> Doug wrote:
>
>> And he agrees that the notion of a poverty draft is bullshit. The
>> military is made up of the "better" echelons of the working class.<<
>
> Not sure that one follows from the other; the reductio ad absurdum
> of this would be that the Royal Regiment of Gurkhas is
> predominantly made up of the "better" echelons of Nepalese hill
> farmers, but I don't think anyone would claim that Gurkha
> recruitment doesn't have anything to do with poverty. Don't have
> much of an opinion on the US Army but based on the lads I knew who
> joined the Welsh Guards, recruitment is more driven by a lack of
> alternative prospects for doing something interesting - it's not so
> much that people are forced to join the army because the
> alternative is physical starvation, but there is a strong class
> element to it.
I agree with Daniel. Poverty is, after all, a relative concept. I'm not starving, but I feel very poor, because my expectations are high.
Besides, people who are on the verge of physical starvation are too sick to serve in any army anyway (not even in a guerrilla army of Reds, let alone an army of an empire).
Doug wrote;
> Today's soldiers are mostly loyal, disciplined professionals who
> want to be there.
Lifers are like that, but not all soldiers serving in Iraq are lifers. Probably the proportion of lifers is only slightly above 15% (which is the proportion of officers in the US military -- see <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of- Mon-20051128/025983.html>), for only a small proportion of enlisted men and women can move up enough ranks to be able to become lifers (in the military, you have to move up or move out).
First of all, many of the soldiers are drafted from the National Guards, and they and their families suffer from material deprivations and family separations especially keenly. "More than 210,000 of the National Guard’s 330,000 soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan," and "Roughly 48,000 members of the National Guard and Reserve are currently serving in Iraq -- making up nearly 35 percent of the total U.S. forces there" (at <http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/ quagmire/>). That's a very high proportion of non-professional soldiers in war zones.
Then, there is the question of "stop-loss" orders: "As of May 2005, stop-loss orders are affecting 14,082 soldiers -- almost 10 percent of the entire forces serving in Iraq with no end date set for the use of these orders" (at <http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/quagmire/>).
Neither of the above groups can be called "professionals who want to be there." National Guard troops aren't really professionals, and those who are kept in the military by stop-loss orders can't be said to be volunteers who really "want to be there" (if they wanted to be there, stop-loss orders wouldn't be necessary).
Doug wrote:
> Someone - was it Yoshie? - said that there's something socialist
> about the structure of the military (a point that Chalmers Johnson
> also makes).
That's what Stan Goff argues, which I posted here <http://mailman.lbo- talk.org/2002/2002-November/026649.html>:
<blockquote>How many on the left recognize that on a military base there resides a community that is in some respects more socialist than capitalist?
Every resident of a US military base has come to expect high-quality schools, a plenitude of commons -- including parks, recreations centers, gymnasiums, stadiums, swimming pools, cinemas, craft shops, hiking trails, community centers, and nature preserves -- a three- tiered universal health care system, counseling centers, and safe, well-designed residential neighborhoods where housing, maintenance, and utilities are provided free. The disparity between the highest and lowest pay in the military is less than 13 to 1, compared to an average of 458 to 1 in the civil sector.
The majority who remain in the military remain there for these reasons.</blockquote>
Only if you are from working-class families (rather than truly rich families) do these elements look attractive enough to outweigh very real costs of serving in the military. Let's remember that, in the United States, even "the 'better' echelons of the working class" do not enjoy many of the above.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>