MILLIONS OF PEACE-PROMOTERS ARE SIDELINED AS MILITARY PROMOTION ROLLS ALONG IN AMERICAN 2010-2011

ANOTHER reason or opportunity TO MOURN: MILLIONS OF PEACE-PROMOTERS ARE SIDELINED AS MILITARY PROMOTION ROLLS ALONG IN AMERICAN 2010-2011 (Leaving many Brain-Drained or Brain-Dead)
Part 2By Kevin Anthony Stoda

This is the second part of a set of FEAST OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS remembrance articles (i.e. a show of support for the poor and innocent victims of mindless war-economics) and a protest roll-call
at,
by,
& for,
military families in the USA and abroad. Part of the narration of this second piece is derived from my older (2008) article, “SOME PARENTS OF VETERANS COMING HOME FROM IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN ARE HAVING TO GIVE UP RETIREMENT TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR BRAVE OFFSPRING”.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/WILL-AMERICA-CONTINUE-TO-M-by-Kevin-Anthony-Stod-101226-809.html
American’s need to begin to mourn and roué their predicament.
Then they need to demand change.
In yesterday’s piece, I focused on the fact that better education has its role in improving critical thinking and prioritizing in America—by demanding that American families and schools demand a greater debate of a system that is bankrupting us morally, physically, and financially.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/WILL-AMERICA-CONTINUE-TO-M-by-Kevin-Anthony-Stod-101226-809.html
Now, I want to reveal how the rush to keep up a military industrial complex and neo-liberal status quo of neo-colonialism is wasting the chance to implement long-term development and peace making strategies.
This waste of human capital has been reflected more-than-ever in 2010-2011 as run-amok homeland security goes after peacemakers left and right.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/23/fbi_expands_probe_into_antiwar_activists
“The FBI’s probe into antiwar activists is growing. In September [2010], FBI agents raided the homes and offices of activists in Chicago and Minneapolis. Subpoenas that were withdrawn have been reactivated, and a new subpoena was served to a Palestinian solidarity activist in Chicago.”

AMERICAN TRI-CARE—OFFERS NOTHING FOR OUR WAR VICTIMS
Another part of the closing down-of-the-American mind is reflected in recent news that the military’s Tricare insurance concept for veterans and their family is leaving many brain-victims unaided in the years following combat or combat arenas. Tricare is using the same head-in-the-sand pseudo-science that the anti- Prevention of Climate-Change Folks have used so well over the past decade.
“Tricare, an insurance-style program covering nearly 4 million active-duty military and retirees, says the scientific evidence does not justify providing comprehensive cognitive rehabilitation [to American war veterans). Tricare officials say an assessment of the available research that they commissioned last year shows that the therapy is not well proven.”
http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/2009-ecri-assessment-on-cognitive-rehabilitation-for-traumatic-brain-injury
“But an investigation by NPR and ProPublica found that internal and external reviewers of the Tricare-funded assessment [had also] criticized it as fundamentally misguided. Confidential documents obtained by NPR and ProPublica show that reviewers called the Tricare study ‘deeply flawed,’ ‘unacceptable’ and ‘dismaying.’ One top scientist called the assessment a ‘misuse’ of science designed to deny treatment for service members.”
http://uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=23435

OUTRAGEOUS COST ACCOUNTING AND BAD FOR ALL
Tricares’ treatment of American veterans of war is just the tip of the iceberg for the total lack of progressive peace and positive developmental consciousness required at the state federal, national, and international levels.

