I'm saying that soldiers are more working-class than civilians, disproportionately people of color, not that they are from "the ranks of the desperate."
The ranks of the truly desperate -- e.g., those whose mental and physical health are badly damaged by dire poverty and severe drug addiction -- make good soldiers neither for the US military nor for the US left (though it does appear that obesity plagues the armed forces as well -- Cf. Doug Henwood, "fat GIs?" <http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0212/0774.html>).
Not only has the US government not risked the surliness of conscripts, it has not even risked the surliness of rank-and-file soldiers in a "volunteer military" yet. It has often relied on (mostly white) special forces, because it doesn't even trust the rank-and-file soldiers who are not conscripts.
***** Military Matters #2 Black Ops, White Ops by Stan Goff
America's military special forces and the CIA are to set up a joint team of covert counter-intelligence agents to be known as the "proactive pre-emptive operations group" ["black ops"] for secret missions targeting terrorist leaders.
"The group of about 100 is to include experts in behind-the-lines intelligence gathering, computer hacking, and other clandestine skills dating back to the days of the cold war.
"The PPOG, funded from an increased special operations budget, would be under the direct control of the White House and would carry out missions coordinated either by the Pentagon or by CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia.
"Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, is also considering a request for extra cash which would almost double the current £3.5bn annual budget for conventional special forces..." - from "US Anti-Terror Force Planned," by Ian Bruce, The Herald, 15 November 2002.
When I was in Vietnam, I never saw two Black soldiers greet each other without givin' up dap. White officers were clearly uncomfortable with it, and some Black NCOs were pressured to put a stop to these elaborate improvisational handshakes.
It never worked. Dap was as much a part of Black GI culture as Motown.
And make no mistake. It was oppositional culture. White officers were right to feel uncomfortable with it. It was an open display of Black solidarity by Negroes With Guns. When African American GIs spoke with one another, they referred to one another as "Black" with the same frequency guys call each other "man" (another vestige of Black oppositional culture).
Five'll getcha ten...this new, super-elite, "black ops" unit's "operators" will have hardly a Black face to be seen. In the US, "black ops" is always done by white operators. No one is going to teach large numbers of African Americans these clandestine skills.
Every time in the history of the United States that Black soldiers have fought its wars, there has been an upwave of Black resistance afterward. Surely this is no surprise.
Military historians can also point out that Odoacer, a mercenary in the service of Rome, leader of the Germanic soldiers in the Roman army, deposed the western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, in 476 AD, and thereby terminated the western Roman empire.
There is a limit to how much an oppressed people within a state will take. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his ilk know this. You can bank on it.
When the Bush Junta made the claim that the US was attacked by people who hate freedom and democracy, the irony was not likely lost on African Americans or any other oppressed nationality.
I stress African Americans here because Black people are the embodiment of white ruling class fear, especially in the military. Three out of ten soldiers in the Army today are African-American, as is one out of ten officers. Until you look at Special Operations.
Negrophobia, and not generalized racism, is characteristic of special ops units, and the more rarified the unit, the whiter it gets - with a few honorary Aryans from Hispano-Latina and Pacific Islander ranks. There are special places for Black soldiers in Special Operations: kitchens, supply rooms, and motor pools.
This lack of "minority" participation, as "operators," in Special Operations began to leak some years ago. In 1999, the Rand Corporation released a report that attempted to describe Barriers to Minority Participation in Special Operations Forces (SOF), which attempts to put an empirical mask over SOF racial exclusion, even repeating many of the urban myths within SOF about why Black soldiers are so vastly under-represented there: "They can't swim," and so forth. A more trenchant analysis is done by Tod Ensign in Covert Action Quarterly.
When we put two and two together, we will likely end up with four.
One reason there is a real reluctance to commit US conventional (as opposed to SOF) forces to decisive combat around the world is the Powell Doctrine, which works very hard to ensure that US civilians at home don't see images of flag-draped coffins in a nightly parade on CNN.
Conventional ground forces will still be held back for any but the most banal military tasks: mop-up and guard duty. The new emphasis on using SOF for any decisive ground combat tasks is partly predicated on the Powell Doctrine fear of US casualties. But another factor is BPCSSD. Black post-combat social stress disorder, not to be confused with PTSD.
Black troops who go to war, especially if they are required to fight, become restive and uncooperative when they get home. They ask embarrassing questions, like "Where's ours?" - BPCSSD.
Let there be no doubt that the American white terror of Black rebellion still haunts the psyches of our pale ruling class. The US Army has a disproportionate number of Black troops. Having too many of them crossing the psychological barrier against squeezing triggers on human targets can't strike The Man as a very good idea.
Vietnam taught the white supremacist US ruling class a lot of lessons about the military. One was that it's not wise to maintain a large military conscript force of many oppressed nationalities, while simultaneously exposing them to combat for colonial objectives when their lives at home mirror the conditions against which their putative enemy is fighting. By 1973, as US forces were well along in a phased withdrawal from Vietnam, the US Armed Forces were dumping the draft.
They didn't want citizen-soldiers any more. They wanted mercenaries. Do what you're told, and collect your check, Cuz.
And now, with the immense expense of the new higher-tech War Department, whose cost will tear the frayed carpet from under the US working class, with workers of oppressed nationality hitting bottom first, they sure don't want a bunch of Negroes With Guns coming home with role conflicts.
They sure don't need any BPCSSD.
Stan Goff is the author of Hideous Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti (Soft Skull Press, 2000), an account of the author's personal experience as a member of 3rd Special Forces in Haiti, 1994, which also recounts a number of formative experiences in the military, reaching all the way back to the author's tour of duty in Vietnam.
<http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_2_blackops.html> *****
What if the Bush Junta -- carried away by their enthusiasm for the re-making of the Middle East and aggressive imperial policy, faced with unintended negative consequences of them, or led into the path of "mission creeps" -- get forced to deploy rank-and-file troops in a ground war? -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>