Jackdog, Rara and Doc created a beautiful melodic version of “A Peaceful Solution” with additional lyrics that bring home the understated pathos of unjust wars of aggression. Their lyrics asks me to questions the forces that send low income young people off to fight for increasing the profits of the already wealthy.

The hollow rhetoric of patriotism provides small solace to those whose children go off to die on foreign soil because of the lies offered by governmental leadership. The impoverished economic status of those to whom a military career seems like the only way out of their circumstances draws attention to a hierarchical social condition in which a person chooses the military within a coerced set of choices.

Most who go to Iraq or Afghanistan to die, become maimed or acquire permanent mental problems do so to escape poverty, lack of status and discrimination. This is clearly a case where those disadvantaged in life chances including income, education, mental well-being, housing status, health and medical treatment are exploited by government run for the benefit of multinational corporations and banks.

While I am sure there are those who will be quick to point out exceptions to this case the principle is sound when broadly applied. Those with the social, economic and political power to exploit these circumstances of their own making prove to be ruthless and uncaring towards those who suffer the consequences.

These conditions under which a person must join the U.S. armed forces, submitting to the authority of a war mongering government in order to prosper or merely to subsist, can only be described as a form of slavery. Here the distinction between owning and renting a person shrinks to a meaningless exercise of language.

It is the futility of living by any other means that compels our soldiers to fight for resources which the soldiers will never share in the profits of their sale. It is want that drags them to the military where the government will do them the kindness of sending them off to secure the profits of multinational corporations.

It is want that compels them to fight for their lives in order to enrich the bankers that impoverish the people of America. Some will say they fight for their freedoms and those of their fellow citizens.

But those are not free who are reduced to need and the most cruel dependence upon the whims of government directed by the financial interests of the monied elite. They live only by risking their lives with small benefit to themselves.

A slave’s value to an economically rational owner is in some ways higher than that of enlisted soldier who can be discharged, replaced or harmed at small cost. At least slaves may rightly dismiss the values embraced by their owners.

As it stands today soldiers cannot expose the hypocrisy in the ideology for which they stand in harms way. A soldier’s starkest choice is fight for big money interests or face prison.

At least a slave is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of its master’s interests. An individual soldier, property as it were of the entire government, has no secure existence.

The existence of soldiers is assured only to the class of soldiers as a whole.

Supporters of soldier’s slavery have linked some of the unavoidable features of reality, the subjection of people to the violence of nature, with the avoidable conditions of social structures, the subjection of people to the violence of other people. They would argue that war is no more violent than nature itself.

Even if the violence of nature is conceded the violence of war is still unethical because it is a system of violence. Even if it would be possible to expand democracy by using people coerced into fighting, coercion would still be wrong.

The methods of coercion and control of soldiers differs substantially from those of slaves. The government is trusted to ensure that the interests soldiers serve are the right interests for the entire country.

The key word here is trust.

When the entire country and the world is driven down the road to general economic collapse to guarantee the profits of an economically elite minority that trust is both abused and misplaced.

It is no wonder that Jackdog, Rara and Doc sing from Australia asking us to take back America.

* * * * * Artists’ Statements* * * * *

From Jackdog: Our song is proof that people can come together from opposite sides of the planet and collaborate on a powerful message of peace.  Our adaptation of this song shows the futility of war from a big picture perspective…. there are no winners.

Jackdog, Rara and Doc collaborate on a number of projects, including the wonderful website www.midlate.com.  Midlate is a free resource for songwriters to collaborate from all over the world.

It was a true pleasure to take part in this project for Willie Nelson’s A Peaceful Solution.  We believe passionately in the power of peace, love and music.

Jackdog’s performance is simple and moving. He is the former president of the Australian Songwriter’s Association, administrator of Midlate.com, and an award winning songwriter.

We hope one day for the opportunity to meet Willie Nelson and shake his hand…peace out.

To contact Jackdog simply search his Skype name “Jackdogdude”. or write to
jackdogdude@gmail.com

From Doc: Doc is a Small town boy from the mid-west with big dreams. Doc is on the
administrative team of www.midlate.com and the founder of  www.xkypeoholix.com.
and through the internet has been able to bring people together in a peaceful environment …

Jackdog, Rara and Doc.