Summer 'war' camp kids chant 'Ooh, aah, ooh, aah, I want to kill somebody.'

[MiaCulpa]

Source: Raw Story

Climbing ropes and crawling in the mud under barbed wire, dozens of American high school kids at an unusual summer camp vied to see who could get most dirty as they tackled an Army obstacle course.

And as they ran between obstacles in the woods, the kids shouted Army chants. Asked by a cadet if they were motivated, they shouted back in unison: "Motivated, motivated, downright motivated. Ooh, aah, ooh, aah, I want to kill somebody."

Each summer, 800 high school kids hoping to become soldiers spend a week at West Point to see what life is like at the prestigious U.S. military academy for future army officers.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan straining the U.S. military and public support low for the Iraq war, recruiting future officers might seem a tough sell. But officials say applications to the summer program are at a record high.

West Point says it recruits "scholars, leaders and athletes." Kids at the Summer Leadership Seminar, a week-long residential program held over two sessions, have top grades and are strong in sports and extra-curricular activities.

Full story and video at the link...

Read more: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Video_War_camp_kids_chant_Ooh_0628.html

---

Just when I think I can't be shocked anymore.

-Diane

[stray cat]

1. 16-18 year olds who are thinking about attending West Point

getting a taste of West Point.

[Faygo Kid]

2. Same thing happened in Germany in the 1930s.

Worked then. Maybe it will work here now. Not.

[tabasco]

47. Puh-leeze.

This is voluntary for students considering a military career.

If they don't like it, they can do something else.

[gristy]

3. I was at a company picnic yesterday and we had a fun and games thing

Our team's "chant" was "ooh aah". :puke:

[Indenturedebtor]

52. Isn't it Ooo Rah? n/t

[patrice]

4. Genuine Defense is good. Anything else that robs these people and others of their Human souls is

DAMNABLE (as in it WILL Damn this country to Hell) BLASPHEMY!

[dsc]

5. I actually went to this when I was between junior and senior year

and it surely wasn't like that. Let's just say though, it cemented my incapatabiliy with military service. I would have been busted so fast.

[ohio2007]

6. kids these days

gotta keep em seperated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhVDwrfoTOg&feature=related

[pattmarty]

7. I WANT TO FUCKING TO MOVE TO........................ ANYWHERE BUT HERE!!!!!!!!!!!

[Oregone]

8. Then do so already, please...

Im not sure what some people are waiting on

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Arctic Dave]

14. I think the post was rhetorical numbnuts.

But you knew that didn't you.

[Oregone]

25. No, I didn't.

Maybe they do want to move. I think they should if they want to.

[pattmarty]

31. You knew what I meant ( and saw a certain deleted msg).

[Oregone]

34. I was out...never saw the message.

So Im still a bit confused why anyone should jump down my throat for encouraging someone who wants to leave to do so.

[awoke_in_2003]

20. Do you know how hard it is

to emigrate? Most nations just don't welcome everyone with open arms.

[Duke Newcombe]

21. The irony of that statement, on DU, is gobsmackingly evident. n/t

Duke

[awoke_in_2003]

22. How so?

Because people get kicked off here if they stir up shit? That is the right of the site owners. People don't have to come here.

[Oregone]

23. Yes I know.

I have an immigration/residency Visa on my passport.

[awoke_in_2003]

24. Which country? nt

[Oregone]

26. Canada

We will give it a spin in a few weeks.

[awoke_in_2003]

29. That is probably gonna be my fall back

I will have some good points in a couple years- dual bachelors degree in Aerospace and Mechanical engineering.

[awoke_in_2003]

9. New Zealand is where I would go

if I could. Small population, real border security (Pacific Ocean), and they tend to stay out of peoples business. And, unlike Australia, no poisonous snakes.

[Catch22Dem]

16. WAAAAAY too many fucking christians

Not that we have it any different here.

[awoke_in_2003]

18. Damn, that ruins it for me

being an atheist and all. Too bad Sweden is so damn cold.

[nwliberalkiwi]

54. In New Zealand Now

Great place---great people---to hell with Amerika we're not going back!!!!!!!!!!!

[kuratowa]

57. New Zealand

How easy was it to emigrate?

[Arctic Dave]

13. Why move? Stupid is universal.

Check post below you to find out.

Be the change.

[awoke_in_2003]

19. Well, I would move

so that I was around less stupid. My biggest worry, though, is my 7 year old boy. One day he will be 18, and be registered with selective services. I refuse to send him off to be killed just so a few asshats can get richer.

