When Congress discusses banning TikTok to keep our children safe from Chinese government spying, what do they really have in mind? And is it a pretext to bring back the military draft?
The debate conjures up memories of when Congress adopted children’s interests in the No Child Left Behind Act, and inserted a provision allowing military recruiters unprecedented access to children’s data and enabled contacting children in schools in the absence of their parents. Military recruitment in schools is not allowed in any other Western country, and the United States did not ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child expressly so such predatory exploitation of minors could take place.
George W. Bush just happened to be in an elementary school on the morning of the 9/11 attacks, promoting No Child Left Behind, a law that tied federal school funding to military recruitment.
Visibly, it was not foreign terrorists that came after American youth. Instead it was the agents of the National Security State that were enabled by the Congress to misinform underage children about the nature of U.S. military and their activities abroad. Social psychologists have established that suicide terrorism does not rise from religious extremism, but is formented by resentment of the presence and actions of foreign troops in native lands.
The TV images of George W Bush with school children when the terrorists struck our nation momentarily convinced the public that our children need to be protected at all cost from some invisible evil that we must search for everywhere else. Congress subsequently passed unconstitutional bills authorizing use of military force (AUMF) in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Afghanistan AUMF literally has no exact military mission or specified limits. The Iraq AUMF accomplished its stated mission, but twenty years later Congress remains at an impasse to repeal it.
In 2004, The Washington Spectator detailed how President Bush’s extended family profited from their close ties to military contractors as he led our nation into the endless wars. American elites profit by starting wars, and sacrificing our youth to fight them.
The instant a baby is born in the United States they already owe $100,000 dollars, their per capita share of the national debt. The alarming amount per taxpayer is about 2.5 times as much. National debt is generally bought by the Federal Reserve—which leads to higher inflation—and by our major trade partners. These foreign governments already hold too many U.S. dollars, and they have little else to import from the United States except more govenrment debt. Washington DC has given our country the largest national debt in the world. Considering the debt ratio to the U.S. GDP is 70% consumption, our economy is not producing enough for peaceful foreign trade.
80% of the national debt has accrued since 2001, when the National Security State took us into the Global War on Terror to protect us from unspecified externals threats. The debt grew at an even higher pace after Barack Obama took office, with Joe Biden as his vice president. The National Security State received even more generous and covert funding. Joe Biden’s son is known to have been lucratively paid by a gas company in Ukraine, and predictably, this Eastern European country was next on the list for U.S. internal meddling and suffering a war.
Responsible Statecraft reported in 2022 that the Pentagon failed its fifth audit in a row, and was unable to account for 60% of its assets. Perhaps the real reason why the British are our “coalition partners” in global wars is that the United Kingdom is a financial center that coordinates the offshore tax haven network and hypothetically could be the Pentagon’s partner in laundering money.
Do we believe the National Security State that burdened children with this massive debt now actually wants to protect children from malign foreign governments? Absolutely not. Concurrently with calls for social media to protect children from China, frequent and shameless promotion of resurrecting the military draft started to appear in media. Articles blindly cite talking points in favor of the draft, without raising questions or concerns. Is this another No Child Left Behind moment, where our youth get channeled by Congress into military occupations?
The last time the United States had a military draft was for the Vietnam war, purportedly fought to oppose Chinese communism. With the current calls for “the great competition with China,” it is conceivable that Congress will choose to activate the draft again for another unpopular war, furthering the interest of elites who profit from weapon sales. The great competition with China is not inspiring to the majority of Americans. Such a conflict would come at great cost to both the American and Chinese people. On the other hand, cooperation brings benefit to all sides. Therefore, greater cooperation brings greater benefits. I hope thats Antony Blinken realizes that his current job description as the secretary of state is diplomacy with the goal of mutually beneficial cooperation.
Archaeologists have reported that Northern European cultures used a ritual sacrifice of a young male as a valuable gift to propitiate their gods. In America we no longer sacrifice people to the gods. So why do we still pursue sacrificing our youth in wars for the elite, and brand these wars as just so long as more of the enemy are destroyed? The more destructive the war, the more objectionable it is.
Let’s tell Congress what wonderful life plans we have for the years to come, instead of being misled into a war with China. Our children need family, friends, love, healthy food, a clean environment, great education and, most important of all—peace.
