Our All Volunteer Army may be drawing skinheads and neo-Nazis ...

Hey, Bro! There may actually be a less-than-Spiritual reason for the horrors I wrote about in a previous posting earlier today. There're a couple of reports out there that suggest that the recruiting problems that the military has been having may be drawing skinheads (above) and/or neo-Nazis (at bottom of posting) into our military to fill its ranks.

Now don't get me wrong; I still firmly believe that there is an element of "evil" in every one of us and that Paul of Tarsus was right on in Romans 4 and 5 when he stated that the "answer" is in Jesus Christ -- whom I regard (like GWB, yes!) as my personal savior and guide ... and a lot more!

But that having been said, every time I look at a picture of Steven Green, the alleged "mastermind" [sic] of the rape/murder near Mahmoudiya (see previous posting), I see a perfect caricature of a skinhead-turned-Nazi-but-clearly-with-a-mental-disorder! He certainly doesn't take a particularly good mug shot, but then I always hate to show a bank teller my drivers license when making a withdrawal.

He kinda reminds me (in looks) of Timothy McVeigh, another "fun" guy, who blew up (with help) the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.

But back to the issue of this posting, the Army, in particular, has been having problems with its recruiting and The Poverty Law Center (PLC) has been collecting data that suggests that new recruits are more likely to be racists (among other things) than the population at large. The PLC's intelligence project director, Mark Potok, estimated that the number of "supremacists" in the current military numbers in the thousands. "Supremacist" is a term new to me, but one that describes racists who regard their own race as supreme -- like the Master Race that Adolf Hitler touted.

Of course, the Pentagon rejects the PLC study out of hand, but the PLC even identified websites that give advice on how to practice white supremacy in the military -- while staying under the radar, so to speak.

In the case of Green, shown in the photo above, the "mental disorder" that caused him to be thrown out of the Army (a couple of months after the Mahmoudiya incident, which is suspicious in and of itself) might very well have been some off-shoot of his being a white supremacist. The darker skin of the Iraqi people has always been a concern to me, having spent nearly a decade in the Middle East working largely with Caucasians, and having heard Arabs referred to as "ragheads" or being in need of deodorant, among other more inflammatory insulting terms or phrases.

Was I exposed to racism? Yes! Although most of it was directed to middle Asians (e.g., Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) by the Saudis or other Arabs themselves, I surely heard the term "raghead" used regularly by (in particular) the British.

I must admit that the US military with whom I worked were pretty good in that regard, but there was always a sense of white superiority that made me nervous almost anywhere I traveled in/on the Arabian peninsula. And homophobia? Well ... that's a story for another time, but sufficeth to state that many Arabs, in particular, were "accused" of being homosexual ... possibly stemming from the fact that most (in Riyadh) had either zero or three or four wives.

As for other evidence, well, I do recall an embedded television reporter mentioning some clearly racist graffiti on various walls and buildings in Baghdad, but that she was restricted from photographing it. I certainly agree with the restriction on photographs, but the evidence was obviously there -- at least at that time (about a year or more ago, as I recall).

And guess what? As I am keying this in, I am hearing about anti-depressant use in Iraq ... on Fox News, of all places.