[Oregone]

28. I feel the same way regarding children.

Is that a chance you are willing to take?

[awoke_in_2003]

30. No, not at all

a parent should not have to bury their children, the children should bury (cremate in my case) their parent. My mother died when I was 13. My grandfather never got over it.

[Oregone]

27. Its universally stupid to force your family to live in a less beneficial environment

especially one that you do not feel you can enhance, or cannot do so without interfering at you pursuit of happiness and family life. At DU, we scream about the worries of corporatism, fascism, and what George Bush has done to America. We've seen the bottom falling out for years, and we know how much further we are looking to go and the pain ahead. Well, is that all rhetoric, and just talk...is Bush/the fascist really not that bad at all? They probably aren't to the people willing to live here another 50 years, raise their children here, and have their children's children raised here. But to me, the pain and devastation (that which is and is yet to be) is all too real.

You may want to enroll yourself in the "good fight". Is it fair to enlist your children as well?

[galledgoblin]

33. better to stay and fight (n/t)

[Oregone]

35. Why?

What is the potential for the toll of the fighting to have on one's life vs the benefit someone can gain by fighting (if any at all, as an individual)?

What is the potential gain for relocating to a domain that you find in more agreeable with your values (and agreeable to your life, health, and pursuit of happiness), vs the "stress" and problems of doing so?

Seems like the "fighting the good fight" philosophy can often stem from little but dogma, and often neglect one's own family (who doesn't get an opportunity to consciously make the choice to fight).

[galledgoblin]

38. because we're in the right

and we can and are winning, not only the current short-term battles, but the long-term fight as well.

we leave, especially during the ugly moments where we're losing the battles, then fascists are all that are left... left with a massive armed force and an imperialist mindset. :scared:

besides, I hate moving, and I love my nook of the world. I'd hate to leave it and my extended family.

[Oregone]

39. Being right in the wrong place...

doesn't make your family immune to potential devastation, or guarantee the fight will be productive and safe (as well as a useful investment of energy, which could of been put in actually enjoying life).

In terms of the success of us winning the long term fights, Id have to question that. If American progressives have been winning the long term fights for some time, why the hell are we where we are at? Why is the gap between the rich and poor at an all time high? Why is the military industrial complex sucking our treasury dry? Why have all the good paying blue-collar jobs that were the cornerstone of our society up and disappeared? Why is housing and health care so unaffordable that young families have little more of a future life than promised indentured servitude? Why are children given the lowest chance in the industrialized world to improve their socioeconomic status and climb out of a well of poverty? Why?

If winning the good fight is producing this environment, whats the fuckin point?

[galledgoblin]

40. maybe I don't have kids

but if I did I hope I'd have the courage to stay. I would bring up my kids to be strong and support them in any way needed. I think I and the previous American generations of my family turned out all right, and I'm sure that I am capable of bringing up children here as well.

we are winning the long fight. yes, we aren't where we should be, and the last 25 years in particular have been very hard, but we're still steadily improving. why have they become so bad in the last 25 years? because the right started playing dirty and stopped pretending to be moderate. we suffered through Reagan, both Bushes, and Clinton did little except to slow the move right. but we can bring blue collar jobs back- we need to rebuild our entire transportation and electrical infrastructures, need to build all those hybrid cars or convert existing cars to hybrids, need to tear down and rebuild, and that is all going to take men and women who can work with their hands. I'm graduating with thousands and thousands of dollars of college debt, I am already an indentured servant. but I can fight to keep future students and families and people from having to make similar decisions by demanding national health care and better housing policy and better education funding. once these demands start being met, the stranglehold the military-industry has on all of us will lose it's grip, and class socioeconomics will again become fluid.

I don't blame anyone for feeling the last 25 years hard. I do feel sorry for them if they cannot see that November will bring changes in this country that we have not seen since at least the 1960's, and maybe the 1930's. the worst is over, Bush and his cronies are in check by the democrats, and we need to keep the democrats in check and keep pushing them to the left. we cannot settle for half-way deals.

civil rights best prove that we're moving forward. 100 years ago women could not vote. 50 years ago, blacks were still second-class citizens. 10 years ago, gays and lesbians could and were still being arrested for having sex. and no, today these and many other groups still do not have full equality, but we're all still a hellava lot better off than we were.

[Oregone]

42. Courage is overrated

Life is short. Do what you must to enjoy it. Protect your loved ones in the process.

