Why I Will Never Join The MilitaryMike Sygula War is part of human history, we have fought each other for millennia. In most cases wars have been waged to take territories and resources. All major nations have won their power through blood and iron. Not a lot has changed today. Big players still try to dominate the world by playing out a grand chess game. They conspire to deceive and manipulate the public through propaganda campaigns and false flag operations, they often invent non-existent threats to justify their actions. Soldiers are led to believe that they are fighting for a just cause to protect their countries, but in many cases this is a travesty of the truth. The Iraq war began in 2003 but it was merely one of a legion of conflicts involving the US in the last 200 years. The pretext for invasion was the supposed threat to international security raised by Iraq allegedly possessing weapons of mass destruction. These were never found in the end. Initially, the American Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed that military intervention would cost no more than $60 billion and predicted that the war would not last longer than 5 months. In fact, the American-led occupation lasted for 9 years and may well have to return following the rise of the Islamic State. Brown University has estimated that it has cost the US more than $2 trillion, over 40 times the initial projections, and it could go beyond a staggering figure of $6 trillion. Some sources suggest the death toll has exceeded more than one million people. So what were the real reasons for this war? Just take a moment and watch this testimony by General Wesley Clark: Some of the countries he mentioned experienced American military intervention. Not everything happened according to plan, but lets focus on Iraq in this instance.The US and its allies hoped to benefit from this war in several respects but the main prize was oil. Iraq has one of the largest oil reserves in the worldand the US had already planned to take control of its supplies much earlier. The following statement made by Dick Cheney in 1990 before the Senate Armed Services Committee can be seen to reveal the true purpose of the invasion: Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a stranglehold not only on our economy but also on the other countries of the world as well. The Project For The New American Century In September 2000 the policy paper entitled Rebuilding Americas Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century was composed by the neoconservative think tank Project For The New American Century (PNAC) of which Dick Cheney was a member. Established in 1997 its main goal was to promote American global leadership. The report explains: The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. The PNAC document supports a blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests. This American grand strategy must be advanced for as far into the future as possible, the report says. It also calls for the US to fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars as a core mission. The PNAC report also: refers to key allies such as the UK as the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership. Switching from the dollar to the euro. In late 2000 Saddam Hussein switched oil trade from dollars to euros, which infuriated Washington. They decided to do so since they didnt want to trade in the currency of the enemy. The dollar is a fiat currency, it is not backed by anything, it can only maintain its position because it is used for trading worldwide. If more countries choose to switch to another form of payment it could have catastrophic consequences for the American economy. In this video from 2003, Stephen Harper, a Canadian politician who later became prime minister, and Australian Prime Minister John Howard delivered largely identical speeches urging their nations to join George W. Bushs Coalition to invade Iraq. The official explanation was that it was the speechwriter who was responsible for this imitation and that Stephen Harper was unaware of this plagiarism. Whatever the truth of this matter, when a political leader makes such a critical decision like sending their soldiers to war they should have the moral integrity to act in the interests of their own people independently. Iraqs Missing Billions and the Military Industrial Complex On January 17th 1961 President Eisenhower, who had been Supreme Allied Commander in WW2,made a famous farewell speech at the end of his term warning the nation about the looming danger of the military-industrial-complex. Since the date of this speech the American military industry has expanded on an unimaginable scale. The US spends more on defense every year than the next 10 highest spending countries in the world combined! According to a recent study conducted by Morgan Stanley (cited inBarrons, 6/9/14, p. 19) stocks in military-industries have risen 27,699% versus 6,777% for the overall market in the last 50 years. Eisenhowers fears have turned out to be true. War is a business and there are many ways in which special interests and particular individuals can profit from it. Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, the Development Fund for Iraq was formed collecting over $20 billion of Iraqi money from oil sales and assets seized from Iraqi bank accounts and wealth funds. The US and the UK were given the authority to use these assets to build new roads, improve health services and rebuild Iraq. Many of the corporations which acquired contracts for the reconstruction were connected to the Bush administration and the largest recipient of Iraqs resources was Halliburton, whose CEO had happened to be Vice-President Dick Cheney. The whole project ended up being a complete failure: the companies were stealing money, overcharging, delivering substandard work or doing no work at all. This documentary tells the story of what really took place. Iraq war documents leak On 22nd October 2010, the whistleblower website WikiLeaks released nearly 400,000 secret U.S. Army reports gathered from between 2004 to 2009 during the war in Iraq. This leak revealed a rather different view to official reports. Some of the atrocities include civilians ruthlessly killed by coalition forces, physical and mental abuse of prisoners by American troops and the authorities deliberately ignoring torture by the Iraqi security forces. Fortunately enough there were a few soldiers who decided to tell the truth about what has been happening in the wars in Middle East. Please take a moment and listen to what they have to say: What should be considered before joining the Army. In 2012 the US military suicide rate exceeded the number of deaths on the battlefield. We can not even imagine what horrific traumas these combatants had to suffer and how severely it affected them.Recent reports in the UK, for example, show that more than 10% of the British Army are unfit for duty. These veterans have been injured, are disabled or have serious psychological issues like post-traumatic stress disorder. In the UK you can become a soldier as early as when youre 16, and once you are 12 you can become a member of the Army Cadet Force. It isnt a surprise that at such a young age people are not fully developed emotionally and often dont realise the implications of joining the Army. They will have been attracted by ads and slogans which offer the prospect of a fantastic adventure. Having been brought up on a diet of violent video games and movies, these kids imagine that it will be great fun the thrill of a lifetime. The fun ends when you lose your leg or your best friend dies. War does not solve anything. War creates terrible human suffering, causes appalling environmental devastation and also wastes enormous sums of money. In 2012 the military budget in the US had reached $737 billion when only 30 billion dollars would be enough to feed all the hungry people on the planet for the whole year. Why would you want to kill anyone? Soldiers follow orders, they go to war, they kill their opponents who are just soldiers like them, they only fight because they are doing what theyre told or because they have to defend themselves from being attacked.Meanwhile those who send people to wars rip off the profits and sit comfortably in their offices while others are dying for their greed. How can we make a difference? The example given above showing Iraq war crimes is not an isolated incident, the difference is that it took place in times where it is much harder to control the information and it becomes easier to see the lies thanks to the Internet and independent media. Although I have highlighted the US war in Iraq it doesnt mean that other nations are any better. We can stop this slaughter but only if we work together. You can play your part by sharing this material with your friends, and especially anyone you might know who is thinking of joining the military. There will be several thousand people who will read this article. If everyone could share it via social media or with their network of friends this would massively multiply the numbers of people who read it and potentially change many peoples minds. We do our job trying to find out and connect the dots so please do yours and share this material with as many people as possible. We all have to work together, people are dying, trillions in taxpayer money is being wasted profiting the few. It has to end. I strongly recommend to watch those documentaries: References: Mike Sygula is a blogger and activist promoting alternative ideas to raise public consciousness of the important issues facing humankind. He is currently involved in establishing Awe Academy, an open source learning and teaching platform. You can learn more about Awe Academy 