While I have been opposed to most of the conflicts that our military has been committed to by our government in my lifetime, after the end of the Viet Nam war I have more or less taken the point of view that if a friend of mine wanted to join the military, and he understood that he was pretty much entering into indentured servitude, that was his business.
Given the abominable treatment of Bradley Manning by the United States Military I can no longer allow any person I call a friend to join the United Stated armed forces. An intervention may be necessary. If this was a religious cult no one would allow their children to join.
Consider Bradley Manning. Merely accused of revealing criminal conduct by the military he is degraded and tortured. Aldrich Ames actually was a Soviet double agent who actually was responsible for the deaths of brave men and he was never treated this way.
I have reports from several friends in the military that while they were supposed to be sleeping subliminal conditioning prompts were played on the barrack sound system.
Soldiers now have to take "Spirituality Evaluations" to be sure they are religious enough and it seems that only fairly fundamentalist forms of Christianity can be sure of measuring up. If you fail the assessment you are sent to "counseling"
Add to this the military's long and deplorable history of using our own soldiers for test subjects for everything from weaponized LSD to marching soldiers through ground zero of a nuclear bomb test while the mushroom cloud still loomed over them, and then claiming it never happened when the men began to develop leukemia or lymphoma.*
A warrior is still an honorable profession.
First one must serve an honorable master.
Be seeing you.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/10680/the-atomic-widow-prevails-at-last/
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