The Harvest Is Coming, or No More Special Forces

Yesterday, Buzzfeed published a terrifying article describing the role of US special forces operatives being hired out by private companies to do the whims of foreign governments.  The United States is already the biggest exporter of weapons and other military technologies.  Now, as was the logical conclusion of the evil empire, the US is servicing foreign governments by providing a pool of mercenaries to do what they’re trained for: killing humans.  The United States is sowing some seriously destructive and violent seeds that will only bloom into fatal fruits.

The economy of our evil empire is supported largely by defense spending, weapons manufacturing, and technologies developed originally by research and development (R&D) grants paid for by the military.  This is what it means to be a warfare state.  This is why the United States is still at war in Afghanistan going on eighteen years (as well as to train more US Special Forces operatives).  The wars we fight today are not the wars of the past.  Unmanned drones piloted by a person hundreds or thousands  of miles away drop bombs on people who have no way of defending themselves.  If not drones, then special forces operatives – the guys they make movies about, they idolize in first person shooter video games, the guys that are so willing to serve their country that they train for years in the art of ending human life.  That gamut of training and preparing to be the most effective killing machine in the world is not a humanizing endeavor.  No one is advocating the pleasantness, goodness, or positive impact of those that work Special Forces.  At best, the argument goes that they’re defending our freedoms [sic] as Americans or that the enemy whom their killing is a depraved, soulless entity.  But the entire reason for being for a Special Forces operative is to effectively neutralize targets, or in other words: end human life.  I don’t sympathize with evil people regardless of what country they were born in, but dedicating oneself to the art, science, production, or profiting from the murder of others is a tragic and loathsome offense.

Violence and war is the option after creativity and dignity have been abandoned and that is exactly what the US is reaping with the current state of affairs.  We have abandoned dignity by allowing so many killing machines be allowed out of our borders to be used for their one intended purpose all around the world.  We have abandoned creativity by allowing the easy, deplorable, and effective solution of violence to dominate our actions in the face of conflict and problems.  We need a change of course.  We need to end the violence perpetuated, exported, and designed by our government.  We need to defund the Pentagon.  Bring the troops home.  Heal them.  Teach them and our collective sense of right and wrong that it is not honorable to pull triggers or drop bombs.  For a peaceful future we’re going to need, not only to radically transform the mechanisms and values of our society, but also suspend the atrocious nature of training and supporting troops that specialize in murder.  Conflict can escalate or de-escalate.  The former is the path to death while the latter is the path to peace.  It’s time to sow seeds of peace because the harvest is coming.