https://socialistaction.org/2018/02/24/mitch-linck-why-i-am-running-for-u-s-senator-from-connecticut/
Mitch Linck: Why I am running for U.S. Senator from Connecticut
/ 18 hours ago
By MITCH LINCK
Mitch Linck is the Socialist Action candidate for the U.S. Senate from
Connecticut.
I want to talk a little about what I learned from my time in Iraq, and
how it can help us understand our situation today.
By the time I was 17, there was no one who could tell me that joining
the military was not the best thing I could do with my life. I joined
shortly after high school, and it was not long before I was living my
dream of going to Iraq to free a people from a “brutal dictator” and to
bring them democracy. After I arrived, however, it was not long before I
realized that everything I had been told, believed, and held as obvious,
was simply lies.
I couldn’t tell you exactly how I came to this, but one moment stands
out when everything turned upside down. My unit and I were patrolling
through the streets of Fallujah, Iraq. Some kids, maybe 15 or 16 years
old, took a few shots at us from a rooftop and ran off. I was not much
older than them, really—just 18. We took cover in a house, and the
realization came over me that I had so much more in common with these
kids than I did with anyone who had decided we should be at war.Feb.
2018 GIs Iraq
I came to see that being in Iraq, we were making things worse, not
better. We were not making anyone safer. And that the things I had done
were going to hurt for a long time. And that the scars I will carry are
small in comparison to those of the society we decimated in the Middle East.
As my time in the military came to a close, I started asking myself: For
all the blood spilled in Iraq and Afghanistan, did we make anyone’s
lives better? For all the money spent did we make this world a more just
or equitable place? For the 22 suicides that veterans commit each day
from the trauma of fighting an unjust war, is anyone safer?
No. But the rich made billions of dollars. They made it off weapons that
blew up Iraqi infrastructure. They made it by controlling the flow of
oil. They made it off no-bid contracts to repair the infrastructure that
helps the rich suck ever more resources from the country. They made it
from employing people like me as private contractors to protect the oil
fields.
This is what the Iraq war was always about. It was about destabilizing
the Middle East to ensure the dominance of American business. It was
about profiteering from the destruction of countless lives, Iraqi and
American. It was about protecting the American dollar. It was to further
entrench the military industrial complex in the Middle East.
And so, I discovered that the real aims of the war had nothing to do
with why I decided to pick up a gun and fly thousands of miles from home
to join it.
I did not want to go to war to make the rich richer. I did not want to
go to war to defend a system that benefits when more people are sick or
in prison. I did not want go to war to protect a system that lives by
destroying our environment and bringing us always closer to total
ecological collapse.
I did not want to go to war to protect a system and a class that lets
some people take private helicopters to work while the people who
produce their wealth, working people, have to take hours on a neglected
public transit system every single day.
What I wanted, when I went to war, was to make a more just world. This
is why most young people decide to fight. But fighting in a war doesn’t
let you decide its purpose, or even your own role. When you fight for
the American military you fight for the rule of American capitalism.
Whether it is in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Kosovo,
Vietnam, or Korea, or anywhere else.
When you put on that uniform you don’t enter a democratic organization.
More than any institution on earth, the military has perfected the art
of coercion. The orders flow from the top on down. And at the top are
generals tied to the ruling rich by a thousand threads. They trust each
other with their lives.
This military, the police, other armed forces, and a massive unelected
bureaucratic state machine, enables the rich to maintain an order where
you have to work for them in order to live. Where you make them
wealthier every day just so you can make it to the next week.
And when you step into that workplace, you do not step into a democratic
organization either. There may be a few more smiles, but the orders
still come from the top. And if you disobey, or show too little
enthusiasm, or work a little too slowly—you’re out on the street. You
have no more real say in the aims of your job than I had in the invasion
of Iraq.
You fight for your boss every day. You bleed for your boss. You pay for
your boss’s wars. You compete with other workers for your boss’s jobs.
You compete with other cities and towns for your boss’s
investment—investment made with profits created by you.
They have you fighting your allies: your fellow workers, here and around
the globe. They have you serving your enemies: The banks, the
corporations, the richest few thousand people on earth.
• Do you go to work to make the ultra-wealthy richer?
• Do you pay taxes to imprison and deport your neighbors and family?
• Do you pay taxes to imprison and murder children in the streets?
• Do you pay taxes to send kids to kill people around the world?
• Do you go to work every day to destroy the basis of human life on this
planet?
This is what the billionaires who run this society do with the wealth we
make by our own hands, whether we like it or not. We do what the bosses
say on the job. We do what the police and the courts say everywhere
else. Like the generals, they are on the side of money. As are the
politicians who make the laws the police and the courts enforce.
We do what they say because they are organized better than we are. We do
what they say because we are confused. Confused about our interests and
about who the enemy is. And no less confused than I was on the streets
of Fallujah.
A few thousand rich people have nearly everyone in the whole world
working for them and fighting each other. We will only be able to do
something about our situation when we join with working people around
the planet to fight our common exploiter.
Everywhere the bosses have power we need to organize our own power. And
if we are going to crack their hold on this earth, we not only need to
organize on the job, in the streets, and on the campuses, we need to
organize independently from their political leadership. We need to
organize independently from their parties, the Republicans and
Democrats. And if we’re to have a chance, if we’re serious, we need to
organize our own party.
That’s because, to win our emancipation, working people cannot simply
put a few top hats in jail and call it a day. We are compelled by our
situation to create a new society. This means realizing the liberation
of women, of African Americans, of LGBTQI people, of Latinxs, the
colonized, the immigrants, and the First Nation people. It means taking
the great productive forces we have created together and placing them
under public ownership and the management of workers.
The Democrats and the Republicans do not care about us. My opponent,
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, does not care about us. He does not
care about you. He is a professional politician. Chris Murphy and
politicians like him make policies for the ultra-wealthy, not workers.
We need a party of our own—a party that fights every day for the
interests of those most exploited by capitalism. A party that has at its
very core the idea of taking power from the capitalist class and putting
it in the hands of workers.
That’s why I’m running as a socialist candidate for U.S. Senate against
Chris Murphy. My party, Socialist Action, believes workers and oppressed
people can build a truly democratic society organized to satisfy human
needs, rather than corporate profit.
Help us bring this message to your coworkers, your campus, and your
neighborhood. Volunteer, host a house party, or make a donation to help
build this campaign. Vote Socialist Action in 2018! Vote Fred Linck for
U.S. Senate in Connecticut.
March 2018 Mitch Linck
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February 24, 2018 in Anti-War, Connecticut, Elections.
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