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A message to troops, would be troops and other youth
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Know anyone in the military, or thinking about signing up soon? Pass this along to them. They may appreciate it, or not... but they deserve a heads up.
By Jeff Patterson.
In August 1990 I was an active duty US Marine Corps Corporal. I was ordered to the Middle East, the Gulf War was about to come. Four years prior-thinking I had nothing better to do with my life-I had walked into the Salinas, California recruiting station and told them to "put me where I was most needed".
And if I hadn't spent those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be inclined to fall into line now. Most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peasants who dared to struggle against "American interests" in their homelands-specifically Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. I saw dire poverty in the Philippines, US government-sanctioned prostitution rings to service servicemen in South Korea, and unbridled racism towards the peoples of Okinawa and Japan-the standard response to a child waving a "peace sign" at us with his fingers was "yeaa, ha ha, two bombs little gook." I began to understand why billions of people around the world really do hate the United States-specifically it's war machine, covert contra wars, and an increasing system of economic globalization that replaces hope with 12-hour days locked in sweatshops producing "Designed in the USA" exports.
Faced with this reality, I began the process of becoming un-American-meaning that the interests of the people of the world began to weigh heavier than my self-interest. I realized that the world did not need or want another U.S. troop. Although they did not look much like me, I found I had more in common with the common peoples of the Middle East than I did with those who were ordering me to kill them. My Battalion Commander's reassurance that "if anything goes wrong we'll nuke the rag heads until they all glow" was not reassuring. Up against that, I publicly stated I would not be a pawn in America's power plays for profits, oil, and domination of the Middle East. I pledged to resist, and if dragged out into the Saudi desert, I would refuse to fight. A few weeks later, I sat on the airstrip as hundreds of Marines-many of whom I had lived with for years-filed past me and boarded the plane. I fought the Gulf War from a military brig, and after worldwide anti-war protesters helped spring me, we fought the war in the streets.
But back then we failed to stop the war. Since 1990 over 1.5 million Iraqi people have died-not mainly from the massive US bombing from the sky, but from a decade of economic sanctions. All the while the US government has coldly declared that these Iraqi deaths are "worth it" in order to achieve strategic regional objectives.
Every time the war machine is kicked into high gear, acknowledgements are made about past "mistakes": Gulf War Sickness, Agent Orange and napalm in Viet Nam, massacres of refugees in Korea, U.S. troops used as nuclear exposure guinea pigs after World War II. And always: "Trust us, this time it will be different". But it never is.
One need not be a pacifist, a Communist, a Quaker, or a humanist to oppose this war. However, it certainly helps to be an Internationalist-realizing that our collective future is bound with the majority of humanity. For those woman and men now in uniform, you have a choice to make. Silence is what your "superiors" expect of you, but the interests of humanity require more. Think. Speak out. Resist. And if you refuse to fight, there are hundreds of thousands who will support you-many of whom have already taken to the streets to oppose this war.
On August 30, 1990, 22-year-old Marine Corporal Jeff Paterson refused to board a military plane in Hawaii heading to Saudi Arabia. He was the first active-duty military resister in the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. The photo of Jeff Paterson sitting on the airstrip, defying orders to go fight in the Gulf War, appeared on TV and in newspapers around the world. Later Jeff edited the Anti-WARrior newsletter of military resistance to the Gulf War.
Source of article.
By Jeff Patterson.
In August 1990 I was an active duty US Marine Corps Corporal. I was ordered to the Middle East, the Gulf War was about to come. Four years prior-thinking I had nothing better to do with my life-I had walked into the Salinas, California recruiting station and told them to "put me where I was most needed".
And if I hadn't spent those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be inclined to fall into line now. Most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peasants who dared to struggle against "American interests" in their homelands-specifically Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. I saw dire poverty in the Philippines, US government-sanctioned prostitution rings to service servicemen in South Korea, and unbridled racism towards the peoples of Okinawa and Japan-the standard response to a child waving a "peace sign" at us with his fingers was "yeaa, ha ha, two bombs little gook." I began to understand why billions of people around the world really do hate the United States-specifically it's war machine, covert contra wars, and an increasing system of economic globalization that replaces hope with 12-hour days locked in sweatshops producing "Designed in the USA" exports.
