>GIs who read Hustler and come across Christian Parenti's article are
>often going to be the kind who do not actively seek out the left
>media. Some of them -- no, many of them -- will be people who have
>uneasy but incoherent feelings about the war, but don't know exactly
>what to think of them, and they will read this article from a
>leftist that says a lot more about the insanity of what they've
>experienced than anything else they've read or seen in the
>mainstream media. And that will be the beginning of an ideological
>journey for some of them.
>
>VVAW got a boost of thousands of members in late 1970
Christian is probably going to do a piece for The Nation sometime next year on the culture of the military. Quick summary of his point: today's US army is nothing like that of the 1970s. Today's soldiers are mostly loyal, disciplined professionals who want to be there. There's no great untapped potential of critique there. 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. He also points out that the military is a real meritocracy, and that it brings together people of different ethnic, regional, and status origins and molds them into a collective - and that that mixing promotes a great sense of solidarity. Someone - was it Yoshie? - said that there's something socialist about the structure of the military (a point that Chalmers Johnson also makes). It's true, and it's very effective.
Doug