The Nation: The War and the Working Class

[marmar]

article | posted March 13, 2008 (March 31, 2008 issue)
The War and the Working Class
Michael Zweig



The government treats its soldiers the way most corporations treat their workforce--as an invisible, disrespected, disposable means to an end that is contrary to workers' interests. Members of the armed forces come mainly and disproportionately from the working class and from small-town and rural America, where opportunities are hard to come by. The "economic draft" operates, in effect, to recruit young people from these communities as they sign up to gain job skills, experience and educational opportunities absent from their civilian lives.

A number of parallel experiences link the lives of soldiers with those of working-class civilians, going well beyond their common discipline of following orders. Consider "stop-loss" as an example. The military reserves the right to extend the deployment time and active-duty status of every soldier beyond the service dates prescribed in their enlistment contracts and mobilization papers. Most soldiers were unaware of this as the Iraq War intensified, but by the start of 2006 the military had enforced its stop-loss provision on 50,000 of them. Outraged soldiers and their families challenged these extensions in court, but they were upheld.

Meanwhile, in the civilian economy, one out of every five full-time hourly employees worked mandatory overtime--the requirement by management that the worker stay on the job beyond the normal quitting time. Many workers want overtime for the money, but they generally resent being forced into it, especially when it disrupts family plans or taxes their physical or mental strength. While the consequences of stop-loss are more far-reaching, the principle is the same. Both disregard the needs of the workforce and abrogate the expectations working people have of a life outside the control of their employers.

Counter-recruitment activity, an important element of the anti-Iraq War movement, responds to the many ways recruiters imply commitments to prospective enlistees that the military is under no obligation to keep and promise benefits that in the end do not materialize--a pattern with many parallels in working-class civilian life. Common among the misleading enticements are offers of training that will lead to civilian employment in good jobs; education benefits to pay for college costs and even the signing bonuses, $10,000 or more, that can seem like a fortune to the kids at the desk. The most outrageous reason for yanking back the signing benefits comes when a soldier leaves the military before the full commitment is over because of severe combat injuries. The military, insisting that the benefits are contingent on honorable discharge after completing the full term of service, has moved to take back the signing bonuses that injured servicemembers, unable to complete their tours, have already collected. To combat these practices, young people, often accompanied by veterans with their own stories to tell, are challenging military recruiters in high schools, shopping malls and other places where recruiters seek out volunteers to fill their quotas. Congressional attempts to stop these abuses have so far been unsuccessful. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/zweig