Revolution #176, September 13, 2009
Waking Up and Shaking Off:
Resisting Recruitment, And a Life With Meaning
"[W]ars, invasions and occupations…assassinations and massacres…planes, missiles, tanks and troops of the USA bombarding people in faraway lands while they sleep in their homes or go about their daily lives, blasting their little children to pieces, cutting down men and women in the prime of life, or in old age, kicking down their doors and dragging them away in the middle of the night…" This is a glimpse of the reality exposed by the RCP's statement, "The Revolution We Need... The Leadership We Have"—just a glimpse of what the U.S. Military carries out across the globe, a glimpse of what is covered-up, lied about, redacted, misrepresented, or re-written throughout history.
I was oblivious to this basic fact when the Army JROTC cadets and their instructor showed up during my lunch period one day to promote their high school program. Even in 8th grade, looking at my prospects for the future and the situation I was in, what they were offering had a pull on me. I grew up in a middle-class household—the situation was nowhere near the desperate conditions of poverty that people face around the world, but my parents had gone bankrupt while I was younger, they had some debt and the money for my college education just wasn't there. Besides, I wasn't going to ask. It's not that my parents were particularly stingy, but when I was growing up it made me feel guilty to ask for things, even basic things—it was a strange mix of not wanting to come off as ungrateful for what I did have and looking at our relationship as a series of commodity exchanges. The way I saw it, I had totally relied on my parents for over a decade, they had spent so much time, effort and especially money on my development, I didn't want to burden them with even the thought of accumulating more debt in order to put me through college. I sure as hell didn't want to take out a loan and end up paying it off for 20 years. My grades weren't that great, and I wasn't exactly studious, so I didn't expect to be able to get any scholarships. Joining the military in order to get money for college seemed like a logical choice.
I didn't talk to the cadets but a friend of mine picked up one of the pamphlets they were passing out. He said he was going to be in the JROTC program in order to get out of P.E. I looked the pamphlet over and saw that being in JROTC for a couple years during high school would enable me to skip ahead a rank once I joined the military; since it was more and more appearing as "the best option," it made sense to get some elective credits, and get a step ahead with some training before I ended up joining after high school. So, when the time came to select courses for our first year of high school, a few of my friends and I decided to sign up together. Out of the few of us, I was the only one who expected to join the military, the others were doing it for the credits or were undecided at that point and wanted to check it out. We had all quit abruptly or left the program by our junior year.
JROTC at my school was mainly made up of people who were seen as misfits for one reason or another; some were a bit socially awkward or very timid, some were adamant about not taking P.E. (because they disliked physical activity or didn't want to change in the locker rooms). We were not very academic, nor were we popular—especially on Wednesdays. Wednesdays were the days that we had to "dress-out"—shine our patent leather shoes, iron our green pants and shirts, wear our caps outside, salute any cadet officers we saw, have our uniforms inspected and generally carry on as representatives of the JROTC. I hated Wednesdays. I didn't even let my girlfriend see me in uniform; I would manage to be conspicuously absent at our meeting spots and the lunch table and if I saw her coming I would flee. I found it excruciatingly embarrassing to wear our version of the Army uniform. It was not exactly "cool" (people would yell and call us "pickles" or otherwise insult us), it was not comfortable wearing a green suit and tie in algebra class, and you had to be hyper-attentive because if you spilled anything on yourself, wrinkled your clothes or otherwise messed up your uniform, you would get marks off and probably a lecture during inspection. Unfortunately, it wasn't unpopular because we were representing and being trained in preparation for service in an imperialist force of armed thugs which was just beginning to invade Iraq but, instead, because what we were doing was very different, it took discipline, seriousness, and the uniforms were less than fashionable.
There were some things I liked about it however: P.T. Team (basically a track team for JROTC), learning how to march and drill (which involves a lot of coordination between people), and there was some camaraderie to it among the cadets.
We spent a lot of time in military studies class both learning about the military of the United States (rank, chain of command, drill instruction, how to lead small units) as well as training in other general skills (marksmanship, first aid, survival training, map-reading) but throughout all of this, the process was devoid of any discussion of what this training was actually for, what the nature of the U.S. military actually is and what it was being sent out to do in the world. These fundamental questions must have been seen as unimportant to our preparation in the program, and we were not conscious of the need to get into those questions; the atmosphere was lacking any kind of political ferment or philosophical wrangling, not only in JROTC but in my high school as a whole.