[galledgoblin]

44. heh. fair enough (n/t)

[Doctor_J]

45. I don't really see * and his cronies being in check

What brings you to that conclusion? Did you not watch the news this week? The Telecom immunity was "even more than the GOP (and their 23% approval-rating Resident) hoped for". Thursday and Friday two of the architects of the new US torture policy mocked and sneered at the US Congress because they know that they are impervious to the law. The grind toward an attack on Iran moved inexorably forward. The stock market continued its collapse. Congress is getting ready to sign off on funding for another year or so of occupation of Iraq. 15 or so US soldiers and marines dies in the ME. And Big Media ramped up its campaign for 4 more years of McSame.

If we were going to fight our way out of this, there would already be a big pile of bodies. This part is over. The fascists have won. The first, 4th, 5th, and 8th amendments have been repealed. Our votes don't count (rest assured there will be rampant election theft in November).

By any objective measure, we're very close to Duvalier's Haiti or Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Let the fascists have the country to themselves. They will go the way of Hitler and Mussolini and Milosevic and Pinochet, but only with the help of the rest of the world. Then the US will be restored to its rightful position as the leader of the free world.

[galledgoblin]

48. it's not the first time bad laws have been passed

hell, we've even had bad decisions handed down by the Supreme Court, which were eventually overturned.

when I say Bush and Co are in check, I don't mean they still cannot make any moves, but the big ones, like lobbing missiles at Iran, are now beyond them.

FISA, if passed, will eventually be overturned. the main part of FISA that bothers me is one of the amendments, the one that give immunity to the Bush Administration from prosecution. the others we can take a little more time to overturn, but that amendment has a short timetable- Cheney is, what, in his 70's? even if he's in his 60's, it's an unhealthy 60's. I will be enraged if he dies comfortably in bed before facing justice.

"the fascists have won" "our votes don't count" "by any objective measure we're close to Duvalier's Haiti or Mugabe's Zimbabwe."... look, I'm no optimist- I'm a realist, and usually a pessimistic one at that. I know life is hard and ugly right now, and we're fighting every day, but this is hardly the nightmare you seem to think it is. the stolen elections were done with loopholes that only work with close elections. this time around I think we could potentially have a LANDSLIDE. that kind of an election cannot be rigged.

you want to run, fine, but I think you'd be making a mistake that you would regret.

[indepat]

11. Wonder what kind of citizens those who salivate at the though of killing someone

will become? :D

[Journeyman]

12. "The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines. . ."

"Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts — a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing. . . . The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well."

Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience (1849)


Reading the comments in this thread, it would be easy to believe many have no historical perspective whatsoever.

[JohnyCanuck]

15. That "killer" attitude is just what's needed when you are sent off to steal someone else's oil.

Off course you might feel somewhat shitty about it afterwards, but Dick Cheney and his buds will be most appreciative of your efforts.

Welcome Home, Soldier: Now Shut Up


By Paul Rockwell


27/06/08 "BlackCommentator" -- - -There are two kinds of courage in war - physical courage and moral courage. Physical courage is very common on the battlefield. Men and women on both sides risk their lives, place their own bodies in harm’s way. Moral courage, however, is quite rare. According to Chris Hedges, the brilliant New York Times war correspondent who survived wars in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans, “I rarely saw moral courage. Moral courage is harder. It requires the bearer to walk away from the warm embrace of comradeship and denounce the myth of war as a fraud, to name it as an enterprise of death and immorality, to condemn himself, and those around him, as killers. It requires the bearer to become an outcast. There are times when taking a moral stance, perhaps the highest form of patriotism, means facing down the community, even the nation.”


More and more U.S. soldiers and Marines, at great cost to their own careers and reputations, are speaking publicly about U.S. atrocities in Iraq, even about the cowardice of their own commanders, who send youth into atrocity-producing situations only to hide from the consequences of their own orders. In 2007, two brilliant war memoirs - ROAD FROM AR RAMADI by Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, and THE SUTRAS OF ABU GHRAIB by Army Reservist Aidan Delgado - appeared in print. In March 2008, at the Winter Soldier investigation just outside Washington D.C., hard-core U.S. Iraqi veterans, some shaking at the podium, some in tears, unburdened their souls. Jon Michael Turner described the horrific incident in which, on April 28, 2008, he shot an Iraqi boy in front of his father. His commanding officer congratulated him for “the kill.” To a stunned audience, Turner presented a photo of the boy’s skull, and said: “I am sorry for the hate and destruction I have inflicted on innocent people.”

