It’s important to understand just how unjust an experience many of our soldiers have had during their time in the military. Killing, being killed, a prolonged fear of being killed, seeing killing up close, rampant sexual assault, all these comprise the true military experience never to be mentioned by the recruiting officer on campus, or by the organizers of “military appreciation” events at your kid’s elementary school. They won’t talk about the coffins returning home, or the emotionally and mentally broken shells that are returned to civilian life and proceed to live a waking nightmare. There will also be no mention of their potential, unwitting inclusion in secret human experimentation, of which there is ample evidence. Here are just a few articles on the sordid treatment of soldiers as lab rats:
NPR: Veterans used in secret experiments sue military for answers
ProPublica: The breakthrough: Used as ‘guinea pigs’ by the military, then discarded
Edgewood Arsenal human experiments
CCHR: Military drug testing–pharmaceutical experiments run on our troops?
Live Science: The 10 most outrageous military experiments
This is only a small portion of the information and the incidents that have occurred, and are surely still occurring, within the United States’ imperial army. Our government is reckless in the extreme with the lives and health of the troops, as has been shown more recently in soldiers’ exposure to the “burn pits” of Iraq and Afghanistan. These were massive, burning waste dumps, where everything was thrown in. And who did the throwing? Soldiers, completely exposed to the fumes of the toxic pits. Those fumes led to cancer or other devastating illnesses for many troops, including Joe Biden’s son, Beau, who died of brain cancer a few years back.
It is a hollow, meaningless act to pledge support for troops on one day each year, and do no more. They deserve care and attention as to where they are shipped off to, and whether they will risk their lives for a worthy cause. That is what they deserve, but not what they receive. We should debate whether the border between the Korea’s is worth the life of a U.S. soldier, or Turkey or Israel’s border, for that matter. I say it’s not. A military is created and maintained to defend it’s own country, not to be sent abroad, stepping over tripwires, and running the risk of instigating a conflict thousands of miles away.
