Manufacturing Conscription - Z Magazine
 
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:41:08 -0500 (CDT)


http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2007/aleman.html

Manufacturing Conscription

By George Aleman III

Of all the slogans used to stifle opposition to Americas aggressive
foreign policy, the most infamous is Support Our Troops. After
dispatching its massive force across the Atlantic, the U.S. public
relations industry threw this phrase into the public forum. A scheme
undoubtedly contrived for the effect it would have, the public began
probing itself for those who did not support the troops.

The intended effect of suppression took root and all discussion about U.S.
war policy was off the table. A national discussion about the composition,
effectiveness, or readiness of Americas Armed Forces was, therefore,
absent. It was a three-pronged plot to asphyxiate opposition, divert
peoples attention, and drum up support for the war. Accordingly, those
who feared being accused of not supporting the troops became subservient
to an empty slogan.

The population became immersed in a squabbling match, which continues
today. Jingoists came out of the woodwork and slapped magnetic ribbons on
their vehicles with the empty, suppressive slogan to show their devotion
to keeping their mouths shut about their nation going to war.

It was an ingenious plan with impeccable timing. However, out of all the
consequencesintended or unintendedfrom this ruse, one of the most
disastrous has been the suppression of a national discussion about the
reality of the U.S. all-volunteer fighting force.

Undoubtedly there are many patriotic individuals who seek to genuinely
defend the United States. Hence, they choose to join the Armed Services.
However, not all of the men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces are
enlisted by choice. Though the media figureheads would have people believe
otherwise, with their talking-points about the all-volunteer fighting
force, many people do not join the Armed Services because they want to,
they join because they have to.

The priorities in the New American Century are obvious; the swelling
poverty rate says it all. The proportion of Americans who are living in
severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, as millions of working
Americans are falling closer to the poverty line. Moreover, the number
of severely poor Americans has grown more than 26 percent since 2000.

If all this was not enough, the Center for Disease Control recently
released a report titled Early Release of Estimates from the National
Health Interview Survey, January-September 2006. It concluded that at the
time of the interview nearly 45 million people of all ages were uninsured,
31 million had been uninsured for more than a year, and 55 million had
been uninsured for at least part of the prior year.

In February the New York Times reported, The most recent test results
from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as
the national report card, showed that American 12th graders
areperforming worse in reading than they have in the past ten years.
Moreover, performance in reading has been distressingly flat since 2002
and only about 35 percent of 12th graders are proficient in reading.
Hence, a majority of the countrys 12th graders have trouble
understanding what they read fully enough to make inferences, draw
conclusions and see connections between what they read and their own ex-
periences.

According to the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which is
supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, approximately 1 in 3
high school students in the Class of 2006 [did] not graduate. In
California alone, the graduation rate dropped to [a] 10-year lowas a
third of the Class of 2006 left without a diploma, according to
Department of Education numbers. If this was not enough, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology publication, Technology Review, recently reported
that a study conducted by Michigan State University political scientist
Jon D. Miller found that 216 million Americans are scientifically
illiterate.

The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in 2002, emphasizes testing
rather than education. Educators around the country have been persistent
in pointing out that the Acts concentration on standardized assessment is
part of the problem in the plight of the public school education system,
the dumbing-down of new generations of Americans, and dwindling graduation
rates. Yet, the current Administration claims it to be a policy for the
improvement thereof.

Young, poorly educated Americans (by way of legislation), with or without
high school diplomas, are facing an unforgiving, technology-based society
and have very limited options and/or no direction. Enlistment appears to
be the best option. In other words, they are forced to volunteer for the
all-volunteer fighting force, as it provides relief from the despair and
uncertainty they face. The modest but steady wages, the guaranteed
housing allowance, the solid retirement plan and the health benefits of
the Armed Forces is appealing when the rest of society is moving in the
opposite direction.

The Armed Forces is comprised of many individuals who commonly join up to
advance themselves in light of the dismal alternatives presented to them.
These alternatives include: difficult job searches, little or no job
security, regular pilfering of retirement funds by company executives and
their accountants, privatized medical care, bad public elementary
education, and expensive higher education.

Knowing this, divisions of recruiters are dispatched by every branch of
the Armed Forces to scour the country in search of those looking to escape
the depressing alternatives before them. At malls, sporting events,
community gatherings, residences, and public schools, recruiters
disseminate their message of the benefits of volunteering.
Additionally, millions are spent on a public relations campaign and
creative ways to lure people, especially youth, into signing up. Pro-war
films, commercials, decorated T-shirts, toys, video games, and Junior
Reserve Officer Training Corps are used to make enlistment appealing and
life in the Armed Forces a place where one can be all one can be, as a
substitute for a world where one seems like nothing.

Facing blocked avenues and having a deep pessimism about the future,
individuals are forced to turn towards the offered benefits and financial
security of the Armed Forces. Hence the use of creative ways to draw
in, even re-draw, recruits amid a war that is stretching ranks to their
limits and pushing the U.S. towards imperial collapse.

The surge of desperation, degradation, and economic hardship endemic in
American society goes unreported in the media. In addition, the Armed
Services desperate need of more recruits for a quagmire with no end in
sight is cloaked through creative tactics of appeal. These factors
combined allow for the fagade of an all-volunteer fighting force.
Politicians, jingoists, and media figures exploit this to, in the words of
the president, catapult the propaganda that the U.S. fighting force is
saturated with genuine volunteers who had plenty of other choices in life;
that they gave up their pursuit of the American Dream to protect the
American Dream. The offensive, political, and fabricated use of the death
of the professional football player turned soldier, Pat Tillman, was the
most blatant case for the exploitation of this myth.

Though there are those who are driven by patriotism, sense of mission,
camaraderie, pride and adventure, many individuals do not join the
American fighting force to actually fight, or even with a desire to go to
war. They join because of the socialistic nature of the institution. While
the Armed Forces are having trouble reaching recruitment quotas amid an
un-winnable war, they are managing retentionat record levels. People
already in the Armed Services have a firm understanding that a civilian
world that seem[s] ever more unwelcoming and unreliable awaits them and
that the military cocoon is just the opposite.

If the U.S. is going to continue to assert that it has an all-volunteer
fighting force, then Americans need to realize that the more desperation
there is at home, the more citizens will join. The more citizens that
join, the bigger fighting force the U.S. has. The bigger fighting force
the U.S. has, the more subject it is to misuse by an establishment with
imperial ambitions.

The more one buys into a narrow, sacrosanct, empty phrase like Support Our
Troops, the more one sanctions the current environment of national plight
in the U.S. and aids the perpetuation of the status quo. It only serves
Americas move towards hegemonic breakdown. Supporting the right to life,
security, and peace for all in the war-ravaged countries of Iraq and
Afghanistan, even around the world, is what matters.

Z

George Aleman III is an MA student in history. He is also a writer,
activist, and musician.