The Winter Soldier investigation was followed by the publication of COLLATERAL DAMAGE: AMERICA’S WAR AGAINST IRAQI CIVILIANS, by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian. Based on hundreds of hours of taped interviews with Iraqi combat veterans, this pioneering work on the catastrophe in Iraq includes the largest number of eyewitness accounts from U.S. military personnel on record.

SNIP

War crimes are collective in nature. Especially in wars based on fraud, soldiers are expected to lie - to their country, to their community, even to themselves. The silencing process begins on the battlefield in the presence of officers, power-holders who seek to nullify the perceptions and personal experience of troops under their command.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20191.htm

[gratuitous]

17. The High Church of Redemptive Violence is very evangelical

It needs more recruits all the time, and even its pervasive and pernicious influence permeating our society isn't always enough. Violence has to glamorized, ritualized and sanitized to appear as wholesome and star-spangled All American as it does. It's hard werk.

[formercia]

32. Warrior Nation

It starts with team sports. Us against them. The mindset is drilled into everyone from the time they begin to watch TV or go to school.

This whole fucking country is about us against them.

Even here, it's us against them.

The mindset is so pervasive, you don't even give it a second thought.

[Karenina]

36. Your post says it all.

How 'bout that "Jesus Camp," eh?

[formercia]

46. Making little 'Killer Crusaders.'

Teaching them the joy of hate.

You can't have sex until you're married.

Murdering non-believers is an outlet for all of that hormone-driven nervous energy.

[caraher]

37. And it's even worse in sports thanit used to be

I'm not too surprised to see football coaches adopt "themes" based on military recruitment slogans. That's about as close to war as typical organized activities get in a high school or college.

But I've seen swim teams chanting, "Blood makes the grass grow!" WTF? This is who can swim faster, not mortal combat!

While I don't agree with all his prescriptions, Dave Grossman has done fascinating work that probes what it takes to make a killer, as well as the cost. Grossman has the military background and generally conservative outlook that allow right wingers to hear what he's saying; they can't tune him out the way they might ignore or mock peace activists. http://www.killology.com/art_psych_casualties.htm">From his analysis it's obvious that the nature of the fighting and the lengths of deployments in Iraq almost inevitably destroys the men and women sent there.

The only way to truly "support the troops" is to bring them home. They won the war in 2003, but this endless occupation is destroying our military. (So nice of McSame to say he's fine with a century of passing young people through the meatgrinder...)

[Joanne98]

41. This will be on their criminal records someday.

When the public demands to be kept safe from government trained serial killers. And it WILL happen.

[coffeenap]

43. Part of their training should be to go to a veteran's hospital

and see reality. Then, perhaps, view films of the children killed and injured in Iraq. I can't stand this.

[Flagg]

49. The fascist elite of tomorrow

[Mudoria]

50. Not really

:eyes:

[Bush_MUST_Go]

51. Get 'em while they're young... get 'em while they're young.

[ohio2007]

56. see post # 6

only the "infantry" is younger then that.

[provis99]

53. actually, it sounds like the West Point staff are putting on the kids

The ones they want to weed out, the "weaklings", are the ones who demonstrate a little too much enthusiasm for war and military-fetishes. The many West Pointers I've met, as well as the staff and professors, seem like the least militaristic people alive. Cynicism about war and the use of the military is common, and contrary positions to right wing propaganda are commonplace.

West Point ain't the Citadel or VMI, two places that are geared to turning out little fascist Bushista types. Its quite a bit different, more like a CalTech for people who happen to wear a uniform.

[Posteritatis]

55. That's good to hear at least

I've looked at West Point now and then over the years (out of curiosity, not admissions interest - I'm already in grad school and a Canadian nonetheless) and some of their programs looked rather less militarist than some civilian schools I've seen. There's a military focus - duh - but it seems to be where one makes sense, as opposed to crammed into the language or law departments. Their history department's looked consistently interesting (and organized), though the workload they attach to the courses looked kind of limited. Then again, I don't know what kinds of standards they put on the things, and I know the place has a solid reputation academically.

If they're actually churning out educated officer material like they're supposed to be - and if they're trying to filter warmongers in the admissions process - more power to 'em. I haven't heard a tithe of the horror stories out of them as I have from the Citadel or VMI, in any case.

(And, well, they've got that endearingly standard perpetually-under-construction university webpage. I swear people probably go to school for decades to learn how to maintain those in juuuuuust the right level of utter disarray, heh.)