TRAINING FOR DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP IN THE MILITARY CAN BECOME A DEATH SENTENCE FOR THE MIND
BY Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior editor
Military training uses principles established in the Stockholm Syndrome to train soldiers for combat and to accept leadership. Chronic abuse and sensory deprivation is the basis for our military training system meant to build leadership and loyalty much the same way, back in 1973, psychologists learned that hostages in a Swedish bank robbery were conditioned to bond with their captors.
The use of this form of passive coercion, combined with constant propaganda, attempts to play on guilt and inadequacy and the total collapse of our political and military leadership has brought about a confused and exhausted military machine plagued with record desertion rates, record PTSD victims, record suicides and a military that is constantly using front line troops as scapegoats for “crimes” that, when examined more closely, are real soldiers fighting a real war led by “tourists” and “country club generals”.
It has long been our military tradition to “break down” men in basic training and rebuild them as “something better”, more willing to take orders and more willing to sacrifice themselves for things they don’t often understand and may not even agree with. Every war is entered into with newspaper accounts of atrocities that never happened or enemies that, in some cases, are simply “failed business partners”.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the Civil War had very little to do with slavery. Freeing the slaves was an afterthought years after the beginning of the war. The South was fighting for “states rights”, a conservative principle supported by a great many today. When talking about Gettysburg, we seldom mention that the Federal government was under the control of bankers in the Northeast and their British partners who used the South as a “whipping boy” for their corrupt schemes.
The Spanish American War was much the same. Nobody could say that the Spanish had anything to do with the sinking of the battleship Maine, our reason for entering the war. We could look on that war much as we could our unsuccessful hunt for WMD’s in Iraq. It was a mistake that gave us control of the Philippines, Cuba and Guam, among other places, and set us on the road to “colonialism”, something America always hated.
Go to Germany today and you will be reminded that most Germans believe that we should have been on their side during the First World War, and not Britain’s. I don’t necessarily share that view but war profiteering by American industries did much to undermine our form of government by building a “military industrial complex” that could buy and sell our legislature at will. We are paying for this mistake with our endless wars today, as most will agree.
World War Two could take days to talk about. After the First War, our “military industrial complex” had no customers. America had become isolationist and disarmed. Their only opportunity was to rebuild Germany and to arm Japan. Thru the 20s and 30s, Americans helped build up Japan and make Nazi Germany the most powerful nation on earth. When we finally had to fight them, many American companies, including the largest, continued to work closely with our enemies.
In Vietnam, tens of thousands of Americans died so dictators could keep a popular but Communist government out of power. Even Operation Desert Storm was plagued with false stories about Iraqi atrocities in Kuwait.
Today we are recruiting our children to fight a Global War on Terror, though many Americans, recently a majority, suspect the government itself may have helped start the war through actually taking part in terrorist attacks on our own people. The investigations done by our government were a shameful whitewash and considerable real evidence of our own complicity exists but is uninvestigated. It almost seems like somebody has decided that we need a war going all the time just to keep the money flowing.
To fight those wars, we need soldiers. Right now, we have reached the point that lies and propaganda are not enough. We throw tens of thousands of dollars at new recruits and soldiers we want to reenlist but fail to take care of the sick and wounded. We expect that our troops don’t know what’s going on.
With more and more of our troops being publicly tried for “war crimes”, many for simply defending themselves in an unpopular war and “lip service” being generously supplied in place of quality hospitals and financial aid for the wounded and maimed, our credibility with our own troops is at an all time low.
For years, the Armed Forces Network has spewed right wing propaganda, religion and partisan politics at our troops as part of their program of indoctrination and suppression of individual initiative and responsibility. Our leaders seem to assume that no reasonable and well informed person could serve their country. Our current leaders have made this fear a reality. Millions of well informed and responsible citizens refuse to be lied to and manipulated, and many of those are members of our armed forces. Lack of trust for, not only our President, but our military and goverment itself is at an all time high.
In a wider sense, the hollow threat the Global War on Terrorism has proven that, with it’s original basis being the scandal ridden 9/11 attacks followed by our phony intelligence leading to a mistaken war against Iraq, selling the war requires more and more extreme disinformation tactics.
Even when caught lying the government, be it President Bush, the Department of Defense, the VA or any other branch is never punished. Only the victims are punished.
In the end, we have been inundated with, not only political scandals involving war based corruption, but a building national disaster where troops trained to blindly accept misleading information and often total falsehoods are no longer able to successfully function a society that operates under very different ideas of what is and is not “real”.
Homelessness, suicides, PTSD and a sea of yet to be realized problems are the clear result of turning citizen soldiers into hostages to propaganda and psychological manipulation. Not only do we need to treat for physical wounds and mental trauma but we need to restore a sense of judgement and self awareness that the military, in its self serving way, has seen fit to stifle in its membership.
GORDON DUFF IS A REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR ON POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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