Faced with this reality, I began the process of becoming un-American-meaning that the interests of the people of the world began to weigh heavier than my self-interest. I realized that the world did not need or want another U.S. troop. Although they did not look much like me, I found I had more in common with the common peoples of the Middle East than I did with those who were ordering me to kill them. My Battalion Commander's reassurance that "if anything goes wrong we'll nuke the rag heads until they all glow" was not reassuring. Up against that, I publicly stated I would not be a pawn in America's power plays for profits, oil, and domination of the Middle East. I pledged to resist, and if dragged out into the Saudi desert, I would refuse to fight. A few weeks later, I sat on the airstrip as hundreds of Marines-many of whom I had lived with for years-filed past me and boarded the plane. I fought the Gulf War from a military brig, and after worldwide anti-war protesters helped spring me, we fought the war in the streets.
But back then we failed to stop the war. Since 1990 over 1.5 million Iraqi people have died-not mainly from the massive US bombing from the sky, but from a decade of economic sanctions. All the while the US government has coldly declared that these Iraqi deaths are "worth it" in order to achieve strategic regional objectives.
Every time the war machine is kicked into high gear, acknowledgements are made about past "mistakes": Gulf War Sickness, Agent Orange and napalm in Viet Nam, massacres of refugees in Korea, U.S. troops used as nuclear exposure guinea pigs after World War II. And always: "Trust us, this time it will be different". But it never is.
One need not be a pacifist, a Communist, a Quaker, or a humanist to oppose this war. However, it certainly helps to be an Internationalist-realizing that our collective future is bound with the majority of humanity. For those woman and men now in uniform, you have a choice to make. Silence is what your "superiors" expect of you, but the interests of humanity require more. Think. Speak out. Resist. And if you refuse to fight, there are hundreds of thousands who will support you-many of whom have already taken to the streets to oppose this war.
On August 30, 1990, 22-year-old Marine Corporal Jeff Paterson refused to board a military plane in Hawaii heading to Saudi Arabia. He was the first active-duty military resister in the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. The photo of Jeff Paterson sitting on the airstrip, defying orders to go fight in the Gulf War, appeared on TV and in newspapers around the world. Later Jeff edited the Anti-WARrior newsletter of military resistance to the Gulf War.
Source of article.
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Comments
fyi, just to keep the record striaght, i am in no way supporting the military or any militant actions of any country.
In the words of Vietnam Veterans Against The War "Vietnam was not just a mistake. Any U.S. venture in another part of the globe will also be a mistake for the GIs who buy the government's lies. Vietnam was not a "noble cause," except for those who fought to bring our brothers home after they made the mistake of going."
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/
Can we just pretend its already happened, and you failed to convince anyone, and leave it at that?
good idea
If we all insult him, hopefully one of the mods will close the thread.
At the moment the majority of the population are against the coming war, but we need to persuade more people that the coming war is wrong as well.
On Saturday the 28th of this month hundreds of thousands of people will also take to the streets of London to demonstrate against this coming war. See this.
No it isn't. You're a liar.
i don't know why, that comment just made me laugh. tom, your funny.
It wasn't good at all.
View this poll then!
Also in a poll by the Daily Mirror 71 per cent of their readers voted against the war!
Oh come on! You use an Urban 75 poll to show that the majority of the population is against the war! Who are you kidding?
I'd be more surprised/interested if the poll had come out in favour of the war.
And the Daily Mirror? Their readers probably mistook it for a poll asking whether they should introduce Page 3.
Well anyone who supports a war which kill and maim tens of thousands of people and destroy a country by bombarding it with tons of bombs must be either an idiot or as evil as Saddam Hussein themselves!
The last Gulf War to drive Iraq out of Kuwait resulted in the deaths of about 100,000 Iraqi people, injured and maimed many times more and totally devasted Iraq destroying factories, homes, bridges and water and sewage treatment plants! Another war will repeat the carnage of the last Gulf War!
