Battleangel

It’s not often one finds something worth mentioning in the local newspaper. But last week I came across a peculiar front page item that unwittingly summed up most of what I’ve been saying in recent years. Let this be an example for those that are tempted by the Siren’s song …

Moving to the US and becoming computer scientist for the Army.

Anna Ljungberg (Skövde, Sweden) is leaving for New Jersey. Her assignment will be for the US Army, leading a research group that will develop machine translation and artificial intelligence. This is her dream job and it comes after nine years of university studies and two years waiting for a work visa.

(hastily translated)

The full article also presses that Anna has always wanted to work in / for the US. And that her actual field of expertise is computational linguistics. She also boast about the US, claiming that “they have the best salaries, the best working conditions and the best employers.” It is also noted how much more difficult it is as a foreigner to get a work visa after 9/11, even if your work is potentially vital for the US Army. Anna is also suffering from an apparent superiority complex, though that is entirely my own interpretation. It is noteworthy that the US Army does in fact acquire expertise, as this particular position, via private defense contractors.

(source: SLA / Skaraborgs Allehanda / Onsdag 17 Augusti 2005 - Copy1 - Copy2)

So where does one begin? I find this story tragic in so many ways. To think that people are so gullible.

• Private defense contractors: The latest trend that people are only just now realizing. The problems with this approach are numerous. Lack of accountability. It connects to the privatization fad. It makes war even more lucrative and so on. The Military Industrial Complex as one exceptionally apt American warned us about.
• Working for the US: And specifically the armed forces is as good as pulling the trigger yourself. It seems to me that if one gets employed with the US Army, it is hardly an accident and one to some extent has to share in the ideals of that organization and the people who control it.
• Rosy picture: I don’t think ordinary people in the US would agree that working 50h weeks and having a 2 week vacation is a measure of anything, at least if they were informed about the bad deal that they’ve struck. Add to this the monstrous work ethic, the aggressive capitalism, the “American dream” and virtual lack of understanding of social factors. But I don’t see why a spoilt little rich girl should be bothered with trivial details. After all, she’s living her “dream” (and our nightmare).
• Usurping of expertise: If one accepts that Anna is an expert of anything and good at what she does, she will join the ranks of millions who have ventured to the US, drawn by the mythos, thus effectively draining other countries of advanced technical expertise. But considering the views that one can extrapolate from the article, perhaps they deserve each other and we’ll be better off with people like her gone. Also, I don’t think Sweden is usually among the victims of such traditions.

One shouldn’t focus too much attention on this one person, it’s rather the underlying ideals that are at fault here. But it’s nevertheless interesting when one can find an example that is so close to base. And to think there are probably millions like her across the globe, wanting nothing more than to join as an unwitting cog of the US machinery. Either because of economic or, in this case I guess, ideological reasons. It’s a tragedy really. For everyone involved. The US taxpayers who finance this game, the nations who are robbed of able minds and the poor souls who are at the receiving end of the continued hegemony and oppression of US military might.