inhabited by populations so hostile that they believe that both land and resources belong to them, and not the United States.

Even concentrating efforts only on those areas critical to resource extraction, it is still a daunting task, as the Afghanistan operation shows.

Even after 3 years of occupation, carpet bombing and massive crackdowns, the US has still been unable even to establish a secure corridor for pipeline construction. If every troop in Iraq were moved to Afghanistan, it is debatable whether even that would be sufficient to accomplish the mission.

Obtaining additional personnel from "allies" is a popular mantra, especially with the left, but the allies simply do not have the kind of population, much less soldiers.

Both the US and Somalia chose not to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Indeed, the provision against child soldiers alone precludes the document from being in the interests of the military goals of either entity.

At this time it is not known when, or by how much, the US will be obliged to lower the minimum age for military service, and it is reasonable to assume that Washington anticipates that there will be some domestic opposition to this and other essential measures, but forward-thinking policy makers have laid solid groundwork to counter and neutralize such eventualities, and as can be seen from recent events, significant dissent in the US is easily diverted by press conferences alone.

Some questions from the education and social science sectors on the utility value of gunmen of a very young age are unavoidable, but military strategists have only to point to Africa, where some very impressive results have been noted using troops as young as seven, especially with the aid of appropriate medications, and US pharmaceutical companies have a long history of stepping up to the plate to do their part to help America's soldiers get the job done.

For folks with the resources (read money) there will always be options, ways to buy your kid's way out of Abu Ghraib guard duty, but as the middle class dwindles, more and more moms and dads are getting used to the idea of being "military families."


http://ductapefatwa.blogspot.com/2004/09/pentagon-helps-security-moms-prepare.html

[Zhade]

1. Read it on the blog, loved it. Your writing is wickedly good.

I'd thought you'd dropped off DU (to some extent, I could understand if you had).

Kick for the kids...

BTW, do you know what happened to Tinoire? I miss her.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. Second all of that.

I'm really glad to see Ductape Fatwa posting here again. Everyone who feels the same should visit his blog.

Missing Tinoire, too. Been months since I've see her.

[jpgray]

2. What this lacks is historical perspective

We've teetered on the edge of a wholly imperialist, fascist society before, and we've been able to come back. We can do it again if we work at it. What this also forgets is that to some extent we've always been this way. And this part is really revealing of the lack of perspective:

"A cursory glance at a world map tells the story. In order to secure natural resources and transport thereof, it will be necessary to occupy quite a large land mass, all of it inhabited by populations so hostile that they believe that both land and resources belong to them, and not the United States."

We don't need to occupy them, we just need to maintain puppet or otherwise friendly totalitarian governments. We've been doing this for years and years without a draft, we will likely continue to do so without one.

The reason the draft seems a danger now is the utter incompetence of the Bush adminitration at ministering to our little fiefdoms. They made the mistake of thinking American soldiers can uphold American interests in a country with a hostile population. For a number of PR reasons, they can't. Americans aren't ready to see their soldiers brutally subjugating a population to the extent necessary to pacify it, and they aren't ready to see thousands die each month.

America relies traditionally on brutal friendly governments to keep the population down while the stuff we need gets back to us. The Bush folks, through a mixture of ideological blind spots and garden variety incompetence have made the mistake of thinking US soldiers can do this job. Those who have run this scam best (think back to Standard Oil) know that the US stamp has to get out of the way for the real work to begin.

The idea is to wean ourselves off this brutal repression entirely, but no modern country can do that utterly because they are all built on keeping poorer nations down. Sweden and Norway may be socialist and relatively pacifistic, but they don't manufacture their own clothes, for example. Chinese kids do that.

[DuctapeFatwa]

5. That neither colonialism nor brutal oppression are new ventures

for the US is a point well taken, however, as the years have passed, changes have taken place that impact the resources needed to implement these processes effectively.

Technology has changed things in many areas of life, from weapons, both type and availability, to mobility, and it would not be wise to underestimate the advances in communication. Today, for the first time in the history of human activity, it is possible for any human being to communicate in real time, with any other human being almost anywhere on earth, as long as both have access to modems and a common language.

This has dramatically impacted smooth implementation of US policy, not so much domestically, where careful media strategies have largely desensitized the US news-watching and voting sectors, who have developed a variety of techniques to variously justify, applaud, or refuse to believe many aspects of how their tax dollars are spent, but among the target populations, it is a different story.

Not everybody in the Majority World has internet access, far from it, but more people than ever before have access to information today, whether an internet cafe, or a cousin who has been to a city with an internet cafe, and the nature of US operations necessarily renders them somewhat transparent in the field: people cannot ignore the fact that it was a US operative who shot their brother in law.

There have also been some social changes. While it is true that the US has managed for decades to control large populations by the simple technique of identifying native overseer candidates from the target nation who are capable and willing to sell their grandmothers for the right price, this method is becoming less effective and exponentially more costly.

Think of this: Less than a half century ago, in the United States, racial apartheid was the law of the land, and it was not difficult to find even African-Americans who would, even when no whites were listening, express their sincere view that this was as it should be. Today, one would be hard pressed to find even an elderly African-American anywhere in the United States who would agree with such a view.

As the blip of pre-eminence of Europe (and spawn) fades from the radar screen, the notion that Sahib knows what is best continues to decline in popularity throughout the Majority World, and while some westerners, especially Americans, are quite sincere in their closely-held belief in Manifest Destiny and the innate superiority of white western culture, the victims of the doctrine who share it grow smaller in number.

