Worm in the Heart (Contd)

Several months back I suggested that a danger lurking inside the Iraq "war" campaign is the rise in extreme Right and Racist elements in US society. The Aryan Nation and Tim McVeigh are standard icons of this danger, what I call "worm in the heart" and the "monster within." Should they gain military training, I suggested, the danger to US society will grow exponentially.

In those earlier postings I suggested that gang members as well will infiltrate the military, gain combat training, and return to the homeland with more than just PTSD on their minds. Now, it seems that those warnings are bearing fruit as military recruiters go after these unsavory groups to meet the miltary's demand for "boots on the ground."

As attrition, death, injury, and burnout take their toll on the troops in Iraq, we can expect more of these retrograde elemnts in American society to learn more military tactics and indifference to death and suffering and bring those virtues home with them. ...

According to the NYTimes:

An article in the National Alliance magazine Resistance urged skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units.

The Southern Poverty Law Center identified the author as Steven Barry, who it said was a former Special Forces officer who was the alliance's "military unit coordinator."

"Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman's war," he wrote. "It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and 'cleansed.' "

He concluded: "As a professional soldier, my goal is to fill the ranks of the United States Army with skinheads. As street brawlers, you will be useless in the coming race war. As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood."

Who knows, maybe we will soon have a phrase to equal the noxious "going postal." How about "saddam's revenge" or maybe "Fallujah Follies"? Not very catchy, I know. But you get the picture.

And from several years ago already:

Photographed carrying a terrified, half-naked Iraqi child to safety in March of 2003, Army Spc. Joseph Dwyer, of Mount Sinai, was on front pages across the country, a potent symbol of American heroism.

Friday morning, Dwyer, 29, was arrested in El Paso, Texas, after a three-hour standoff in which he fired a 9-millimeter handgun in his apartment.

Dwyer's family says he's suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and that he's fallen through the cracks of the Army mental health system since he returned two years ago to Fort Bliss, Texas, from his tour of duty as a medic in Iraq.

Lest we forget, these men and women were people of character and integrated personalities before they faced the terror of warfare:

James Jenkins left Hamilton for the Marines in 2001 as a solid young man and citizen, his family and a former coach say. He was a Nottingham High School graduate, a star wrestler and talked of turning his military training into a career with the U.S. Secret Service.

But something went terribly wrong.

By all accounts, Jenkins was an excellent Marine. He'd served two tours of duty in Iraq with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif. And of the many awards that were pinned on his uniform, one was a Bronze Star with a combat V for valor.

But the James Jenkins whose picture was plastered all over the news in the San Diego area two weeks ago was described as an AWOL soldier who'd gone on a violent crime spree with a stolen gun.

He'd robbed, kidnapped and even tried to sexually assault a woman he had carjacked at gunpoint. Police said he was considered armed and dangerous - and possibly suicidal.

Related Links

• Three Suicides in Special Forces Unit Raise Questions About the Attitude Toward Stress