Signing the Dotted Line

i’ve known individuals who never signed the dotted line--- they never took the $20,000 sign up bonus & they never pretended, lying to themselves beforehand, that when they were enlisted, that it would somehow be “peace time,” whatever that means. i’ve known folks who have worked at a gas station for years to pay off the bills that they could have easily caught up on, had they had the salary promised them, if they had become professional hired killers. and i am well aware that there are those that say that they had no other way to go to college, than to join the military. and i am well aware that these scumbag recruiters prey on the poorest neighborhoods, often seated right at the bottom of the stairwell of a subway exit. but i just don’t have any sympathy for you, if you have signed that dotted line--- because when you do that, you are saying that someday, somewhere, you won’t have a problem killing someone whom you have never met--- having stolen them from their family, having taken from them all that was life, for the purpose of the state--- you may even be sitting in an office in arizona, as i write this, “manning” a drone, that has entered any one of our prospective targets (victims), in order to beat them senseless & rape their land of their natural resources. if you come back & they hail you, you still signed the dotted line. if you come back in a box, you still signed the dotted line. you are a hired killer the minute that pen hits the paper & no amount of praying or “good deeds” when you get home, will rectify doing so. i have so much more respect for those of us that work our asses off every day in a country with a decrepit education system, no universal health care, 14+ million unemployment, etc. etc.--- because we stick it through--- we will never try and convince ourselves that even the possibility of killing someone else or helping destroy another people’s country will somehow solve our own problems.