- Mar 29, 2004
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'Why aren't you in Iraq?" (Statesman.com) That's the question I posed recently to a group of undergraduates at the University of Texas, an honors class studying the legal aspects of the war on terrorism.
I tried to ask this without antagonism or implicit criticism, but the question appeared to unsettle the students anyway. None of them had given military service much thought. All of them were against the war in Iraq. They told me they support the troops, but not the war itself. They won't sign up to fight a war they consider illegal and a mistake.
Our conversation took place shortly after U.S. military deaths in Iraq passed 2,000. The war is now increasingly unpopular with all elements of American society, and disaffection with the war is having a big impact on military recruiting.
This year the Army missed its recruiting targets for the first time since 1999, and the pool of people signed up and waiting to be inducted is at its lowest level ever. The Pentagon increased the eligible age for enlistment from 39 to 42 this year, and there is now a reluctant discussion within the military about opening enlistment to high school dropouts. Last week, the Washington Post featured a detailed look at the current distribution of recruits. It showed that the majority are coming from rural and economically distressed regions. Only 14 percent are from urban areas.
One UT student said during our conversation that her friends regard the military as something for people "with no other options," and that, because of the war in Iraq, military service is now considered "dishonorable." I was reminded that recently, while I sat in an Austin theater waiting for a movie to start and the ads featured a pitch from the Marines, some people in the audience booed.
The war in Iraq is not only vexing military officials and political leaders as it drags on and chews up billions of dollars and the lives and health of American troops. Now, not unlike the war in Vietnam, the Iraq war is fracturing the country over the relationship between civilians and the military. The military hoped to recover its status after Vietnam by ending the draft and stressing the positive benefits of service ? job training, discipline, leadership experience and an egalitarian ethic that made the military the model institution for race relations. The slogan "Be All That You Can Be" communicated that message, and before the war in Iraq, it worked.
There was a burst of enlistment after Sept. 11, 2001, when young people were inspired by patriotism to sign up. But the war in Iraq has drained that motivation from young Americans, and also from a growing number of parents, including many people who voted for President Bush.
In August, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a story about a Marine recruiter who visited a home in an affluent neighborhood where a teenager had expressed interest in joining the Marines. The recruiter was welcomed warmly by the teenager's mother ? until the reason for the visit was revealed. "Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told the recruiter.
Throughout the country, middle-class parents are blocking recruiters or discouraging their sons and daughters from considering military service. This became a running storyline in Doonesbury, the cartoon strip, as Mike Doonesbury pleaded with his daughter to ignore the attentions of a military recruiter. The No Child Left Behind Act contains a provision that allows the military access to large amounts of information about young people in school, and parents are fighting this access ? even the national PTA has come out against this feature of the law.
It's understandable that young people would want to avoid Iraq, and that their parents would want them to stay home. This personal resistance is the new form of anti-war protest, and it's far more widespread than most Americans understand.
But there is something ominously wrong with a democratic nation that protects its affluent youth from harm, and from service, while putting disadvantaged young people into a meat grinder overseas. There is something disturbing about a nation that beats the drum of patriotism but lets its most privileged young people believe that military service is for losers.
It also is unforgivably hypocritical for people to support this war, this president and his economic policies ? thus victimizing the poor twice over ? while at the same time shielding their own children from the sacrifices others are making. You can't claim to support the troops if you feel that the troops are beneath you in status or that your own children are too valuable for military service.
Either we're all in this together, or we should get the hell out. We can't have it both ways.
Awful lot of young folk in here, why are you not serving?
I tried to ask this without antagonism or implicit criticism, but the question appeared to unsettle the students anyway. None of them had given military service much thought. All of them were against the war in Iraq. They told me they support the troops, but not the war itself. They won't sign up to fight a war they consider illegal and a mistake.
Our conversation took place shortly after U.S. military deaths in Iraq passed 2,000. The war is now increasingly unpopular with all elements of American society, and disaffection with the war is having a big impact on military recruiting.
This year the Army missed its recruiting targets for the first time since 1999, and the pool of people signed up and waiting to be inducted is at its lowest level ever. The Pentagon increased the eligible age for enlistment from 39 to 42 this year, and there is now a reluctant discussion within the military about opening enlistment to high school dropouts. Last week, the Washington Post featured a detailed look at the current distribution of recruits. It showed that the majority are coming from rural and economically distressed regions. Only 14 percent are from urban areas.
One UT student said during our conversation that her friends regard the military as something for people "with no other options," and that, because of the war in Iraq, military service is now considered "dishonorable." I was reminded that recently, while I sat in an Austin theater waiting for a movie to start and the ads featured a pitch from the Marines, some people in the audience booed.
The war in Iraq is not only vexing military officials and political leaders as it drags on and chews up billions of dollars and the lives and health of American troops. Now, not unlike the war in Vietnam, the Iraq war is fracturing the country over the relationship between civilians and the military. The military hoped to recover its status after Vietnam by ending the draft and stressing the positive benefits of service ? job training, discipline, leadership experience and an egalitarian ethic that made the military the model institution for race relations. The slogan "Be All That You Can Be" communicated that message, and before the war in Iraq, it worked.
There was a burst of enlistment after Sept. 11, 2001, when young people were inspired by patriotism to sign up. But the war in Iraq has drained that motivation from young Americans, and also from a growing number of parents, including many people who voted for President Bush.
In August, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a story about a Marine recruiter who visited a home in an affluent neighborhood where a teenager had expressed interest in joining the Marines. The recruiter was welcomed warmly by the teenager's mother ? until the reason for the visit was revealed. "Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told the recruiter.
Throughout the country, middle-class parents are blocking recruiters or discouraging their sons and daughters from considering military service. This became a running storyline in Doonesbury, the cartoon strip, as Mike Doonesbury pleaded with his daughter to ignore the attentions of a military recruiter. The No Child Left Behind Act contains a provision that allows the military access to large amounts of information about young people in school, and parents are fighting this access ? even the national PTA has come out against this feature of the law.
It's understandable that young people would want to avoid Iraq, and that their parents would want them to stay home. This personal resistance is the new form of anti-war protest, and it's far more widespread than most Americans understand.
But there is something ominously wrong with a democratic nation that protects its affluent youth from harm, and from service, while putting disadvantaged young people into a meat grinder overseas. There is something disturbing about a nation that beats the drum of patriotism but lets its most privileged young people believe that military service is for losers.
It also is unforgivably hypocritical for people to support this war, this president and his economic policies ? thus victimizing the poor twice over ? while at the same time shielding their own children from the sacrifices others are making. You can't claim to support the troops if you feel that the troops are beneath you in status or that your own children are too valuable for military service.
Either we're all in this together, or we should get the hell out. We can't have it both ways.
Awful lot of young folk in here, why are you not serving?
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