Putting the barbarians in the US Armed Forces.  I discussed this before; I thought they would consider this.  

We either need to get out of Iraq, Asap, or we need a draft-- or both.

here's my suggestion... and i am VERY serious... prison inmates. I have not quite worked out the details, but it so happens i've been toying with this idea for some time. It has been discussed often online in various blogs, not to mention as an exercise in intellectual discourse between me and a few of my friends. Well, ok... ONE of them :P

My variant on the concept... we get a team of psychologists to develop criteria for selecting prison inmates to have an option to trade their sentence for service in the army. Pardon of all crimes to be granted upon successful completion of service. They would be given a stipend instead of salary. The incentive? a restoration of citizen rights and priviledges. This is very rough, and i'm not even fleshing out the ideas... but if you wanna discuss the pros and cons... lets roll

If we are to follow the roman example of putting Barbarians in the rank,s why not choose from our OWN barbarian population.
Screw the foreign legion routine, as romantic as that sounds, that went out with Lawrence of Arabia. And todays crop of foreign mercenaries... shit... i'd rather have a patriotic american criminal. many of them are, you know.

Oh yeah... I'm quite serious. Imagine ---
Turn Mala Noche & the South Central Crips loose in Bahgdad, and send the conventional troops home. They'll take over the turf, then turn on each other WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! (levity... i needed it)

I would hope they would be treated as "second-class" in the army...  What I mean is that they would NOT be able to ascend in rank, not take any advantage of college programs, and be assigned to "special units" that would not degrade the honest men and women that signed up the regular way for the regular reasons...

They could do all the heavy lifting and dangerous shit,,, Hell, most were probably in street-gangs or drug rings and the stuff they'd face in Iraq would be childs-play compared to the shit they'd had to deal with in their pre-prison life...

After 16 months this is the first time we are in agreement.

What next?  Clone male orphans,  and raise them to become military helots?

I wonder what the recruiting slogan might be?

"The parole board wants you"?

to be shipped to exotic foreign climes to kill non-white foreigners on behalf of the same racist, oppressive white patriarchy which imprisoned them, all unjustly of course.  And will continue to do so as long as there is a USKKK.

Xrist, who would officer these fellows?

Who's to say they would not turn mercenary and be paid off to direct their tender mercies at a more favored child of US foreign policy.  Israel, for example?  Don't forget, the petroterroris Arabs have tons of money to pay off the crips and the bloods.  And imagine the interesting reactions within the US.

Ah, sweet fantasy.  

that South Central L.A. or Compton is even remotely more dangerous than Baghdad then that goes a long way towards explaining where your fucked up views come from. Are you saying that the liberal L.A. Times is covering all of those bombings going on in downtown L.A. every day?

failure.  They fail in high school, fail in the job market, turn to crime and fail in that and they pretty much fail in the military.  But to make matters worse, they lower the morale of everyone else with their causing all kinds of trouble with fighting, stealing, heroin/drug use  etc.  
I don't know the numbers but there were a small number that did work out but most were a real burden.  
The Army and Marines competely abandoned that in the mid 70's.  Plus the judges that would offer a petty criminal a 2 year prison sentence or a 4 year hitch in the military are all long gone.

On the other hand, I would love to see a Gladiator show where convicted death row inmates fight to the death.

-- Modified on 12/27/2006 8:50:24 PM

As much as I hate to agree with GOPgeezer

As a musician Z, I think you will agree Arlo Guthrie had it right in "Alice's Restaurant" when he talked about going to the draft board inspection after the Thanksgiving Day massacreeee.  

"And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's
where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there.  Mother rapers.  Father stabbers.  Father
rapers!  Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me!  And
they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest
father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly
'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me
and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?"  I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay
$50 and pick up the garbage."  He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Littering."  And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
said, "And creating a nuisance."  And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
bench.  And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of
things..."

http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/alices.shtml

TMT

Don't kid yourself, Mr Xiao Xlux Xlan of the East Coast. you don't understand SHIT about the streets of Compton. its not about money its about Power and Intimidation....not to mention  
getting them off the streets of Compton :P

And a full presidential pardon for the one who kills Usloba Pig Larder (isnt that how its pronounced?)

Re:As much as I hate to agree with GOPgeezer

Yeah... but nonetheless... the government officials dont want to send their kids... the volunteer army is almost entirely comprised of poorer minorites and rejects from redneck valley, and frankly, nothing else seems to have worked.
Has anyone noticed the rising cost of prisons? Almost exactly on a par with the graph showing increases in defense spending.Its fucked up, man.

