False Dilemmas I: Love the Soldier, Hate the Military

Here's a question that I was asked by a student at a recent anti-war protest:

"Professor Kurgman, I know that we should protest Bush's genocidal oil war because it is killing our soldiers. But isn't the U.S. Military also the enemy of the people? How can I reconcile these views?"

I thoughtfully considered his remarks, and then told the student that his question is very stupid. Of course it is possible to be concerned about the soldiers and to also hate them.

First, as any mother can tell you, our children are being taken from our bosoms and hurled onto Haliburton-manufactured minefields for sport. Our children, our future, are being sacrificed for Dick Cheney's sick sexual fantasies. (Speaking of which, when will the trial be held for his "hunting accident" murder?) This murdering of our children makes me want to scream, which in fact is what I was doing all weekend in order to stop the war.

But yet, I also scream at individual soldiers. Or, at least at heterosexual soldiers because they are racist homophobic imperialist killing machines who discriminate against sexual minorities and are only interested in gratuitously torturing people in other countries. Ideally, we would have an all-gay army that would be pacifist and sympathetic towards other cultures. And an all-gay Army of Color would of course be even better. Best of all (at least in the context of our mongering aggression against Iraq) would be an all-Islamic army. What better way of showing our solidarity with the People of Islam than to send our own American Islamic Army to their nations with gifts procured from our capitalist criminals?

Realistically, though, we won't be having an all-gay or an all-Islamic military in the near future. Therefore, the only feasible option is to reduce military spending by about 100%, and reallocate these funds to teachers unions to educate our children. Which brings us to the only downside of disbanding the military, which is the jobs that returning soldiers will be stealing from union workers. So, in order prevent a war between the working class and the war-criminal class, we will need to greatly increase taxes on business profits.

I would explain more, but I'm afraid this is all I can say for now to an audience that is not paying tuition.