Army's "Spiritual Fitness" Test

[Joe Hillshoist]

Soldiers may not know what they're getting themselves into, but as soon as they realise, they should stop. If enough soldiers stop, the wars stop. As unimaginable as that might be, thats what it is going to take, not petitions or marches or speeches in parliament. The bankers will keep the US afloat to keep its military at war to keep commodities cheap and taxes low to keep the bankers afloat and round it goes. The soldiers are the most sentient, but they're operating on lifetimes worth of bad data - see the US jump to bar soldiers from reading wikileaks, they know how important the Good War myth is, to smooth over the humiliation and horror and waste. Soldiers must resist, and we must do everything we can to support them in their right to refuse unjust orders.

I know Australian soldiers, and they swear to follow orders in good faith. They do so on the understanding that in a democracy they're following the will of the people. Now regardless of how cynical you or I might be about it, or how all the ex army guys I know are about it - when they join up they do so under the illusion that they represent us. That they follow orders but they don't implement policy cos that comes from civilians.

I can only talk about people I've talked to about it tho. And its a few at least 10, more probably. Not a huge sample overall. I have a mate who was in vietnam, and he described war as long periods of mind numbing boredom broken up by short periods of the most intense fear you've ever felt in your life. He reckons thats when the "bad stuff" happens and it isn't so much deliberate orders as fear and chaos and panic.

WE send our soldiers to Afghanistan - the Australian govt did that. Its a democracy so its "us". It would be a lot harder for them to question what they are doing when the overall picture is all "Aussies" support them.

Unlike Iraq where at the time of deployment less than 20% of the population supported the Invasion, and it wasn't even cleared thru parliament. IMO Howard should be charged with treason for that on top of everything else.

[wintler2]

Same applies JoeH - some soldiers may begin under the delusion that most aussies have made informed decisions supporting war, but i think experience does away with that delusion, and then comes the individuals decision point - collaborate/support, or resist. I may make the wrong choice and spend 15years supporting the exploitation of the weak, and still go on to live a beautiful life, but not without some serious grieving and reparations somewhere along the line. The evil that we do blights our lives, there is no escape from karma.

..If one is willing to risk ones life to kill, shouldn't one be equally willing to risk ones life not to, if that's what's right?

[Gnomad]

If one is willing to risk ones life to kill, shouldn't one be equally willing to risk ones life not to, if that's what's right?

Yes. Most people don't have that kind of moral conviction, though.

I love his story -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arndt_Pekurinen

In 1926, Pekurinen repeatedly refused mandatory conscription, leading to his imprisonment between 1929 and 1931. He refused to either wear a uniform or take arms. While Pekurinen was deeply religious, his motives were not based on his faith. While his contemporaries suggested he was Communist, he was not interested in politics. Because of his pacifist conviction, in the atmosphere of the Militaristic thirties he was deemed as guilty of high treason, and the Lapua movement harassed him relentlessly. In 1930, an international petition on his behalf was sent to the Finnish defense minister Juho Niukkanen, which included the signatures of sixty British MPs and notables such as Albert Einstein, Henri Barbusse and H. G. Wells. On April 14, 1931, the Lex Pekurinen, Finland's first alternative to military service, was passed. However, its provisions extended only as far as peacetime.

When the Winter War broke out in 1939, therefore, Pekurinen once again found himself imprisoned. At the onset of the Continuation War in autumn 1941, he was sent to the front, with orders to make sure he did wear the uniform, and bear and use a weapon. At the front he still refused to wear a uniform or bear arms. Following an order issued by Captain Pentti Valkonen, he was executed without trial. The first two soldiers (Sergeant Kivelä and Private Kinnunen) ordered to execute him refused; only the third, Corporal Asikainen, obeyed Valkonen's direct order.