This is a war to protect corporate "oil" interests in their supplying of the oil to meet our addiction that THEY have engineered.

 The corporatist mantra is "Keep It In The Black" and the ends will justify the means.
Simply lend the most powerful military force in recorded history to the oil companies (along with the cost of running it). The universal corporatist precept of making a profit while keeping expenses low will make for the utilization of our military in such a devastatingly effective way that the entire Mid-East will be a 51st State before Easter Sunday 2007.

 Being that the military was led by the corporation(s) and their business needs rather than a government run socio-political agenda wrought with moral constraints it will thereby admonish any societal American guilt for the expeditious genocide of the region.  


-- Modified on 12/28/2006 8:44:16 AM

When the draft was in effect, non-citizens were not exempt.

This is not really a novel idea. It has been done in the past. Also, mercenaries served in the American Revolutionary War and in the American Civil War. Many thousands of non US citizens served in the Civil War.

If thats the case, then why not just institute a "draft" that somehow, as was the case during Vietnam, manages to draft lots of poor people and minorities, (and all those "ill eagle I'm a Grunts") while overlooking all the eligible draftees who just happen to be offspring of priviledge.

thats also been done before. (gee, is my sarcasm and cynicism dripping over?)

probably inti the 6-figures. This would allow them to skim from the top of the talent-barrel rather than scrape the bottom of it... Although, I do still see a use for the prison-brigade, someone has to "scout" for roadside bombs... It would be better for us as a nation to lose a few "dishonorable" x-cons rather than some of our most honerable and selfless citizens such as we have been...

If the corporations are given command of the armed services, it means a complete power shift from the nation to the corporations-- especially if they are better paid.  For corporations, keeping it in the black might just mean "spinning it off."   Which will de facto make it into a mercenary force with little resemblance to the forces we see now.  

Second, the military and the citizenry both might not stand for this.  

I keep on thinking of other negatives.  It likely can't work.  Even though corporations have to run "in the black" corporations do frequently fail and they end up liquidated.  

Lastly, the only way I could see that an army "runs in the black" is through pillage and looting.  That is what made them profitable in the past-- before nations made them professional.  If they "revert to form" then we might as well have a barbarian army.

... It would be one way to fund our efforts and pay our soldiers a decent risk-based wage.
 I still don't understand why we can't KEEP the oil when we concour these tribes, Imperialism is an age-old practice, and Biblicly supported as far as I can tell...
 It must be the "fairness doctrine" of the lefties that prevents us from taking our just spoils...

...Where they mostly died on the battlefield, and now, a couple breeding-cycles later, they've devolved into the pissy, homosexually charged naton that they are today...

I'm not sure I can agree with any form of forced-military service, I guess it is simply the "lot-of-life" if a person is "born poor" and want to use the military as way to advance out of their cercumstances... It is further their "lot" if we should happen to go to war after they signed up...

I tryed it in my youth, but was rejected due to a pe-existing condition... I thank God every day that I was excluded from the prosess, because I would have been prime age for Gulf-war-1...

 But who knows, maybe the experence would have made me a better man, with a great successful career... Like so many of my class-mates ended up doing, but of course now they are all back over there, leaving their family and children for year-long tours, while I'm free to sit and watch from the bleachers while arm-chair quarter-backing the war...  Again, the "lot of life"...

(it, not her's) i just don't think we should burden the good folks of the US military with having to shape into fighting form the most incorrigble amongst us. they have enough to do. it is we who ought to bear the burden of dealing with them AND I might add, of filling the ranks of said military if the need should arise.

oh and, Hobby Nude Year to you too Doc.

I'll be in touch on that lunch..

BK



-- Modified on 12/28/2006 5:56:46 PM

Relax, Geezer, this proposal is made [I hope] mainly in jest.

But here's how it could benefit the US  -- when members of the Comptom/Watts/Harlem/Liberty City/East New York/Newark/South Bronx Corps are captured, the US simply makes no attempt to repatriate them at the end of the war.  Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan/etc... get stuck with them. and I DO mean stuck.

I know plenty about crappy neighborhoods and their denizens.

And getting them out of Compton also gets them farther away from your Monster Trike?

you propose [tongue-in-cheek?] that we first become awash in an ocean of blood?  From  the guilty minority, the  even smaller totally innocent minortity, and the great unwashed indifferent majority alike?

