The corrupting mud

I see in yesterdays paper an article where a female US soldier was demoted for mud wrestling and 5 soldier spectators received counselling. Interesting chain of events that brought back some memories. During the vietnam war a folk singer by the name of Arlo Guthrie had a very popular song called "Alice's Restaurant". As we all know the Vietnam war was a very bloody event where about 70,000 young American soldiers lost their lives and God only knows how many hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were killed by both the Viet cong and the US military. Young Americans were drafted, put through basic training, taught to be killers of human beings and deployed to practice their craft.

Now the song talks about being called to report for the draft. During the interview process it was revealed that the potential inductee had been ticketed for littering and as a result was deemed unfit to serve in the US military. It seems the logic is that if you litter you are not fit to kill people. The irony was not lost on an entire generation.

So here we have serving in Iraq a group of young Americans as part of the 160th Military Police Battalion Reserve Unit who having spent a year being shot at, seeing their friends blown up and suffering from the stresses that come from that type of existence being sent home. They have served their country well, done their patriotic duty, survived what must have been a hellhole and are about to return to their loved ones. can you imagine that they might have had reason to celebrate and have a party.

At some point during the evening it was decided to have a mud wrestling event and some of the young women participated, the young men encouraged this and watched the proceedings. Now that sound like pretty normal behaviour to me for a group of 19 - 25 year olds in those circumstances. But I guess that the oppressing presence of "political correctness" once again raises its wacko head.

These are soldiers, trained to kill, young people exuberantly celebrating the completion of their duty. These are reservists who have just experienced the worst horrors they will ever see in their lives. If they are psychologically damaged it will be from these experiences, not from seeing someone roll in the mud in their underwear. This is America, the porn and sleaze capital of the world where corporate cheating, playing hardball with lives, living in a country run by lawyers, where the President sets the example of "its OK to get a blow job from a young girl" just because he was in a position of power. This is the America that produced Jeffery Dahmer, Heidi Fleiss, Hugh Heffner, Jimmy Jones and Hannibal the Cannibal, peep shows, Michael Jackson, Rowe vs Wade, Al Capone, Strom Thurmond, the KKK and Ted Kennedy yet someone thinks these kids will corrupt or be corrupted by mud wrestling.

So the Army decides that this girl should be punished as an example and the soldiers who watched are put in counselling.

Once again I guess its just to complicated for me to understand.