While I had charted and began following a particular course, I was yet unaware that larger forces in society and the world had the potential to radically alter the direction of my life and what it was going to be about.
At first, instead of becoming active around and conscious of the horrors being perpetrated by the United States in 2007 (my junior year), I became attracted to resistance through learning about something that had gone on 161 years earlier. I found out about Henry David Thoreau and how he resisted through a play based on his early life up until his first night in jail; he went to jail in 1846 for evading taxes. He refused to pay taxes to support the United States government because it was waging an unjust war against Mexico at the time. The Mexican-American War was supposedly started by the claim that Mexico had 'shed American blood on ... American soil'; however it was actually a war fought to expand the territory of the United States. It was through encountering that long past act of defiance which challenged me to look at what was going on around me and my role in the world very differently. An alternate course was developing... but I would not come to explore it more fully until a year later.
When a Marine recruiter called me at home in the first semester of senior year—my stomach dropped. They were offering what I expected, it was the choice I had anticipated making, coming to me, but it was unsettling. The military option I had braced myself and prepared for, what I had been intending to do for years, the prospect of 4 years of obligatory service and possibly fighting in a war, this was becoming serious. I met up with the recruiter after school. He told me about how much he loved the military, moving around the country, the money and getting to use a car from the recruiting office; he told me about what enlistment would entail and told me about some of my job options based on my test scores—I picked a position as a translator and initiated the process. A few weeks later I went into the MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station), took a thorough medical exam, a written test, filled out the paperwork for enlistment and gave an oath—this oath supposedly sealed the deal—I was going to the military, or so I thought.
This process came on somewhat unexpectedly—up until the point where they called me I had planned on going to the military but I wasn't exactly overflowing with initiative for seeking them out and signing up. Once they called I felt unsure and scared, but I felt like I had to follow through with the plan I had made, because the factors leading me to that course of action remained the same and because no alternative was presenting itself in a forceful or well-developed way. However, all of this did compel me to think about this decision and its implications more deeply.
I started talking to people about the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and I tried to research more about the underlying causes of the war and what were the real aims and objectives propelling it—"spreading freedom and democracy" seemed to be a more and more unlikely explanation as I studied the real history of the United States and its military excursions around the globe. I was becoming more interested in getting politically involved when I got a sense of the injustices going on in the world and because I met people around Revolution who were both telling the truth about the war—that it was in the service of expanding and consolidating U.S. domination of the world—and that there was a great need for people to actively resist the crimes of the exploitative system behind all this, capitalism-imperialism, and to organize for a revolution which could put an end to this system.
They told me about the protest that was being called for by World Can't Wait, to march on the Pentagon in opposition to the "murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq" and I felt like there was no way I could miss out on something so bold, so daring and so righteous! I immediately investigated the travel costs and made plans with a friend to go together. We were exhilarated by the opportunity to stand with the people of the world against the war. We were ecstatic to travel halfway across the country, and meet completely new people who also felt the urgent need to fight and struggle, to protest and resist. We were immensely excited to play a part, not only of immediately ending the war but driving the entire Bush regime from office... and then we were temporarily de-railed.
We overlooked the fact that our parents had no intention whatsoever of letting us go that far on our own. However, we were able to hook up with Revolution distributors and go to a protest being held on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, March 19. This was very new to me at the time, it was very challenging and intimidating to not only be at my first protest but to try and bring revolutionary politics (which I was not incredibly familiar with at the time) to thousands of strangers. It was also very meaningful and thrilling because I was sharing Revolution newspaper with people and the things I had learned in a relatively short period of time about the system of capitalism we live under, that it was the cause of so much unnecessary pain and suffering and that we needed a revolution to get rid of it. This experience propelled me to both want to learn more about the world and also to change it in the interests of humanity.
But I didn't get it yet. I thought I could be for a better world; for a revolution to get to socialism and advance towards communism; and somehow that those desires and aspirations could survive my decision to join the U.S. military. I thought that I was "strong-minded" enough not to be ideologically twisted into what they wanted me to be.
Fortunately, someone I knew around Revolution challenged me to confront reality on this, and they called me out on what I was doing: putting my individual need for college money (promised by the military) above the lives of the tens of thousands of people this system crushes every day. I did not understand what I was doing in that way. I felt that because I was opposed to the war and the system politically and because I wasn't "supposed" to be in battle due to the fact that I chose to be a translator, that I could get an education and be in an even better position to fight for revolution and communism.
I was dead wrong, but I didn't think so; I felt like they were being intrusive. Who were they to challenge what I had been planning to do for years? I thought it was frustrating at the time that they were making me question what I was doing, that they kept inviting me to meetings and confronting me on what the military does and has done to the masses of people around the world and what it meant for me to be joining up with that. To the extent that what they were saying influenced me, it brought up many more questions: how to get out of the military, how to get an education, where I was going to live in order to not stay at home, and whether I could be a part of consciously fighting and preparing for communist revolution.
This was very difficult because they refused to let me ignore what I knew; they were calling on me to act on what I understood to be true, to rupture from a path and a way of thinking motivated mainly by my own, narrow self-interest and to take my life in a completely different direction.
This person struggled with me very fiercely around the real nature of the military—that it exists to violently enforce capitalism-imperialism—and that joining with it in any capacity means serving this system, actively taking part in plundering and destroying people around the world, whether I ended up being sent to war or not. This really struck me because at first I hadn't put it together—if you're working for the military (whether you're repairing the tanks or actually driving them and firing the cannons) you are functioning as a cog in the overall juggernaut of death and destruction, known as U.S. imperialism. This is what I didn't understand at the time, I thought that if I could get out of combat then it would just be like getting any other job. However the way they posed this and drew together the links, they didn't let me avoid reality like that. They showed me the connections between those supporting the war logistically: military police, technicians, translators (those making sure the military machine was working) and those carrying out its purpose: infantry shooting people down, pilots dropping bombs, and soldiers in tanks firing cannons.
This person also did the work to help me find a way out of the agreement that I had made; as a high school student in the Delayed Enlistment Program (DEP) even though I signed the paperwork at the recruiting office, and swore an oath, as long as I didn't ship out for boot camp, they couldn't make me into what they want, like the RCP statement says, "a mindless killing machine for the system itself."
The fact that this person was very persistent, passionate and scientific was decisive; they were not only walking me through what it would mean to be a part of the military, but that they were also showing me a different pathway, something worth dedicating my life to and worth sacrificing my life for: the emancipation of humanity.
A few months later I joined the Revolution Club in my area and began committing myself to communist revolution.
Nobody should make the mistake I almost made. If no one had been there to struggle with me, I would probably be in Iraq or Afghanistan kicking down doors and terrorizing people, in jail for refusing orders, or dead. If it makes you sick to think about the crimes against humanity being committed right now by the military, you have a responsibility to let your friends and the world know. It is up to you to confront your friends, challenge convention, go meet some of the JROTC youth or people who might be attracted for whatever reason when the recruiters show up; you have to let them know what this military is actually about and what it is carrying out in the world. You have to put this to them sharply: is it worth it? To live and die for empire, to check your humanity, to suppress the feelings of compassion you might have for human life being snuffed out or irrevocably scarred by torture—for a fucking paycheck and a college education. That's disgusting! Not one more generation fighting and dying, trading their humanity for blood money, becoming assassins for a brutal empire—all of this serves only to more deeply reinforce the current world order and the violent domination of humanity by a handful of ruthless exploiters. This way of life is intolerable and you have the responsibility and opportunity to put an end to it.
Spread this issue of Revolution to everyone you know, spark debates at the lunch table and in the classroom around the big questions being posed in the world: "What are we going to dedicate our lives to?" "Could the world actually be different and better than this?" "What role do students have to play in bringing about a radically transformed world?" Organize some of your friends and print up pictures of what the military actually does, so the next time the recruiters show up, you can pass them around at lunch and expose them for what they are doing: bamboozling youth into fighting for the same system that got humanity into this mess in the first damn place. And when you do any of this, write in to Revolution and tell us about it—what happened, what were people saying and thinking, and how did things change in your class/neighborhood/school, etc.
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