The War Christopher Dorner Brought Home

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-War-Christopher-Dorner-by-Marc-Ash-130217-351.html

The War Christopher Dorner Brought Home
By Marc Ash
OpEdNews Op Eds 2/17/2013 at 10:57:53

It's another flaming meltdown for the Los Angeles Police Department. One more in the proud history of America's most bizarre police force. Words fail.

~snip~

America is trapped in a never ending cycle of enormously profitable warfare. The public relations packaging is always the same: "We are fighting for freedom and democracy." Who better to believe that than the idealistic and young? The truth however is cleverly hidden in plain sight: We are sending America's young men and women off to protect the global interests of wealthy and powerful mega-corporations based on US soil. The notion that this militarism somehow benefits the communities from which these newly adult soldiers come is flatly false. In fact American communities suffer great harm from these unnecessary military forays. The harm is both economic and social.

After Vietnam there was a sense that America had learned from what had occurred. Sadly that appears not to be that case. Those who profit from war will never learn. They can always find a rationale for conflict as long as lucrative government contracts are on the table. The larger and more important question is when will the American people learn? Without public support, the military profiteers will have to fight the wars themselves.

The Christopher Dorner saga is one more painful reminder that war must never be made without good cause and must never be supported by the country unless such cause exists. Beware: it's not a global force for good, it's a global force for profit

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I used to think that the only good the Vietnam War did

was to radicalize a generation.

Sadly, even that has faded away.

Except for some of us old farts, of course. I'm one of those who got shot over there & clubbed over here.

[loudsue]

2. Bam! Knocked that one out of the park!

War is a profit game.

[BlueStreak]

3. The guy was sick before he ever joined the army

Maybe the issue is to get better screening at the enlistment point. But the army isn't interested in turning away people that are willing to get shot at. That's an inherent conflict. The people that the Army wants are probably somewhat unstable in the ideal case.

[pinboy3niner]

5. Dorner was a Navy Reservist until his discharge February 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dorner#Naval_Reservist

[BlueStreak]

6. OK. restated. He was sick before he ever joined the Navy

I stand behind the original point. The military probably made his situation worse, but it did not cause the problem.

If the military had to start screening out people who aren't overly smart, people who have signs of mental problems, and people who seem just a little too interested in shooting people, they would have a very tough time standing up a single division (or manning a single battleship group.)

[pinboy3niner]

7. The military DOES try to screen out psychopaths, sociopaths, indiscriminate killers

Many are rejected, but the testing is not an exact science and some will slip through, some will be weeded out in training, and some will remain.

You could be right about Dorner, we don't have enough information to assess that.

btw, regarding "people who aren't overly smart," google Vietnam and Project 100,000 for an eye-opener.

[DemoTex]

8. AKA "McNamara's 100,000." His middle name said it all.

Robert Strange McNamara

[pinboy3niner]

9. That was one of the real lowpoints

I searched once to see if anyone had followed up on the P-100k "participants" to determine their fates. I didn't find anything, though if one had the list, it would be a simple matter to compare it to the DoD VN casualty database, and to do further followup on them post-war.

Beyond Strange--it was cruel and inhuman.

[Blanks]

4. We don't teach the history of wars quite right...

We need to tell high school students about the banana wars: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars

Then we will have military aged youngsters suspicious about the motive behind wars.

We also need to evaluate the entire idea of 'hero'. When we send young people off to war and they believe that they will be a hero (flags of our fathers style); our young people need to realize that the press only promotes people as heroes to forward an agenda. Everyone has the potential to be a hero (and performs heroic acts), very few people are actually recognized as heroes.

The entire concept is a manipulation.