LRC reader and retired USAF major Michael Reith, who now sheds the light of truth on the military, sent along this note after my Good Friday article on soldiers:
When I was stationed in South Korea, the combination of a relatively poor economy (1976-1977) and US GI’s earning incomes that far outpaced local wages led to an ugly American scenario. Prostitution was rampant. Whereas I can never ever remember being solicited in the United States, to venture through the Americanized sectors of Korean towns was to elicit regular offers of sex for obscenely low prices. Not being a Christian at the time, my aversion to such offers was not one based upon the immorality of unwed sex. Rather, I was sickened at the idea of GI’s flaunting their wealth amongst the poor, who often were sold into prostitution to help their poor families. How could a human be treated as a commodity? Not only in their unrestrained behavior in the sex trade, my fellow Americans seemed to have no restraint on drunkenness, rudeness and maltreatment of the local population. As such was the case, I avoided the areas frequented by GI’s and set about exploring the true culture and geography. I developed friendships with Koreans who had no normal interaction with American GI’s and came to enjoy their genuine hospitality. Many wished to expose their children to English. Some wished to deal with latent emotions left over from serving aside Americans in the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts, having lost track of Americans with whom they had established true friendships. But I carried with me a sense of the “The Ugly American”, loosely assimilated from the 1958 novel of that name.
When visiting the homes of Korean families, I was often overwhelmed with their hospitality, in that it contrasted with the way my own countrymen treated the Korean population. I often found myself making apologies for the behavior of my fellows. Their responses were uniform in telling me that I had no need to apologize, for after all, these were young men in the military, and away from home, as though being removed from one’s home environment and serving in the military led to immoral behavior. They would go on to also point out that the US forces were unique, in that they were an all volunteer force. That being so, who in their right mind would volunteer for the military except those who were the dregs or lowest caste of society (present company excluded)? They assumed that any man who would actually desire to serve in the military would have to be a ruffian and the worst sort of fellow. That being so, they were not surprised at their behavior and did not hold America as a nation accountable.
Posted with full permission of Michael Reith.
9:46 am on April 22, 2014
