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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2004YouthResisting militarismby Brown Douglas War doesn’t only express the need for capitalist governments and markets to expand and dominate. The subjective contradictions--that is, the people caught in the middle or taking part in the war’s destruction and confusion--sometimes show themselves in ways that can open up new space for the possibility of revolt against the leaders and possibly even the very system and "logic" that began the war in the first place. This can be seen in the way that a growing number of soldiers are becoming dissatisfied with the war in Iraq and are expressing it in various ways, sometimes refusing military service. The question of being a soldier is one that confronts young people when we turn 18 (at least young men turning 18; women aren’t required to register, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect them as well). We are mandated to register for the draft as a reminder that we are always at the beck and call of the leaders and when they want us to go fight a war somewhere we are to nod our heads, take our thinking caps off, and pick up a gun to kill on command. Of course, there is no official lottery-style draft anymore and the act of registering is pretty much a token act, "just in case" we ever need it again. In my opinion, we probably won’t need it because there will always be plenty of people to recruit into the poverty draft. Because of unemployment and especially underemployment, as well as the rising costs of higher education, many young people, especially young people of color, see the military as a way to grab an opportunity to get some money for college and develop a skill to use in the civilian workforce. It’s a smart ploy developed by capitalist armed forces to play on the fears and hopes that a capitalist society plants in working people. It reeks of exploitation and manipulation. It’s dirty. Even dirtier is not even waiting for young people to get out of high school before bombarding us with recruitment and brainwashing methods meant to smash critical thinking and decision-making skills. Recruiters set up stations in high schools all over the country to peddle the armed forces as a viable career choice for young people scared about the bad economy and college education. So, many of us find ourselves in times of war fighting in a foreign land when all we wanted in the first place was to go to school and raise a family. Of course, there are always apologists from within that wave the flag and do what they’re told and mask it in patriotic and violent, macho sloganeering. But those who don’t do that and harbor sentiments contrary to those that made the war in the first place represent something that shouldn’t be ignored. Some examples of this include the young Filipino-American Stephen Funk who was a reservist when he decided that repeatedly yelling "kill!" while in training was teaching him to be a murderer and not a liberator, or Camillo Mejia, who served in active duty in Iraq and came home on furlough and decided not to go back, and who is now in jail. These people are not run-of-the-mill peaceniks, they are soldiers who thought through the totalizing war ideology and said "Hell no". If not "Hell no," a growing sentiment seems to be in the form of the question "Why are we here and what good are we doing"? The question itself is rebellious because you’re not even supposed to think about why you’re there. Staff Sgt. A.J. Dean--currently serving in Iraq--said, "I don’t have any idea of what we’re trying to do out here. I don’t know what the (goal) is, and I don’t think our commanders do either." This goes directly against everything we are being told by the liars and killers in office and their supporters in society, from George Bush’s "mission accomplished" to every unthinking "support our troops" liberal or conservative. What should become more and more apparent is that "supporting the troops" means something different when you see that the troops themselves are actively questioning their duty. It is encouraging to know that resistance to war from the inside soldier’s perspective is an international phenomenon. It is most prominent today in the Israeli refusenik movement, which is composed of brave young men and women who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories, or refuse to serve at all in the Israeli Defense Forces. Ideas and feelings such as these are universal, and their expression in different countries only proves that you can’t limit something that comes from the subjectivity of young people attempting to shape the world as we want to see it. |
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