If we kil them all off, who will buy all the capitalist detrius junk we manufacture and endlessly flog to those poor devils?  As if they haven't enough problems w/o gangsta rap, Michael Jackson, fast food and other assorted material goodies from The Free World.

and the mortgaging of our next 5 generations of taxpayers to pay for this bullshit!

1. “If the corporations are given command of the armed services, it means a complete power shift from the nation to the corporations-- especially if they are better paid.  For corporations, keeping it in the black might just mean "spinning it off."   Which will de facto make it into a mercenary force with little resemblance to the forces we see now.”

 We would only “Lend” the military to the oil corporations until the job is done.
Who gives a flying fuck if they farm out some work to mercenaries.  As long as the job is done and we have all the reasonably priced oil we want/need to feed our Hummer2s etc etc.


2. “I keep on thinking of other negatives.  It likely can't work.  Even though corporations have to run "in the black" corporations do frequently fail and they end up liquidated.”

The fuck’n oil companies have more money than God and Allah put together. The thermo nuclear war heads and/or biological warfare would seal our victory hundreds of billions$ before  corporations such as oil would feel a squeeze.

3. “Lastly, the only way I could see that an army "runs in the black" is through pillage and looting.  That is what made them profitable in the past-- before nations made them professional.  If they "revert to form" then we might as well have a barbarian army”

 Looting, pillage, and rape boosted the morale of solders for many centuries. If you bring back the spoils of war to down trodden, pussified, brow beaten into Political correctness American men secretly yearning to re-attach their testicles; a “draft” will not be needed.  


-- Modified on 12/29/2006 5:56:34 AM

I'm in no way a war hawk; but the good o'l US of A has been a big fuck'n pussy for over 50 years. All we ever did is try to feed the world and bring industry and commerce to nations that couldn't spell their respective goddamn names, and all we ever got from these nations is ingratitude while their fuck'n inhabitance scrambled for residence in the US.
Personally I would take great solice watching the streets in the Mid East run as rivers with the blood of the indigenous.

Don't misconstrue.  I agree kind of with a lot of what you feel.  The difference in my case is that I'd still regard it as a tragedy, no mater how "necessary" it might be thought to be.

But it also says "Thou shall not kill."  How do you reconcile killing a bunch of innocent people on the wrong side of the gene pool with that commandment?

We can't colonize them, Ben.  We could only murder them.  You can't colonize a socially and politically mobilized population.  

We can't get oil while they are blowing up the oil wells, the pipelines, the trucks, the queues and the ships. Forget it.    

The reason Europe could colonize other areas of the world was that those areas weren't organized, and the Europeans stepped into a power vacuum.  Once areas became socially and politically organized, like Algeria, like Vietnam, colonization was not viable anymore.

The Bible condones the slaying of cultures that practic wicked forms of religion, not to be confused with murdering a particular "geneticly-linked group"... (Yes, I happen to agree with God on that!]

And the commandment that you loosely quote is loosly translated as well, truly it limits only the *murder* of those who are *inocent*, And gives allowance for killing in war, killing for capital-punishment, killing for *self-defense*, and even killing for *sacrifice*...

I see a pattern in your posts, you have very little understanding of the Bible that you so hate... Sort of remins me of other "blind-hatred" around the world, by which all types of atrocities are commited...

You think you understand the bible, but you are given to preferred sources that support faith-- in other words, read it with that "open heart."

The distinctions you give for "thou shalt not kill" were later interpretations.  In fact, no distinction about that was made at the time.  The suggestion in other parts of the Bible where God smites his chosen people in mass numbers (for the least infractions, and not the wicked forms of religion) was that only God had the right kill and only when somebody violated the laws were people given that command.  

Hate the Bible?  I judge it like any other fiction, not with that "open heart."  That is not hatred, Ben.

The Bible very directly calls for the genocide of the Amelakites.  Not for their religious practices, but because they attacked the Israelites when they were weak.  In those days, religiously linked groups were also genetically linked.  As it pretty much is with the Jews now.  

Wicked religions: Yes, some religious practices are simply diseases.  I could see despising people because of the religions they adopt: that is to say, for things like child murder and human sacrifice.  I could think of others.  


However, as far as the commandments, that was not what God objected not to that but to.  He objected to idolatry-- in fact, even to the making of graven images.  He objected to the worship of other Gods.  He explained it as being "jealous."  Now, was that a mistranslation?    

I think if you would list your objections to some religious practices and put them side by side to Yahweh/Jehovah's you will find that there are more points of disagreement than you think: if you were honest with yourself about it.