Reply to Our Series on the All
Professional American Military, What Our Leaders are doing to ?The Boys?

This sensitive
letter is from a former US soldier, Rick Blumhorst, who served in Operation Desert Storm in
1990-1991. He, like many married men, joined the “All Professional Military”
during that period from 1982-1990 when interest rates were deliberately elevated
by a “tight money policy.” The Federal Reserve Bank of NY (the privately owned
central bank of the USA) forced the prime rate to over 10% in 1998 (it is
currently 4.25%) and manufacturers were forced to seek cheap labor abroad. We
thank Ricks Bloomhorsts for his willingness to share
the following. You may contact him at (author@whtt.org)

6/10/2003

Hello, Mr. Carlson –

Regarding the reasons that people join the
army -dont forget economic. That was what forced me into the
military.

I was raised in a former Marines house, and
had decided as a youth that I wanted nothing to do with the military. I had no
desire to ?serve my country?, no
sense of burning patriotism, certainly no desire to ?die for freedom.? I went to work the
day I graduated high school, and for the next ten years struggled to attain some
semblance of the ?American Dream.? My
wife and I were married when I was 23, and we began our family shortly
thereafter.

I joined the army when I was 27 years old.
We had 2 small children, my wife was pregnant with our 3rd child, I was stuck in
a dead end job working 60+ hours a week with no maternity insurance, and getting
nowhere. The economy in Oklahoma in 1988 stunk, at least for me. I wanted only to
feed my family and make a better life for us. I gambled that I would be able to
do my time, get out and get a better job with the training Id received. I
didnt realize how much the deck had been stacked against that happening, given
our governments eternal manipulation of foreign policy. 18 months into my
enlistment I found myself in Saudi
Arabia,
an unwilling participant in ?Operation
Desert
Shame.?

I was not alone in my situation, I found
quite a few men and women with similar stories, who had small children at home
and poor prospects for supporting them on the economy
as it was. Recall that during the Reagan / Bush years the economy was
transformed from a manufacturing base to a service oriented economy, with
disastrous results for hundreds of thousands of families. Many of those fathers
and mothers were forced to strike the same deal with the same devil to support
their families as I.

Desperate economic times enable the elite to
man their armies. Desperate economic times permit the note-holding elite to
gather even more wealth unto themselves, when they call
the notes due and foreclose. Remember that many people lost all they had during
the Depression, but the property they lost did not all simply vanish- it was
transferred up the food chain. As long as Alan Greenspan can manipulate the
economy to maintain a sufficient level of unemployment, some number of men will
be desperate. As long as men are sufficiently desperate to support their
families, they will sign up into the military. Fully half of the military was
married when I was in (1989-1995), I dont know what the percentage is now, but
doubt it has fallen.

I dont know what I would have done as an
alternative to the situation I was in prior to the military. The position I hold
today, I was able to attain from what I learned in the military and from
independent study I was able to accomplish while in the military. But it was a
high price to pay. It would have been far better had the government made
available funds that I could have gotten the training I needed to better my lot
without having had to sell my soul for 6 years and 9 days. I am grateful for
having been able to retrieve it (my soul) after my enlistment was finally
up.

Now I do everything I can to persuade young
people to not bite on the military lure that is cast. The cost is too high, more
that an 18-year-old can hope to comprehend.

Keep on keepin
on.

Rick Blumhorst

1989-1992 MOS 27N
E-724th Spt. Bn. 24th ID(M) Ft. Stewart,
GA.
1992-1995 MOS 35H
TMDE Spt. Center APG,
MD

For a related story you will not find on the
evening news read

?I
Just Pull the Trigger? By Bob
Graham, Evening Standard, in Baghdad

19
June 2003; Reporter Bob
Graham quotes many Americans in Iraq, among them one Cpl. Richardson, who he quotes as
saying:

“S***, I didnt help any of them. I wouldnt
help the f******. There were some you let die. And there were some you
double-tapped.”

Graham continues to quote Corporal
Richardson,? He held out his hand as if firing a gun and clucked his tongue
twice. He said once youd reached the objective, and once youd shot them and
youre moving through, anything there, you shoot again. You didnt want any
prisoners of war. You hate them so bad while youre fighting, and youre so
terrified, you cant really convey the feeling, but you dont want them to
live.”

Full story (http://www.marchforjustice.com/6.20.Trigger.EveStand.php)