Henry Kissinger: soldiers are “dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns of foreign policy”

in a recent post, i referred to the obscenity of "sending our young adults desperate for work to fight and die in wars that only benefit the super-rich elites"...

glenn greenwald's guest blogger, murtaza hussain, expands on that topic in a post from wednesday...

The decision to send young men and women to kill and die in foreign lands is one which is often taken without much real thought for the welfare of these individuals, often barely past the age of adulthood, despite the massive amount of rhetoric and jingoism which surrounds their deployments. Soldiers are killed and maimed with depressing regularity, registering as a brief news story and then in most cases disappearing from the public consciousness forever.

[...]

Those in the United States who advocate war often cite the need to Support the Troops, ostensibly to show them legitimate support, but in practice usually as a means to stifle debate in order to further their own agendas. “Supporting the Troops” is an end-all response and bludgeon to any criticism of the massive, opaque wars being fought around the world; but how much does it really correspond to reality?

[...]

Of those whose lives are ultimately affected by war, the overwhelming majority have little or no say in the popular discourse yet are made to bear the brunt of others ill-thought out or malicious decisions. [...] Those who continue to call for more young men and women to be sent into the abyss of war but who choose never to pay the cost of these grave decisions themselves are the modern iterations of Henry Kissinger who in a moment of candor famously described soldiers as “dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns of foreign policy.”

it is anathema to the ruling, super-rich elites that our country should live up to its stated goal of government of, by and for the people... it we actually functioned that way, it would put an end to this bullshit right quick...

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