The two views are irreconcilable. I remember reading somewhere about a lady expressing her frustration over trying to discuss gender issues with relatives in rural Latin America. "There is," she said, "not much conversation to be had with someone who believes as deeply and unshakably that you are property as you believe they are not."

That illustrates the unbridgeable gap. The United States simply cannot keep pouring money down the holes of even the most obligingly draconian regimes in the face of the groundswell of conviction among the rank and file populace that the land, the resources, and they themselves are not the property of either the United States nor the native overseer, and the vast armies of secret police, torturers and death squads find themselves, and their own families at increasing risk from both directions - the native overseer insists that they murder their countrymen when directed to do so - this is his job, if he does not do it, he loses the dollars, and possibly his life. At the same time, the intended targets' tolerance for dollahoism and collaboration dwindles. The death squad leader demands more money from the native overseer, who must pay him or eliminate him, and his replacement will not be on the job long before he too demands more, and that more must come from the American taxpayers.

The taxpayers are more than happy to pay for it, as long as they do not have to see photographs of the wetwork, but the present system has reached the point of diminishing returns.

It was hoped that Taliban-esque faith-based control would do the job, but that too has its limits - and its glitches.

The Democratic nominee himself has remarked on this, criticizing the Republican incumbent for "outsourcing" US wetwork in target nations.

The only chance of securing the resources for the US, even with the implementation of population reduction strategies so intensive as to jeopardize US contractors and resource extraction personnel and all the potential legal vulnerability that presents for the key defense and energy sectors, is a Guantanamo-style lockdown of the very considerable non-liquidated population, and when one considers applying this to a swath of stretching from South Asia to the Mediterranean, with tributaries encompassing Indonesia, Africa, and Latin America, the limited efficacy of the client state module, for reasons stated above, becomes apparent.

Achieving the goal can only be done with boots on the ground. Lots and lots and lots of boots. The combined population to be subdued is well over twice that of the entire population of the United States, including infants, the very elderly, and the infirm.

Even the impressment of every ambulatory soul residing in the United States from 7 to 75 years of age will not be sufficient.

But it will be a start. And combined with maximum-benefit use of sustained population reduction, and added to, not replacing, the client state system, it will be possible for the United States to accomplish a good part of its objectives, at least in the short term.

The long term is hardly relevant.

[JNelson6563]

11. The more scarce the resources

the more closely they neeed to be guarded. Soon ruling through puppet dictators and colonies-from-afar will no longer be effective. In fact, as we see today, this method is becoming too unreliable as it is.

Rest easy though, soon China will arise and worries of the US taking over the world will be a distant memory.

Cheers-
Julie

[The Magistrate]

4. A Pleasure To See You About The Place, My Friend!

An excellent and entertaining effort, as always, Sir!

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[jackieforthedems]

6. I Agree

Anybody starting a family now-a-days is just breeding for the military. Forget college, forget other types of careers, in a war that will last beyond our lifetime, what else did you expect?! P.S. Also: I heard today that any school participating in the "No Child Left Behind" program, in order to get the funding, is giving the student's names to the military. Wonder why they did the last census?!

[Desertrose]

7. fantastic as always Ductape...

Glad my kids are grown but what happens to their (future) kids....??

"While it's true that at least for the first few years, the heaviest burden will be drawn from America's urban slums and barrios, the rural backwaters and dying little townvilles, it is inevitable that the concurrent transitions to a 2-class, single-industry society will impact the suburbs before today's avid Yu-gi-oh aficionado proudly picks up a can of Foamy for his first shave."


sad but true...

good to see your brilliant and to the point posts here on DU again DT:hi:

DR

[RapidCreek]

8. Wow your back! Great piece ...as always.

I've been spending much less time around here these days. Not as much at home as I used to be....sort of lost my inspiration.

Good to see you haven't lost yours. I didn't know you had a blog. I look forward to visiting! Perhaps I should channel my energies in that direction as well.

RC

[loudsue]

9. The neocons have been growing a crop of "privatized military" groups.

What all this means is that the US military will be made up of people who are NOT NECESSARILY AMERICANS. Private companies can hire as many soldiers from anyplace in the world as they desire: soldiers who would NOT NECESSARILY have any compunctions about putting American citizens in concentration camps, if their bosses told them to.

See, with commercial armies, the loyalty is to the guy who writes the paycheck, NOT a COUNTRY, with a history, a constitution, patriotism, or any of the other trappings of traditional armies. In fact, it is just another job that could easily be outsourced to the Chinese, who have a HUGE untapped labor force, even now.

So, yes, these little ones with their rambo pajamas are in danger of being neoconned into being canon fodder. But the real danger to our country is the privatization of the military.

Great post, and welcome back!!

:kick::kick::kick::kick:

[BiggJawn]

10. That's why the Neo-Cons are against abortion and birth control...

Cuts into the pool of cannon fodder.

The Rich will ALWAYS be able to afford reproductive control, just like they always have, but the "middle-class" and the Poor will just be forced to pop out darlin' lil' soldiers to the Regime...

Since this Bush Bunch has been in power, I have seen a rise in the popularity of War "toys" like I haven't seen since I was a kid during Vietnam. Toy soldiers and "First Responder Action figures", toy tanks and rocket launchers, etc.

Hip-Hop "camis" in colours that would MAKE you a target on the field (red and white?)

"War Chic". Popular amongst the FAUXNOOZ crowd.

[anarchy1999]

12. It's been awhile since I've seen you round, and what a powerful

message you come with when you show up. It's so nice to see you, but the message you deliver hits hard.

Stick around this time and don't leave us for so long again, oh wise one.

On edit, sorry for the second wow!, now removed. So glad to have you back if only for a little while.