Surviving Capitalism (Not) : An Afghan Year: My Road from Soldier to Socialism

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, April 29, 2018

An Afghan Year: My Road from Soldier to Socialism

Click here to access article by Adam Denker from The Greanville Post.

I found reading this article to be an emotionally gripping experience. Denker sounds like a very ordinary young American:

I joined the National Guard to pay for college. I didn’t really think of the consequences at the time. After all: I’m an American, I was raised to worship my country and adore the military, and I did. Receiving a college education seemed like fair payment for "service to my country".

It was a transforming experience for him.

... the worst part was what I was slowly being forced to accept: everything I had believed in my whole life was a lie. I had always been a patriotic American. I believed we weren’t perfect but that we were “the good guys.” I truly believed that the Afghans wanted us there, that we were protecting and helping them. But now, as I saw the war around me, and why it was being fought, as well as the inhuman attitude towards even the Afghan civilians that my fellow soldiers had, I couldn’t keep believing this lie.

There was no greater example of the lie than the contractors who were there.

But the worst was yet to come. Read (if you can) what he experienced and concluded looking at a five or six year old girl who was searching for and collecting old Soviet mines from a field.