Be All That You Can Be

The "New Army" may be sporting "Brownshirts" soon as the uniform of choice. The NYTimes reports, in Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts, on the newest recruitment tool of the all volunteer army:

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

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The report said that neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, whose founder, William Pierce, wrote "The Turner Diaries," the novel that was the inspiration and blueprint for Timothy J. McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war.

The groups are being abetted, the report said, by pressure on recruiters, particularly for the Army, to meet quotas that are more difficult to reach because of the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq.

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An article in the National Alliance magazine Resistance urged skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units.

The Southern Poverty Law Center identified the author as Steven Barry, who it said was a former Special Forces officer who was the alliance's "military unit coordinator."

"Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman's war," he wrote. "It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and 'cleansed.' "

He concluded: "As a professional soldier, my goal is to fill the ranks of the United States Army with skinheads. As street brawlers, you will be useless in the coming race war. As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood."

As Blue Force put it:

Turning a blind eye to neo-Nazis joining the military under any circumstances would be extremely bad policy (that's an understatement). Anyone remember that Timothy McVeigh guy? But doing so at a time when our military is engaged in two separate conflicts in countries whose citizens would raise the ire of neo-Nazis simply on the basis of their culture and the color of their skin is just beyond the beyonds.

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Undertaking remarkably demanding counterinsurgency efforts, while under the persistent threat of violent death from faceless enemies that deliberately blend in with the local population is enough to send many soldiers over the edge and into the realm of committing atrocities against innocents - even when they had the best of intentions upon entering the maelstrom. But sending in soldiers with the most insidious forms of in-built prejudices and a priori hatred is just begging for atrocities against civilians.

Digby of Hullabaloo also aptly observes:

But regardless of the strain of racism that already exists in that warzone, putting white supremecists in their midst and allowing them to spew their Nazi propaganda among those frustrated, frightened, bored soldiers is a recipe for disaster. Instead of the sort of common tribal hatred you might see in any dangerous warlike environment, you suddenly have someone providing a whole philosophy and intellectual structure for it. It's the perfect recruiting ground for white supremecy and gives certain types permission to act out their violent fantasies against those they already consider racially inferior. And they are also training them to think of it in ways that are very dangerous when they come back to the US.

What a policy in so many ways -- the U.S. Army says no to gays, but yes to KKK. I realize that this is the core of George Bush's base, but white supremacists in the Army -- in Iraq? Using a stint in the army as a training ground for the upcoming race war back here?

I don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone that minorities are over-represented in the military, as troops are approximately 20% black & 8% Latino. See, Conflict with Iraq. And white supremacists are going to be able to live and work side-by-side with these groups in perfect harmony? They like brown shirts, not brown people. I can just envision the results of this "mixture," especially with both sides armed.

UPDATE: My Left Wing also has an excellent post on this issue, Neo-Nazis, Hate Groups Infiltrate U.S. Military.

(Picture via Orcinus).

Tags: News, War in Iraq, White Supremacists, Racism