After the war, an investigation of Pekurinen's death was begun but never completed. He remained effectively forgotten for over fifty years, until the publication in 1998 of the book Courage: The life and execution of Arndt Pekurinen by Erno Paasilinna. The city of Helsinki named a park Arndt Pekurisen puisto (The park of Arndt Pekurinen) in his memory.

According to the book by Erno Paasilinna, Pekurinen's motto was inspired by Jonathan Swift: "As people are not eaten, butchering them is of no use."

Today he is remembered as the forefather of the movement of refusing military service (it is still mandatory for all males, except Jehovahs Witnesses, and getting a medical exemption is very easy these days). He was willing to die for what he felt was right.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

"Spiritual Fitness"...

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/28/polic ... for-being/

TAMPA, Fla.- The wife of a military officer shot and killed her son on the way to soccer practice, then drove to their upscale home and shot her daughter in the head while she studied at her computer, police said Friday. Afterward, the woman told detectives she killed the teens for being "mouthy."

Julie Powers Schenecker admitted the slayings after officers found her covered in blood on the back porch of her home Friday morning, police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said. Schenecker's mother had called police from Texas because she was unable to reach the 50-year-old woman, whom she said was depressed and had been complaining about her children.

Schenecker's husband, Parker Schenecker, is an Army colonel stationed at the headquarters of U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. The father had been away for several days when the killings happened, said CentCom spokesman Lt. Col. Michael Lawhorn, describing him as a career Army intelligence officer.

Police said Parker Schenecker was in Qatar and was told of his children's deaths on Friday.

Julie Schenecker left a note detailing her plans to kill her disrespectful children and then herself, saying "they talked back and were mouthy and that she was going to take care of it," McElroy said. She provided the same motive to police who interviewed her.

"I think we will never understand how or why a mother could take the lives of her children," McElroy said. "That was the only reason she provided to our detectives."

The body of Schenecker's daughter, Calyx Powers Schenecker, 16, was found in an upstairs bedroom, McElroy said. The body of her son, Powers Beau Schenecker, 13, was found in an SUV in the garage.

An arrest affidavit said Schenecker shot her son twice in the head "for talking back" while driving him to soccer practice Thursday night. She drove home, went inside and shot her daughter in the back of head while the teen sat at a computer doing homework, then shot her in the face, the affidavit said.

McElroy said investigators believe the teens "never saw it coming." Both were killed with a .38-caliber pistol.

Julie Schenecker was jailed and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Wearing a white jumpsuit, she was led into a county jail later Friday visibly shaking and being supported by a sheriff's deputy.

Her Facebook page says she earned a bachelor's degree in physical education from the University of Northern Iowa.

Sylvia Carroll, who attended Muscatine High School in Iowa with Julie Schenecker, said she was a popular and athletic girl who starred in basketball in the late 1970s. They reconnected about a year ago on Facebook.

"I'm just in shock," said Carroll, who now lives in Austin, Texas. "I can't believe this."

The family's home is on a cul-de-sac in a gated country club community in north Tampa. Hillsborough County property records show that the Scheneckers bought the house in 2008 for $448,000. It now has a market value of $261,000.

[brainpanhandler]

This image appears in an Army pamphlet titled The Army Health Promotion Program - Spiritual Fitness




Are those camo vestments?

[brainpanhandler]

Some have argued that the CSF program is a syncretic new religious movement that blends Army values, Christianity, and positive psychology to make CSF an aspect of the larger new age movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehens ... te_note-10

Like this? -

http://www.spiritualfitnesscenter.com/

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Are those camo vestments?

"Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall shock and awe."

1997-
"Even though the detonation was staged to look like an accident, White House nuclear expert Dr. Julia Kelly (Kidman) is not convinced: SS-18 warheads can only be detonated deliberately. "

[23]

Speaking only from my own personal experience, the attribute which most successfully precludes someone from harming someone else is empathy, or empathetic compassion to be more specific.

The possession of ideological and/or moral and/or ethical convictions can sometimes do the trick.

