[lbo-talk] We can lose, or we can just lose later

[Travis Fast]

The point is Yoshie, you can either take the approach that the average 
soldier is no more and no less responsible then the average AMerican for 
the war and use this as the basis of trying to convince them not to 
en-list or re-enlist or you can get on a moral high horse, act holier 
than though and try to convince them not to enlist /re-enlist by making 
them more responsible for the war than say yourself.  Which strategy do 
you think would be better?

Travis

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


>
> It's a fact of life that some have more agency than others regarding  
> the Iraq War, being more directly involved in war-making than  
> others.  Let's say that 4,000 civilian Americans refuse to pay taxes,  
> following the advice of the War Registers' League (cf. <http:// 
> www.warresisters.org/how_to_resist.htm>).  That will have little  
> tangible material impact on the war-making capacity of the US  
> government (if the tax resisters in question are poor, they may not  
> be paying much tax even without tax disobedience).  If 4,000 Army  
> soldiers refuse to reenlist, however, that will have far more impact  
> than 4,000 (or even 40,000 or 400,000) civilian tax resisters.
>
> <blockquote>The Army announced in October that, for fiscal year 2005,  
> the active-duty Army recruited 73,373 new soldiers, 6,627 short of  
> the goal of 80,000 (i.e., 92% of the goal); the Army Reserve accessed  
> 23,859 soldiers, 4,626 short of the goal of 28,485 (i.e., 84%); and  
> the Army National Guard gained 50,219 soldiers, 12,783 short of the  
> goal of 63,002 (i.e., 80%).
>
> <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ayers011105.html></blockquote>
>
> That's very good.
>
> Reenlistment has not gone down as much as fresh recruitment.
>
> <blockquote>Soldiers are re-enlisting at rates ahead of the Army's  
> targets, even as overall recruiting is suffering after two years of  
> the Iraq war.
> The high re-enlistment rates would make up about one-third of the  
> Army's projected 12,000-troop shortfall in recruiting, although the  
> re-enlistments won't address some key personnel vacancies, such as  
> military police and bomb-disposal experts.
>
> (Dave Moniz, "Soldiers Re-enlist beyond U.S. Goal," USA Today, 17  
> July 2005, <http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-07-17-soldiers- 
> re-enlist_x.htm>)</blockquote>
>
> Soldiers ought to be encouraged not to reenlist.  Soldiers who refuse  
> can make a bigger difference than civilians.
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
>
>
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