As a lifelong progressive for peace (with great leanings towards non-violent action rather than war to solve conflict issues), I have been concerned for decades as to how one-sided or biased both the American family and its educational communities ARE WHEN IT COMES TO TEACHING YOUTH ABOUT THE REAL COSTS OF WAR.
This disgruntlement needs also to include the super-ignorance promoted by mass-media for not mentioning most every real human and capital cost, i.e. when reporting on war. (Most of the time, American media has simply served as a propaganda arm for the powers that be---i.e. brazenly glorifying America's military power and its ability at times to put pressure on less blessed nations around the globe.)
Naturally, my concern has turned to dismay at times, especially, as in 2008, I received a copy of an AARP's article entitled dated that told America’s growing numbers of retired citizens that they would soon have to care for younger American generations—who are victims of political and global bullying or war-mongering.
That article was entitled,"When Wounded Vets Come Home". http://www.aarpmagazine.org/family/when_wounded_vets_come_home.html?NLC-WBLTR-CTRL=F1-52308

DESIRE FOR ALTERNATIVE REARING OF AMERICANS

I have shared elsewhere how in the months leading to the Coalition Gulf War with Iraq in 1991, I was astounded that my own high school students were being recruited in the hallways and cafeteria of one large Kansas high school (where I taught 1990-1991) to join ROTC as well as the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Meanwhile, other students' (of mine’s) parents, who had already been serving/training in the Kansas National Guard over the previous decade, had already been mobilized themselves and sent to Saudi Arabia by October 1990. (NOTE: Yes, one national guard center was headquartered across the street from that same high school.)

I had been raised in America during the Vietnam era, and I knew how heavy a toll that that particular war had had on culture, community, economy, and our family's. I had come to learn later, that still other youth whom I had grown up with were still suffering because their own parents had been untreated following war-related trauma during that so-called police-action in the Koreas in the early 1950s, i.e. now referred to as the Korean War.

From early 1980 through early 1981, i.e. in the days immediately after President Jimmy Carter and his administration activated mandatory selective service enrollment for males in the USA (Selective Service Act), I spent my own high school senior year (1980) considering:
(1) whether I could or should join the military and
(2) still be able to carry out (or live out) my democratic ideals
(3) and make sure that no My Lai massacres ever occurred again in my lifetime.
Note: Carter's call to have selective service started up in the USA in January 1980 came only weeks after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.

I finally decided to enroll in the USA Selective Service only under pressure from my family in January of 1981. However, I continued to ponder and rue my decision to enroll under family pressure for at least 2 months. Finally, in March 1981, I wrote the Selective Service and asked that my name be taken off the selective service registration list.

By writing that particular letter, I knew that my desire to one day work in the U.S. state department or as an ambassador for peace (working with my own government) had become very limited. (In short, I have always wanted to serve my country and make it more of the Beacon on the Hill that history has at times has called it to be. Asking for my name to be taking off the roll-call list for Selective Service in March 1981 made that next-to-impossible.)

The Selective Service agency did not answer my letter in the affirmative, but the staffer who did, in fact write me, did declare that they recognized receipt of the document. (They discouraged me from having other Americans make a similar request.) In short, although I have studied pacifism and non-violent action, including Gandhi's Satyagraha techniques, I have permanently separated myself from potential employment of these skills in a job with the U.S. military or with the U.S. state department because I felt any young person had to do what he could in 1981 to keep things like those that followed from happening, i.e.

- A decade of USA- covert-sponsored wars in Latin America (in the 1980s).
-Bombing deaths of over 200 marines in Lebanon in 1983
-Horrible lack of prioritizing on national spending, via the largest amount of military spending seen in the history of man over the subsequent 3 decades
-The misguided Privatization of American military and intelligence agencies
-The Invasion of Panama in 1989
-The Coalition War with Iraq 1991
-The war on Serbia and Kosovo in 1999
-The expansion of NATO into the heart of Asia, threatening again long-term stability with Russia.
-Military quagmires & boondoggles in Somalia (1991-1993), in Afghanistan (2001 to Present), and in Iraq (2003 to Present)
-Bad management of Peace in Israel, Palestine and the Middle East in general from the Reagan administration onwards (since 1981).

Alas, the state department and U.S. government agencies find me-and others like me-to be unemployable. Millions of young people would rather be making peace in the USA and abroad rather than serving in the armed forces (and, for example, costing the nation over million dollars to finance each dying soldier in Afghanistan in 2010) half-way across the planet as is the status quo today.
America, give your peace-makers real options to serve and stop persecuting generation-after-generation.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/299823