But nothing is as successful as placing yourself in the other person's shoes... which is essentially the dynamic of empathy... to keep you from harming him.

Societies that cultivate good soldiers are rarely societies that cultivate empathy.

[crikkett]

Soldiers may not know what they're getting themselves into, but as soon as they realise, they should stop.

That's exactly right.

What would you have these pathetic souls do, wintler2, fight the entire fucking army, or STFU and get out alive?"

Here's what I have difficulty understanding about your point, Crikkett — and I sincerely hope that you can help me with this if I'm missing something.

Soldiers are supposed to be willing to risk their lives if ordered to do so for the purposes of killing the enemy, right? So shouldn't such brave souls be equally willing to risk their lives for the purpose of opposing unjust actions in war (including a refusal to cooperate in a war they discover to be unjust and evil), once they realize "what they've gotten themselves into"?

If one is willing to risk ones life to kill, shouldn't one be equally willing to risk ones life not to, if that's what's right?

You are conflating the issue. The issue is first whether or not compelling a soldier to complete a spiritual fitness test is a legal order, and secondly whether in the course of a soldier's daily life it is wiser to hang onto one's individuality and critical thinking skills quietly or loudly.

We're all together in mocking the hypocritical concept of a soldier's 'spiritual fitness' and we agree that shooting tv journalists and unarmed civilians is illegal, and killing in general is immoral.

What we don't agree upon is whether it is smart for a soldier to decide to endanger the quality of their life (which as a soldier is already guaranteed to suck) over something as pathetically small as a bubble test.

[23]

Early childhood training for "spiritual" soldiering:

[crikkett]

Soldiers may not know what they're getting themselves into, but as soon as they realise, they should stop.

That's exactly right.

If things went right that's the way it would be. But you can't just stop being a soldier. You sign a contract that's difficult to get out of. At that point the smart soldier realizes they're in a waiting game.

What would you have these pathetic souls do, wintler2, fight the entire fucking army, or STFU and get out alive?"

Here's what I have difficulty understanding about your point, Crikkett — and I sincerely hope that you can help me with this if I'm missing something.

Soldiers are supposed to be willing to risk their lives if ordered to do so for the purposes of killing the enemy, right? So shouldn't such brave souls be equally willing to risk their lives for the purpose of opposing unjust actions in war (including a refusal to cooperate in a war they discover to be unjust and evil), once they realize "what they've gotten themselves into"?

If one is willing to risk ones life to kill, shouldn't one be equally willing to risk ones life not to, if that's what's right?

That is a great ideal, Simulist, and you're right when you think that all new recruits are idealists. It's the only thing recruiters have to sell.

But that ends when you sign the contract, and hand over control of your life to your chain of command. From that point forward, in both officer and enlisted indoctrination programs, soldiers are not trained to differentiate between lawful and unlawful orders, and hold themselves to noble ideals. Soldiers are trained to comply without question, and they are taught to expect unquestioning cooperation.

By the way, soldiers are highly empathetic. That's incorporated into the training, in terms of collective punishment and collective reward. Its reinforced through living, working and possibly dying with their own, to whom they remain loyal unto death, while identifying 'enemies' as 'others', an existential threat.

Can I get a witness? Hugh?

[23]

By the way, soldiers are highly empathetic. That's incorporated into the training, in terms of collective punishment and collective reward. Its reinforced through living, working and possibly dying with their own, to whom they remain loyal unto death, while identifying 'enemies' as 'others', an existential threat.

Soldiers are highly selectively empathetic; an exclusive quality. I was referring to the more inclusive manifestation of empathy which includes all human beings.

Selective empathy is an ingredient of nationalism, to be certain. And arduously cultivated by most countries.

But I wasn't referring to self-serving selective empathy.