And another thing this war is really about Americas desire to control and dominate the oil rich Middle East. The weapons of mass destruction excuse for the war is rubbish. America is just desparate to change to regime in Iraq so that it can replace the current regime with one that American companies can do business with. Saddam was once an American ally in the Middle East until he disobeyed America by invading Kuwait in 1990 so they want him out and are looking for any excuse to attack Iraq!
http://www.stopwar.org.uk
NO I refuse to do so !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sound familiar steelgate ?
No point, the government aren't intrested, you people march that often its teedious now, it just costs the tax payer money and achieves fuck all, but then as your type don't work I suppose your not bothered.
Of course, you could just look in the Politics Forum and see a poll where 86% support the war...
You know that poll Steelgate, afterall you started it...
Remember the old saying? That no-one abhors war like the soldier, for he is the one who fights it.
A CORPORAL? No disrespect to the individual involved, but if you think that anyone with a military background is going to expect a Corporal to have the big picture, you have just proven that you really do need that psychological evaluation.
The last time any military listened to a former Corporal, Austria got annexed and Poland, France and Russia got invaded....
"Would you approve or disapprove of a military attack on Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein"
had the following result:
Approve: 36%
Disapprove: 40%
Don't know: 24%
This wasn't a poll of the entire population, but ICM use statistical models to weight it according to the profile of the population, thus it could be said that the majority oppose war, but not by a massively significant margin.
So squat_tom and all the other pathetic debaters who find it easier to insult steelgate than to face his factual arguments are wrong.
I was not insulting him as it was easier to face up to his "factual arguments", I was merely stating my opinion that an Urban 75 poll would not be balanced and present an accurate representation of the Great British public.
And a statistical model does not the basis of a "factual argument" make.
Slightly more factual than simply saying "You're wrong", or quoting your pure assumption that the majority of the people support war, with no basis whatsoever.
Please expand your criticism of statistical models in order to explain why ICM's methodology is flawed. I'll look forward to hearing your arguments on the matter...
Could you be any more condescending?
Most people when they say they will support a war don't realise how bad a war with Iraq is going to be. If they had been shown around Iraq themselves to see how poor the Iraqi people now are and how the country is suffering greatly from the effects of sanctions I think veery few would still support a war on Iraq!
I went to a public meeting by Voices In The Wilderness last year a group who smuggle medical equipment into Iraq for Iraqi hospitals and I photos of barefoot young children playing in streets where there were broken sewers and raw sewage in the streets. The were also photos shown of the inside of Iraqi hospitals which were bare of any medical equipment.
Voices In Wilderness Website.
I would be delighted to. However, can I ask that you first go back to my post and find where I said that ICM's methodology is flawed, as I do not remember that.
Statistical models do have some validity, but I do not believe that you can use them as the basis for a "factual argument". Statistical models rely heavily on probability and so are subject to variance.
Something that is subject to variance is very rarely accepted as fact; and certainly not as a single entity.
I did not "pluck my assumption out of the air". It is a fact that the Urban 75 website attracts a certain type of person - one of extreme political leaning and one who is most likely to be opposed to war with Iraq.
As for Steelgate's arguments being based on fact, take this into consideration.
Fact: Steelgate has been maintaining that Iraq does not possess weapons of mass destruction. He believes this to be true as it is the opinion of a former weapons inspector who was, at one point, stationed in Iraq.
Fact: the man who is currently in charge of weapon inspection in Iraq is of the opinion that Iraq does posses WMD.
Which one of these men holds the most relevant, up to date information? Which one of these men is in a position to act on his opinion?
So now people who oppose Bush's unilateral demand for war regardless of UN inspections (which is what that idiot is still ranting on about), are political extremists? lol. I think not. More correct to say that people who oppose war on humanitarian grounds are the most constructive and rational people on the planet.
And as for your mention of the other chappy who insists there "must" be WMD's, you might as easily be asked "who has most to gain politically by siding with the Bush administration view?"
I think Nelson Mendella's recent comments are highly significant on the issue of the US administration's unilateral biligerence.