Peace and Justice Post

Published on Wednesday, October 24, 2007 by MinutemanMedia.org

by William A. Collins

Gives our souls,
An awful chill;
Sending soldiers,
Off to kill.

The full-page Army ad in the NAACP magazine reads, “You made them strong. We’ll make them Army Strong.” Besides focusing on these vulnerable minority parents, recruiters are nowadays even trolling homeless shelters, their lures baited with offers of $20,000 to leave “home.” Further, enlistment standards have been lowered for intellectual capacity, emotional stability, and criminal record. These are our own homegrown mercenaries, sifted largely from among the poor.

And while such troops may sound expensive to muster, they’re a bargain compared with the real live mercenaries we hire for Iraq and Afghanistan. American civilians over there get paid like generals, and foreign workers command princely sums compared to the scrabbly farms or brutal sweatshops back home. Like the Romans and British before us, our imperial military has become totally dependent on private workers. Halliburton and Blackwater are the new Hessians.

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