[brainpanhandler]

MAAF (Military Association of Athiests and freethinkers) has completed a six-month effort to gather and review data on religious preference in the military. 23.4% profess no religious affiliation. More members profess Atheism specifically than those that profess Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, or Judaism. These numbers show that nontheists are a significant demographic within the military.

http://www.maaf.info/demographics.html


Fascinating. I wouldn't have guessed that. It would be interesting to see how those numbers change, if they do, based on a division between combat experience vs non-combat experience.

[brainpanhandler]

Adherents of Positive Christianity argued that traditional Christianity emphasized the passive rather than the active aspects of Christ's life, stressing his sacrifice on the cross and other-worldly redemption. They wanted to replace this with a "positive" emphasis on Christ as an active preacher, organizer and fighter who opposed the institutionalized Judaism of his day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity

Seligman wasn’t a therapist for very long. “I’m a better talker than I am a listener,” he says. But he practiced long enough to discover that “even when I did good work and I got rid of almost all of [a patient’s] sadness and all of her anxieties and all of her anger, I thought I got a happy person, but I never did. What I got was an empty person.” Seligman blamed his difficulties on Freud. Psychoanalytically based therapies—preoccupied with what was worst in us, in thrall to misery, and reaching only toward “common unhappiness”—had sickened rather than healed patients; positive psychology, as the antidote to Freud, would be the panacea.

Freud=Jesus?

Herrenmoral v sklavenmoral

[Simulist]

Soldiers may not know what they're getting themselves into, but as soon as they realise, they should stop.

That's exactly right.

If things went right that's the way it would be. But you can't just stop being a soldier. You sign a contract that's difficult to get out of. At that point the smart soldier realizes they're in a waiting game.

What would you have these pathetic souls do, wintler2, fight the entire fucking army, or STFU and get out alive?"

Here's what I have difficulty understanding about your point, Crikkett — and I sincerely hope that you can help me with this if I'm missing something.

Soldiers are supposed to be willing to risk their lives if ordered to do so for the purposes of killing the enemy, right? So shouldn't such brave souls be equally willing to risk their lives for the purpose of opposing unjust actions in war (including a refusal to cooperate in a war they discover to be unjust and evil), once they realize "what they've gotten themselves into"?

If one is willing to risk ones life to kill, shouldn't one be equally willing to risk ones life not to, if that's what's right?

That is a great ideal, Simulist, and you're right when you think that all new recruits are idealists. It's the only thing recruiters have to sell.

But that ends when you sign the contract, and hand over control of your life to your chain of command. From that point forward, in both officer and enlisted indoctrination programs, soldiers are not trained to differentiate between lawful and unlawful orders, and hold themselves to noble ideals. Soldiers are trained to comply without question, and they are taught to expect unquestioning cooperation.

By the way, soldiers are highly empathetic. That's incorporated into the training, in terms of collective punishment and collective reward. Its reinforced through living, working and possibly dying with their own, to whom they remain loyal unto death, while identifying 'enemies' as 'others', an existential threat.

Can I get a witness? Hugh?

Well, thank you for at least trying to grapple with the issues I raised.

• The soldiers who come to realize that "what they've gotten themselves into" is wrong should then do what, exactly? Should they:

• (1) Make the choice to "STFU and get out alive" — and quite possibly continue to risk their lives by following orders to kill, even though they now know that this is wrong?

• (2) Make the choice to risk their lives by following their newly-informed consciences to stop cooperating with a war effort they now know to be wrong?

The first seems to me to be a thoroughly murderous, cowardly, and contemptible position. What's possibly even worse is that those who enable this deplorable behavior by making excuses for such soldiers are not only possibly enabling murder, they are also potentially consigning those soldiers to a lifetime of emotional pain, since some of these soldiers will no doubt have to live with the fact that they knew that what they were doing was shamefully wrong — and they nevertheless did it anyway!

I think soldiers who newly discover that "what they've gotten themselves into" is wrong deserve better than frail excuses being made for them to continue down the wrong road; they deserve the clarity of a moral choice that is within their grasp to make.


"No matter how far down the wrong road you have gone, turn back!"

— Turkish proverb