{"id":330740,"date":"2026-09-05T05:24:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T05:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=330740"},"modified":"2026-09-07T06:54:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T06:54:22","slug":"hey-americans-escape-debt-by-going-to-war-with-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=330740","title":{"rendered":"Hey Americans! Escape Debt By Going To War With Iran!"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Caitlin Johnstone \u2013 Caitlin\u2019s Newsletter Sept 3, 2026<\/strong><\/h1>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fcW3lQOTT9w?si=JNnVPqsFHE1FDu54\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fcW3lQOTT9w\">Reading by Tim Foley<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n<p>Today in dystopia, war pundits have begun suggesting that the US could recruit sufficient troops for a ground invasion of Iran by offering young Americans debt forgiveness in exchange for enlisting.<\/p>\n<p>I guess it was only a matter of time.<\/p>\n<p>In an article titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/defense-and-tech\/article-906985\">The war with Iran will not be won through airstrikes, so what\u2019s left?<\/a>\u201d, the Jerusalem Post\u2019s AJ Jaff writes the following:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cRecruitment numbers are running below what a ground invasion of Iran would require. Estimates for a successful ground campaign against Iran\u2019s 31 provincial commands and its Mosaic Defense Doctrine run between 750 thousand and 1.5 million American troops. The current active US Army stands at roughly 452 thousand. The math does not work, obviously.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cBased on American history, however, there is a path forward. Not conscription or a draft in a world war-era sense, but enlistment through a \u2018debt forgiveness program.\u2019<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cThe average American aged 18 to 34 carries more than $40 thousand in non-mortgage debt across student loans, credit card balances, auto loans, and personal loans, with some estimates go as high as $100 thousand.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cThis is the cohort the Pentagon needs. A federally administered debt-forgiveness enlistment program that fully discharges student loan, credit card, and loan balances after 24 or 36 months of service, and extends the GI Bill, would produce voluntary enlistment at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cThis is not theoretical.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cIt is the American state doing what the American state has always done when it needed staff it could not otherwise generate. World War II offered the GI Bill. Vietnam offered college deferments. The post 9\/11 wars offered signing bonuses and citizenship pathways. The Iran war will need to offer debt relief. The economics of the indebted American 20-and 30-something make this the most efficient conversion mechanism available to the Pentagon and the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cThe moral reading on this is uncomfortable. But states generate the soldiers they need through the incentives that work on the population they have.\u201d<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The Jerusalem Post is now running editorials with ideas for how the Pentagon could recruit enough American soldiers to launch a ground invasion of Iran.<\/p>\n<p>They want to exploit the crippling debt young Americans are carrying by offering them a chance at forgiveness if they\u2019re\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/O6659GwWIu\">pic.twitter.com\/O6659GwWIu<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Mel (@Villgecrazylady) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Villgecrazylady\/status\/2095176196149391418?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 2, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/aj_geo_analysis\/status\/2090605695393804758\">Twitter essay<\/a> on the same subject published earlier this month, AJ Jaff used more blunt language:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cWhen the choice is decades chained to $45,000+ in debt, or a few years of service that erases it and hands you a clean start, a huge share of desperate young people will take the offer. Not because they \u2018support the war\u2019. Because the debt was engineered into a cage, and service is the ONLY door out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Jerusalem Post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/author\/aj-jaff\">says<\/a> that Jaff is a Canadian who currently serves as the head of security for an unnamed \u201cmultinational organization,\u201d describing him in his author bio as \u201ca retired officer of the Canadian Armed Forces and a recognized expert in international security, crisis management, and geopolitical risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There isn\u2019t much publicly available information about Jaff apart from this, and yet here he is being amplified by one of Israel\u2019s largest English-language newspapers. So we can expect we\u2019ll be seeing this idea pop up again elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s just everything ugly about the US empire all rolled up in one neat little package, isn\u2019t it? Struggling American citizens strapped with mountains of bills because they live in a dystopia which plunges people into debt for the privilege of living on the planet they were born on, desperately enlisting to go kill people in an imperialist war of aggression overseas in the hope of one day getting their heads above water financially.<\/p>\n<p>It just might be the most American idea anyone has ever had.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">__________________<\/p>\n<p>Caitlin\u2019s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<\/p>\n<p><em>The best way to make sure you see everything I publish is to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/\">get on my free mailing list<\/a>. My work is <a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/2021\/05\/24\/my-experiments-with-hacking-capitalism\/\">entirely reader-supported<\/a>, so if you enjoyed this piece <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/about\">here are some options<\/a> where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. <a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/\">Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio\/video versions of each article<\/a>. All my work is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/p\/reminder-all-my-work-may-be-freely\">free to bootleg and use<\/a> in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/subscribe\">Subscribe to Caitlin\u2019s Newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n<p>By Caitlin Johnstone \u00b7 Thousands of paid subscribers<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/subscribe\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America would need at least another million soldiers to invade and secure Iran. There may be a solution to this manpower shortfall though. Writing in the Jerusalem Post, AJ Jaff suggests, \u201cThe average American aged 18 to 34 carries more than $40 thousand\u201d debt. Enlistment in the US armed forces could free them from this burden <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":330743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330740"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":330770,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330740\/revisions\/330770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/330743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}