Western-backed wars are having trouble recruiting, so who’s up for it?

Western-backed wars are having trouble recruiting, so who’s up for it?

By: Rachel Marsden

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — As U.S.-allied Israel opens up another Western-backed war against Hamas in the Middle East, the White House has assured that no American boots will end up on the ground — even in a peacekeeping role. Israel is Uncle Sam’s guy in the Middle East, so who will come to the rescue if needed, particularly as the conflict risks regional enlargement?

For now, at least, the Pentagon has been able to settle for just parking warships in the Middle East and cheering on Israel from the sidelines while occasionally calling an offside when bombs take out innocent Palestinians. Meanwhile, Canada’s elite special forces team, the Joint Task Force 2, is already on the ground in Israel according to Canada’s Global News.

And they’re probably not the only covert Western operators present. That’s how things are done these days. Washington at least tries to give the appearance of non-involvement in conflicts from Syria, where the Pentagon and CIA discreetly trained “Syrian rebel” proxies, to Ukraine where the people of that country have been serving as a battering ram for Washington’s interests against Russia. If they’re on the ground, it isn’t on the front line, but rather in a “training” or “advising” capacity.

But now that the U.S. is running out of front-line proxy fighters everywhere, something’s got to give. Either there have to be fewer wars or more proxies, with the former being easier to attain than the latter. Which is why Western officials are now broaching the subject of peace negotiations with Ukraine, according to NBC News.

So much for supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes. Better hope that Russia’s in the mood for settling now, huh? It would be like asking a neighbor to borrow his lawnmower after taking a baseball bat to his car every day for nearly two years. As was the case with previous messy exits from Afghanistan and Iraq, there were many exit ramps from the Ukraine conflict that could have been taken — all of which were recklessly blasted past like the benign radar of a friendly community speed watch volunteer whose warning could be safely ignored.

But now the West wants to wrap things up in Ukraine because they lack the proxy fighters to saber rattle on that front in the same way that Israelis as a result of the country’s long-standing mandatory military service and reserves. Young Ukrainians, by contrast, aren’t keen to keep up the charade of a nonexistent counteroffensive “victory”, and have recently ramped up protests against President Volodymyr Zelensky’s war draft.

So who’s going to pick up the slack when U.S. allies run out of cannon fodder? The minority 48 percent of draft-age Millennial and Generation Z Americans who can barely bother to even voice public support for U.S. backing of Israel, according to a new Marist poll?

Even if they wanted to go fight the elites’ foreign wars, 77 percent are unfit to serve because they’re too out of shape, too stoned, or too mentally ill — with many of them bringing a whole combo plate of several disqualifying issues to the table, according to a Pentagon study from earlier this year.

Some Americans are even suffering war wounds in the trenches of their basement as they ride into battle every single day on their ergonomic recliners. The second battalion of couch-surfers, stationed at Fort Living Room, is apparently prone to post traumatic stress from merely watching all the coverage of these wars, and they’re suffering just like they were actually over in a war zone. Or at least that’s what the experts are saying. “Anyone who has worked with trauma survivors can attest to the fact that we too can experience what is called “vicarious trauma” — when we see these images, hear about what happens to those who were forced to leave their homes or have been injured or whose friends or families are in danger. And it can actually cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress:“you may experience depression, anxiety and insomnia,” according to an ABC News medical expert.

With Veterans Day coming right around the corner on Nov. 11, who will think of awarding Purple Hearts to these unsung heroes who have sprained their fingers while smashing the buttons on that TV remote to switch between all the western news channels’ coverage, or who may have fallen on the battlefield of their own hallway after a long stretch of immobility en route to getting a snack from the kitchen?

Sounds like some folks are losing their own counteroffensive against their television’s off button, and are certainly not in any great shape to be drafted for a local pickleball tournament, let alone for modern warfare. So unless the robot warriors are ready for deployment, and it wouldn’t also involve the robot operators claiming PTSD like drone jockeys have, then maybe it’s time to dial back on the foreign wars.