The uniformed, active duty members of the United States military are now the only force potent enough to stop the corporatization of America's public goods: its land, its air, its water, its people, its institutions, its infrastructure, and its rapidly deteriorating social compact.

They are the only force capable of stopping America's politicians and their corporate handlers from transforming America and the world into a living, breathing Dante's Inferno. And they are the only organization self-critical enough to bleed out commanders who long for perpetual warfare.

The clock is ticking fast though. The uniformed US military is allowing itself to be transformed into a corporate monster. Even now, some military leaders act just like the callous CEOs in private industry. They throw away lives like a CEO blithely chops away 1,000 livelihoods. As it stands, within a decade the uniformed services will be totally polluted with over-the-horizon leaders who see their service to the country as little more than a CEO training exercise. At that point, the uniformed services will become little more than corporate muscle that is used to eliminate local or regional resistance to the corporate takeovers.

The uniformed services are now openly abused by the politicians and their corporate handlers as policy and propaganda shields to mask dreadful national security strategies that are based solely on profit-taking motives. That tactic was perfected in October 2007 when the uniformed military served as a policy and propaganda shield to disguise the influence of the Turkish government and corporations operating though the American Turkish Council led by Brent Scowcroft. The latter group spearheaded the charge to defeat a US House of Representatives resolution that would have recognized the slaughter of the Armenians by the Turks from 1915 to 1917. The uniformed services served as the public excuse for defeating the resolution because it s passage would ostensibly cause the Turks to stop the uniformed services' logistics and supply operations transiting through Turkey. However, a look at the corporate membership of the American Turkish Council (atc.org) gives up the real answer: corporate market-share and profits were at stake as Turkey threatened to take its business to Europe or China.

Even now, the policy and propaganda shield is being used to compare Turkish troops killed by the rebel Kurd group PPK in Northern Iraq/Kurdistan with uniformed US military troops killed by rebels throughout Iraq and in Afghanistan. The theme is obvious: we are like them and must fight the extremists together. That even though the matter of the Turks and Kurds is as dangerous as the Israeli and Palestinian issue (Israel supports the Turks). Once again, the uniformed military finds itself used for political ends. Further, politicians, and all the presidential candidates among them -- managed as they are by their corporate handlers -- are aching for an invasion of Iran. Yet again, the uniformed military is used as a policy and propaganda shield to motivate the American public into supporting an invasion of Iran. One day Iranian operatives are killing US troops in Iraq and the next day they are funding the Taliban at the expense of uniformed troops.

How long until the uniformed military carries out its core duty to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States? The uniformed military is the only US government institution that has the tenuous trust and respect of the American people. The US Senate, House, presidency and judicial branches -- advised by their corporate handlers -- have used the uniformed US military to serve their own individual interests, not those embodied in the Constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence. The premeditated policies of the current US government are literally killing the American people and creating foreign enemies that future American youngsters will be asked to kill. America can't even run a legitimate presidential election.

Two decades of this madness is enough. The uniformed military needs to be true to its oath of office. It's the domestic enemies that are destroying the country. The US Army oath for officers states, " . . . I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter . . ."

It's time.

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in political and national security matters. His most recent book is Talking Politics with God and the Devil in Washington, D.C. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com.