A War on War

The 2,000th American soldier died in Iraq last Tuesday and at least a dozen more have since been added to that total. No one counts Iraqi casualties as precisely, but researchers at Johns Hopkins University last October estimated that at least 100,000 excess deaths had resulted from the invasion. In the shadow of these facts, the majority of Americans now support withdrawal from Iraq "as soon as possible," and 82 percent of Iraqis describe themselves as "strongly opposed" to the continued occupation.
What can those of us who are antiwar do about it, though? Sometimes, it seems as if we have no voice. Very few prominent politicians, from either party, are demanding anything even as radical as a timetable for withdrawal. A quarter of a million people protested at the White House on Sept. 24, and were largely ignored by official Washington. One place many people are turning is the growing counter-recruitment movement, which is dedicated to stopping people from signing up to kill, and maybe die, in Iraq.
The horrors of going to war are an excellent reason to discourage people from joining the military, but by no means the only reason for doing so. Recruiters make plenty of promises, but the military doesn't deliver. They will tell you you're signing up for two or four years, but the contract says you're in the Individual Ready Reserve for eight. They will promise you'll never see combat, but almost none of the non-combat jobs remain open. They will say the military will provide great life skills, but even peacetime veterans earn $1700 less per year on average, and under 12 percent say they've made any use of their military training in civilian life. They'll say you'll get college money, but two-thirds of enlisted soldiers don't see a penny and only 15 percent get a four-year degree. They'll talk about a level playing field, where no matter who you are you can be "All You Can Be," an "Army of One." Minorities make up one-third of enlisted troops and one-eighth of all officers, two-thirds of women in the armed services report sexual harassment, and, of course, GLBT people are kicked out as soon as they're caught.
How does anyone end up joining? Recruiters prey on those who think they have no other options, focusing on high schools and colleges in working-class black and Latino neighborhoods. (When was the last time you saw a recruiter at Columbia?) As soon as kids approach the age of 18, they are subjected to high-pressure sales tactics. The military saturates schools and students' lives, with recruiters, ads, and gadgets ranging from video games to tanks and helicopters; as the recruiters' guidebook says, "The goal is school ownership." The No Child Left Behind Act denies public high schools all federal funding if they don't hand over data on their students.
But we, as students and educators, can fight this. Few people know that high school students can opt out of giving up their information. We can distribute those forms, inform people of what recruiters leave out and where else they could turn besides the armed forces, and help organize protests at recruiting stations. We can demand that people be offered college, not combat-and we can translate that demand into immediate and concrete action.
These strategies are beginning to work already. The army missed its recruiting goal for the last year by 7,000, the largest gap since 1979. The National Guard did even worse, and in April the Marine Corps missed its monthly goal for the first time in 10 years. All this is occurring despite a constant increase in sign-up bonuses and billions of dollars' worth of advertising. In a political climate where Bush's approval ratings are in the 30s, a draft is politically impossible, and if the military can't get enough volunteers, we cannot stay in Iraq.