Shut up and do as you're told

Like many of my high school classmates, I was targeted by military recruiters.

In fact, I actually received a recruiting letter from the Marines when I was 7. It was a mistake obviously. Maybe they got my name from my subscription to Humpty Dumpty magazine or something. The local paper had fun doing a story on the Marines going after a first grader. My brother ended up joining the Marines but at least they waited until he was a late teen to chase him.

It wasn't the only time I encountered military bureaucratic snafus. When I was in the Peace Corps (a development, not military, organization, if you're not familiar), the Navy sent me recruiting information to my postal box in West Africa. I wrote them back a letter saying that I wasn't interested in the Navy and to please take me off their mailing list. They wrote me back saying "Thank you for your interest in the Navy. But you must be a US citizen to join. Please contact the US embassy in your country..."

There are two main reasons I never joined the military.

1) You have to be prepared to kill people. You have to be prepared to kill people in a situation that will almost certainly have nothing to do with defending our country. You may think it an honorable cause, but it will almost certainly have nothing to do with defending our country. And you have to be prepared to kill people whether you agree with the cause or not. You have to be prepared to go to war on the orders of one man, even if you think he's a reckless cowboy or a scum-sucking draft dodger. That's part of the deal. I wasn't prepared to accept this.

2) You have to be prepared to shut up and do as you're told. All large organizations' bureaucracies put its employees through lots of b.s. The military bureaucracy does so more than most. If you join the military, you have to shut up and do as you're told, no matter how absurd, how dangerous, how idiotic or how pointless the order. You don't have to like it, you just have to do it. That's part of the deal. I wasn't prepared to accept this.

A number of my friends who I think highly of who are presently serving in the military, as did my brother, father and grandfather. I know most of them are not fond of the two things I mentioned above. Some joined for other reasons; some enjoyed the experience despite the nonsense. However while they might not have liked the nonsense, they had to accept it.

Independent thinkers can serve in the military, but it is more difficult. For all the criminally deceptive 'Army of One' garbage, the military requires a high degree of conformity to function effectively. It's part of the deal. An army with 2 million commanders-in-chief would be a disaster. It's something you implicitly accept if you choose to join. I couldn't accept it so I didn't join.

Earlier today, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld reminder troops of one of those rules. After delivering a rousing pep talk to soldiers in Iraq where he told the them they were engaged in a 'test of wills,' Rumsfeld found the soldiers were roused in a different way than he might've anticipated.

One GI had the audacity/guts to ask the secretary, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?"

Rumsfeld reminded troops of the shut up and do as you're told rule, "You go to war with the Army you have" not the one you might want.

Another asked how long the Pentagon was going to continue its stop-loss program to prevent soldiers from leaving the service, Rumsfeld replied that it's nothing new and this is simply a fact of war (shut up and do as you're told).

And whether anyone likes it or not, he's right: it IS a fact of war. Occupying a country that didn't want to be invaded is a difficult job that requires a ton of troops; it's been reported that there are more US troops in Iraq now than during the invasion. Anyone who thought Iraq would require few resources after the actual invasion was horribly mistaken.

Rumsfeld added, "There's no way I can prove it, but I am told the Army is breaking its neck to see that there is not" discrimination against the National Guard and Reserve in terms of providing equipment.

Of course the real issue is this. The Pentagon received $379.9 billion of our tax dollars in fiscal year 2004. That's $379,900,000,000. And I don't think that counts supplemental appropriations that have been added since the regular budget was passed. That's over $1200 per American. That's a lot of money, even by Washington standards.

If soldiers in the most dangerous war zones don't have basic stuff like armor plated vehicles and are just told to 'shut up and do as you're told,' where the heck is that $379.9 billion going?

That is the question the rest of us should be asking Secretary Rumsfeld.