The news from Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea has been uniformly disconcerting over the past few weeks and months. Reports of gross criminal conduct by US troops in Iraq are the most disturbing of all. There is a lot of speculation about what prompted these young men to rape and murder Iraqi civilians. Reasons ranging from revenge, stress and mental disorder have been cited. The explanation may be simpler than that. Garden variety criminal mentality may have been responsible for the cold and calculated brutality.
Motivations to enlist in the armed forces vary from soldier to soldier. Some do it for sincere patriotic reasons, some are adventurers and others do it for pride and tradition. But the overwhelming number of soldier recruits join sign up it for economic reasons. The armed forces offer many young men and women opportunities for education, job security, benefits and a structured life that they could not have otherwise afforded. However, there is a little known fact not advertized widely. The armed forces also attract their fair share of sociopaths with criminal tendencies. Men with anger and a penchant for breaking the law often enlist as cops and soldiers in order to find a socially sanctioned cover for their cruel and anti-social behavior. Even more worrisome than individual sadists and miscreants wearing lawful uniforms is when organized groups with violent philosophies do so for collective ulterior motives. When the government's own motives for warfare are corrupt, recruiting honest citizens to fight that war becomes increasingly more difficult. The ranks of the armed forces are then filled by individuals with corrupt motives of their own. Here is a truly scary story based on a report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks and fights domestic extremists groups in the US. SPLC reports that white suprmacist extremist groups have found a convenient way to train their own soldiers in combat at the expense of Uncle Sam. It is possible that Bush's dishonest claims of fighting terrorists there is proving to be a boon for terrorists here.
Racist extremists active in U.S. military
July 7, 2006 -- Under pressure to meet wartime manpower goals, the U.S. military has relaxed standards designed to weed out racist extremists. Large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the armed forces. Department of Defense investigators estimate thousands of soldiers in the Army alone are involved in extremist or gang activity. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," said one investigator. "That's a problem."
Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding racist extremism among members of the U.S. military.
"Because hate group membership and extremist activity are antithetical to the values and mission of our armed forces, we urge you to adopt a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to white supremacy in the military and to take all necessary steps to ensure that the policy is rigorously enforced," Cohen wrote in a letter to Rumsfeld.
Military extremists present an elevated threat both to their fellow soldiers and the general public. Today's white supremacists become tomorrow's domestic terrorists.
"Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists are joining the military in large numbers so they can get the best training in the world on weapons, combat tactics and explosives," said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project.
"We should consider this a major security threat, because these people are motivated by an ideology that calls for race war and revolution. Any one of them could turn out to be the next Timothy McVeigh."
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