Perception of the military must change

[Flagrante]

My friend’s son found himself on the wrong end of our country’s losing struggle with it’s own militarism. With horror I’ve been following his terrible story. In a nutshell, he enrolled in a military academy, and promptly became the whipping boy for some of the older cadets. When someone finally took him to a hospital after days of what can only be described as torture, he had two broken legs and was covered with bruises and welts. My friend then discovered that there have been, and are currently, multiple lawsuits against the academy for similar occurrences:
http://cjonline.com/news/2012-03-20/military-school-denied-gag-order-lawsuit

When a people equate the greatness of their country with the strength of their country’s military, they must accept the violence that accompanies it. To make themselves feel good about it they exalt the military, and convince themselves that the military is honorable and heroic. This is easy to do because service in the military is honorable and heroic. But the military is more than who serve in it.

We must become a society where the military is not needed. To get there, society’s perception of the military must change from honorable and heroic into one of a necessary evil. This attitude must even be that of the service members themselves. When all the world feels this way, we will be able to push the military into the dust bin of history. Until we do, we will continue to find our young people seduced into a culture of violence that they cannot control, and cases like that of my friend’s son will continue to occur.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

1. Best wishes to your friend's family.

What a horrible story. Its sickening that some must break others in order to rebuild them as compliant machines. Sadly, academies all around the world do the same things , and unfortunately thats why the military exists, so it can be done on a grand scale.

[JHB]

2. Actually, this is about hazing, not the military

Plenty of non-military schools and colleges have had hazing problems that took lawsuits or criminal prosecution to stop. The school is at fault for allowing this to continue, especially in the face of these severe injuries and scarring.

This was a private military school for grades 6-12. Teenagers aren't the exactly the best evaluators of their own judgement, and apparently there was no responsible adult putting the brakes on this behavior.

The culture that leads to this level of outright torture is not something unique to military schools. The British have a whole literary tradition about dealing with bullying and hazing at boarding schools, going back at least a century and right up through Harry Potter. College fraternities and "secret societies" have been infamous for this crap. The recurring formula is a "tradition" of dopey initiations that provide cover for sadists and bullies to indulge themselves while creating a pressure for the victims to just accept it, and higher authorities who tacitly (or actively) permit it.

[Flagrante]

4. It's not about the hazing

The original post is not about the hazing, it's about our cultural acceptance of the military, and it attempts to open a dialog about how we can move past that acceptance to a time when the military is no longer needed, nor seen as honorable. The very fact that military academies exist is a result of societies acceptance of the military. The violence perpetrated against the unfortunate young man is an inevitable outcome of that acceptance. Only a change in our perception will end these types of events.

Imaging all the people living life in peace – J. Lennon

[JHB]

9. Then what did the incident at the school have to do with it?

If you are against military schools, that's fine. And those places do have an environment that makes it easier for that sort of inside-culture to develop and perpetuate.

But it is not unique to them and other places do actively suppress that sort of behavior.

When you completely eliminate a "cause" and still have the problem, maybe it wasn't so simple.

[hack89]

3. Are you aware this school is a private institution that has no connection to the US military?

anyone can create a "military" school - doesn't mean it has anything to do with the military.

[gratuitous]

5. Good luck with this

But you're criticizing our national religion, and the acolytes of the High Church of Redemptive Violence will be along to explain to you, chapter and verse, just why we need the military and its unparalleled expertise in violence, to maintain our security, project strength, and how we would be horribly, irretrievably lost (lost, I tell you!) without all our guns, bombs, tanks and personnel to operate them. Oh, and how any negative effects from this culture of violence aren't really a product of that culture, but are actually something else. And who are you going to believe - your lying eyes or the tenets of our national religion?

[Flagrante]

7. We can move beyond

Your post brings up a good point - this kind of discussion, the idea that we can move beyond a time when the military is seen as glorious, is perceived as criticism of the military by those who are invested in the system. It is not, however, criticism of the military; it is criticism of how we perceive the military as part of the greater good.

/edited for typo

[Zalatix]

12. That is heresy you speak!

Yeah, well, I'm a heretic, too. Well said!

[Johnny Rico]

6. For all that you want us to join hands and sing "Imagine" and "Kumbaya"...

We are not going to become a society where the military is not needed. Organized violence has been part of the human condition for as long as we've been, well...human. That's not going to change anytime soon*.





*"Soon", in this case, being defined as "the foreseeable future".

[Flagrante]

8. Of course

Well, it certainty won't change if we don't talk about it. A defeatist attitude is, I fear, part of the problem.

[Johnny Rico]

11. It also won't change if we *do* talk about it.

Some problems don't have solutions, only mitigations...and sometimes not even that.

[Flagrante]

18. Oh Johnny, don't be such a cynic.

[Johnny Rico]

19. Oh, I'm not! I do like to think I'm a realist, though.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. If that were true, why has most of the world been at peace most of the time?

Throughout history, most of the inhabitants of the planet never experienced war first hand. Most people go about their business without using violence. Violence has always been perpetrated by a minority, usually in the hands of a tiny minority.

[Johnny Rico]

15. I didn't say that organized violence was the only part of the human experience,

Last edited Fri Mar 23, 2012, 02:02 PM - Edit history (1)

or even the majority of it...but it does occur throughout history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War#History_of_warfare

Before the dawn of civilization, war likely consisted of small-scale raiding. One half of the people found in a Nubian cemetery dating to as early as 12,000 years ago had died of violence. Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace (Beer 1981: 20)."

In War Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor at the University of Illinois, says that approximately 90–95% of known societies throughout history engaged in at least occasional warfare, and many fought constantly.

List of current wars:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_conflicts

These caused over 50,000 deaths in 2011. Granted, that's a very small percentage of the Earth's population as a whole...but if you include the citizens of each country that's involved in these conflicts, it becomes a significant portion of the Earth's population.

It's also notable that over the course of the 20th Century, approximately 400 million people died by government actions. This includes deaths caused by wars, genocide, politicide and mass murders.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. The problem, then, is the politicians and "leaders" who instigate wars.

I always find the argument that violence is just "human nature" when most humans don't experience it, crave it, or seek it out. Most, the vast majority, have no uncontrollable, genetic, desire to harm others.

[Johnny Rico]

17. Replace those leaders and politicians and you'll just get more of the same.

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and -- thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”

---Robert A. Heinlein, "Starship Troopers"

[grantcart]

10. St. John’s Military School

From your OP I thought that this was about one of the military academies.

This school has as much to do with the military as it has to do with St. John, nothing.

Your rant should be against private militaristic schools, not the military.

Whatever objections anyone has against the military the issues in your OP are not related to the military in any way.

We lived near an a military academy (which I believe has a good reputation but that is besides the point here) and a huge number of people would ask us about it, even though we knew little about it. The parents were not interested in the military, they were interested in getting control over their out of control children. If it had been a clown school and had a reputation for controlling misbehaving kids they would have signed up for that.

[raouldukelives]

14. It's pretty cool to be a soldier these days.

Traveling across oceans and conquering new lands for God & Country in search of treasures to send home.
Sort of a modernized voyage of Christopher Columbus. Replete with his civility and generosity to the indigenous people.