Military in Schools in the United States

The Broken Rifle - Newsletter of War Resisters' International [No. 88, March 2011]

24 Mar 2011 — warresisters

• Oskar Castro

Every year in the United States, millions of young people are faced with the difficult challenge of figuring out what to do with their lives after they graduate from high school. For various reasons, many of them end up considering joining the US Armed Forces, but the commonality among all of those who enlist and those who don’t enlist is that they are all regularly bombarded with military recruitment propaganda pretty much from the time they are born. Whether it is on their television, their computer, at the toy store, or in their classroom, the pitch to embrace the military is everywhere.

The end of World War II saw the United States emerge as a military powerhouse due to the significant role it played in the defeat of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan. Then the Cold War materialised which meant that the perceived threat of communism by way of the powerful Soviet Union had to be met with a show of incredible force. The military propaganda machine ratcheted up and the once neutral nation was now a militaristic monstrosity with an ever-growing military industrial complex benefiting from the fear.  Read more . . .

The Cost of Our Wars

TomDispatch.com
Posted by William Astore at 4:10pm, February 20, 2011.

On Listening to Our Troops
By William J. Astore

“Support our troops” is an unconditional American mantra.  We’re told to celebrate them as warrior-liberators, as heroes, as the finest fighters the world has ever known. They’re to be put on a pedestal or plinth, holding a rifle and a flag, icons to American toughness and goodness.

What we’re not told to do is listen to them.

Today, I’d like to suggest six vows we should make when it comes to those troops:

Vow #1: Let’s start listening to them.  And when we do -- when we begin to recognize them in all their frailty and complexity, their vulnerabilities and imperfections -- we’ll realize that they’re as restless and conflicted about our wars as many of us are.

How do I know?  I’ve had the privilege of reading hundreds of emails from today’s (and yesterday’s) troops sent to me in response to articles I’ve written for TomDispatch.com.  From these I’ve selected a handful of passages to share with you: voices that resonated with me, words that often got me right in the gut.

Consider this passage from an Army national guardsman, a non-commissioned officer who answered his country’s call and deployed to Iraq:

“I am… on my second tour of Iraq.  My unit… has been plagued by suicides and psychiatric problems.  Our guards-men even prior to deployment come from compromised social and economic environments, leaving them very susceptible [to military recruiters].  Many of our soldiers are almost forced into volunteering for multiple tours due to the lack of economic opportunity and the cold fact that there is no other way to support their families...

“I have seen blatant corruption among the [private] contractors [in Iraq] and even cases of outright human trafficking and forced prostitution among female third country nationals… My hope is that the U.S. can withdraw from this senseless war… This war has bankrupted the U.S. and caused untold suffering among U.S. Forces and women.”

When we praise our troops as volunteers in our “All-Volunteer Military,” how many of us consider that significant numbers of them are not truly volunteers?  Rarely do we face the fact that our country has been running a poverty draft, sweeping up the disenfranchised and disadvantaged, with an emphasis on the rural working class, and sending them halfway across the world into harm’s way.

Which leads to my second vow:

Vow #2: Let’s stop consoling ourselves with the myth that all our troops are volunteers -- a myth which leads most Americans to pay remarkably little attention to and take no responsibility for the wars our “volunteers” are fighting.

Read more