War is a Racket

The latest move in off-loading responsibility for everything an elected and accountable government should do to the private sector becomes more horrific with the prospect of the Armed Forces being allowed to run state schools as military academies.

'Minsters believe that children in failing schools would particularly benefit from a military-style education,' according to the Daily Mail. This translates as letting the military directly target working class kids who, it has always and will always need to form the rump of obedient troops ready to lay down their lives for pieces of tin.

These schools will be taken out of public ownership and handed over to the military, which is responsible to the Crown. But wait, the whole basic training service of the armed forces is itself up for tender. Ready to be sold off to a mercenary, sorry security, company like the ones that have been so effective in shooting civilians in Iraq.

Why do politicians keep on down the road with the misguided belief that business can run a school better than professional teachers?

A lot of people think this is a good idea to combat the lack of discipline in schools. It may achieve that. But at what price? Limiting the choices to poor kids, directing them into the armed forces who are likely to send them on another aggressive war with poor equipment. Defending the country from direct attack is one thing. But being sent out to die in some forsaken land because it serves the bottom line of the energy business is another. When they come back with PTSD and broken bodies they'll be pushed out because they're no longer economical fighting units. More veterans of the Falklands War have subsequently committed suicide than died in the fighting. No one wins...

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.