Soldiers and suicides
Jun. 9th, 2012 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbAn Italian news outlet informs me that the rate of suicides in the US army is up to one death per day, and that the Secretary for Defence, Panetta, is said to be very concerned.
Is this supposed to be surprising? The damned HQ treats soldiers as cannon fodder, issues them with impossible standing orders that clearly regard the lives of the enemy as more important than their own, tries them for no reason, and if they have survived all that, dumps them on the street with a VA system I heard one soldier describe as "broken". Why would any poor fool want to be a soldier? Soldiers, believe me, always know when the leadership cares for them. When they do, soldiers will go to Hell for them; when they don't, they just hang around waiting for a bullet. Well, think of the Fort Hood slaughter, and of the headquarters chair-warmer stating in public that the real tragedy would have been if "diversity" were endangered in the American armed forces. What kind of message does that give to the relatives, friends, and two million colleagues of the slaughtered victims? Obviously, that they don't matter. And they have to risk their lives under such conditions.. From what I have seen and heard, most generals in the US army ought to be demoted to buck private and given a taste of what they give their subordinates.
Is this supposed to be surprising? The damned HQ treats soldiers as cannon fodder, issues them with impossible standing orders that clearly regard the lives of the enemy as more important than their own, tries them for no reason, and if they have survived all that, dumps them on the street with a VA system I heard one soldier describe as "broken". Why would any poor fool want to be a soldier? Soldiers, believe me, always know when the leadership cares for them. When they do, soldiers will go to Hell for them; when they don't, they just hang around waiting for a bullet. Well, think of the Fort Hood slaughter, and of the headquarters chair-warmer stating in public that the real tragedy would have been if "diversity" were endangered in the American armed forces. What kind of message does that give to the relatives, friends, and two million colleagues of the slaughtered victims? Obviously, that they don't matter. And they have to risk their lives under such conditions.. From what I have seen and heard, most generals in the US army ought to be demoted to buck private and given a taste of what they give their subordinates.
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Date: 2012-06-09 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-09 08:00 pm (UTC)Interesting insight about Zelayya.
Both MacArthur and Smedley Butler were supposedly approached about fronting a coup against FDR in the early New Deal, and both refused.
There was a very tattered poorly typeset book about the Butler pseudo coup
in the San Antonio library years ago. I browsed it and when I returned to look for it, it had vanished. From my brief browsing I did not at all get the impression that the author was a crank or conspiracy crackpot. Don't remember his name or even if the book listed it.
I don't see anything listed in the wiki sources that could conceivably be this book; the copy dated at least from the '50's and was possibly older.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot