The U.S. Armed Forces suffered a servere setback in Vietnam. The rebuilding efforts after 1975 followed the thinking discussed in Olive Drab Rebels: create an "all-volunteer" army based on pay hikes, college tuition in exchange for subsequent military enrolment and promises of high quality training which would allow recruits to re-enter the civilian world with marketable skills.
As the collective memory of the debacle in Vietnam partially faded, many have enlisted and the increasing number of enlistees have indeed opted for combat training, though most doubted such training would actually involve them personally in a large-scale war. At the same time, the U.S. military leadership continued to be wary of the fortitude of its own troops and remained significantly worried about the willingness of U.S. civilians to accept high casualty rates. Hence, the drive toward "mechanised warfare" accelerated from 1975 through 2003. Boosted by an unrealistic view of the precision reliability of "sophisticated" missiles and bomb delivery systems, the ruling class spent hundreds of billions to develop weapons which could pulverise a country from the air, leaving the ground troops with the lower risks of "simply" mopping up the mess left behind.
This was clearly the strategy of the Bush administration in the current war against Iraq. "Shock and awe" was presented to the U.S. population as an air assault of such overwhelming magnitude that resistance on the ground would crumble. Troops were implicitly promised that they would be greeted by jubilant Iraqis waving American flags and cheering as the tanks and humvees rolled by, almost a "re-dux" of U.S. troops entering Paris after the second World War to the cheers of those now oh-so-ungrateful French.
But this Bush-Rumsfield-Ashcroft fantasy was not to be. While the ruling political system of Saddam Hussein could be blown to bits from the sky, the notion that the new U.S. empire could roll in as an unimpeded occupation force was wrong. Consequently, while Bush declared "major combat" operation over on May 1, 2003, as this postscript is being written the Iraqi resistance to the new empire has caught the U.S. ruling class dramatically off guard. And the working class foot soldiers, as always, are paying the price. It is significant that even the "new" volunteer army is reacting to this reality jolt. Having been sold an entire set of fabrications to justify the war, including the lie that Iraq could be tied to Al Quaeda and the 9/11 attacks, the troops on the ground are beginning to feel deceived.
Troops of the Third Infantry Division, representing 12,000 of the 148,00 U.S. troops currently in Iraq, and certainly representing one of the groups most directly involved in ground fighting, aired their grievances in interviews this month with ABC news. Most of those interviewed felt betrayed by the triple extension of their stay in Iraq, one called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, and Private Jason Ring ("standing next to his humvee") was quoted as saying, "We liberated Iraq. Now the people here don't want us here, and guess what? We don't want to be here either! So why are we still here? Why don't they bring us home?" Another soldier was quoted as writing in an e-mail, "We have been told twice that we were going home and twice we have been ordered to stay in Iraq. Our morale is not high or low. It is non-existent."
Such dissent brought a quick rebuke from the White House. Division officers on the ground were given strict orders to silence the troops; some found their careers threatened. General John Abizaid starkly announced, "None of us that wear this uniform are free to say anything disparaging about the secretary of defence or the president of the United States."
But the troops on the ground retain their ability to think. The current crisis in Iraq has revealed that recruiting working class youth into the armed forces with the lure of economic advancement, essentially an "economic" draft of the most disadvantaged members of the working class, rather than a society-wide draft, still does not produce a military ready to fight extensively and with great suffering for the advancement of an empire. This developing schism can be nurtured not only by continued education and agitation among military personnel, but also work among those working class youth who are still civilians and may yet find themselves recruited to become the replacement troops for the war-weary still in Iraq.
As these words are being written, the Third Infantry Division has taken the 148th admitted combat fatality of the current war as a young soldier was blown from his humvee by a land mine. The U.S. press has noted his death as the fatality which marks the 2003 war as more fatal to U.S. soldiers than the 1991 war against Iraq. His fellow soldiers may see a deeper meaning.
Matthew Rinaldi
July, 2003