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this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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Okay cool, yeah we all agree about the troops, but the question is "what do we do with this information?" and "how do we leverage this to radicalize potential comrades"
As someone that actually organizes IRL we can't simply write off an important component of any potential successful revolution.
Writing them off and pushing them away out of a sense of moral purity is only going to leave them twisting in the wind and vulnerable to fascists.
I like the idea of dissenting soldiers and see the value of getting a Certified 1905 Moment™. An anonymous letter which heavily decries politics and the idea of political soldiers is just performative on its own. It's Step 1. Bushnell showed one form of Step 3. For this to have any real significance to me, I need to see that they're committed to some kind of Step 2. That Step 2, which the whole Certified 1905 Moment™ depends on, would require contradicting the first three paragraphs of this and admitting that war is political and a coherent response against imperialism/colonialism/genocide is political. Maybe it will come but I've been watching the military subreddit responses to Bushnell's self-immolation and it's 100% psychopathic.
It is literally a federal crime for soldiers to make "political" statements. Just signing this letter even as soft as it is is grounds for court marshal
Yes but that's my point. If the penalty for protesting and the penalty for rioting are the same, protests become riots. This is a political statement which uses political language to describe a political problem. It violates that article of the UCMJ and they face the same charge whether they write this or something more radical. They use the political language of milquetoast liberalism, that they're values-based patriots who hold themselves accountable to the highest standards.
Sure that might attract the handful of troops who otherwise starved Yemen for a decade without a letter, who are ideologically committed to the same ideologies perpetuating this war and consume hours of that ideology's media per day. This alone establishes the myth of the Clean Wehrmacht using the same rhetoric for the updated version of the same genocide. To this point they've been entirely responsible for this war without a peep, and like Bernie Sanders there's some arbitrary number of dead kids where it suddenly sparks their moral conviction. If what comes after this letter is something which recognises the reality of war and confronting it, something at least in the vein of a venerated general already writing War is a Racket, then I will treat it as a more serious trend indicating a real threat to the war. With this they're inviting the same criminal charge they'd otherwise face spreading Bushnell-level rhetoric to write "Gee golly we just love America and our values so much we don't wanna do this" as they press the Do This button 12 hours a day.
We must be extremely careful that support for dissenting soldiers does not undermine opposition to participation in the armed forces.
This is clearer if we talk about cops. If I start talking about how some of the cops are actually good and trying to change things what reaction does that conjure up in you? For me it immediately feels like it threatens to undermine all anti-cop work we do. It threatens to convince people that it's ok to be a cop if you're one of the good ones.
This same principle applies to the military. For me, the decision to promote radicalising military members really only becomes a viable prospect when we're actually approaching a sincere possibility of revolution. Outside of that specific situation it feels like it would undermine the work that has been so successful in harming their recruitment.
I agree on one hand but on the other "weeks where decades happen"
None of us can know when that moment will come.