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Advising My Students on Marching to War
By Kirk Stapp, Friday 24 June 2005
After a marine or army recruiter visits Mammoth High School, students frequently ask me questions about my military experience in Vietnam. Eventually, these conversations lead to a single question: Should I enlist?
Advice can carry a heavy burden in shaping a seventeen-year-old’s future: employment, culinary school, a community college, a UC, a tour in Iraq, an amputated leg, a lifetime full of nightmares, cancer from the hundreds of tons of depleted uranium used in US and British munitions, a flag-draped coffin.
Ryan (not the student’s real name): “The recruiter said that my ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) scores were so high that I could become a helicopter mechanic or even go to officer’s candidate school.”
“You know, if you enlist, you’re going to end up serving a tour or two in Iraq or Afghanistan.” There is an awkward moment of silence. “If you’re smart enough to have options in the military, why don’t you go to college?”
Ryan hesitates: “My folks said they could help me pay for books, but that’s about it. They can’t afford to …” There is a pause – then a glimmer of hope: “The recruiter said that if I enlisted I would receive ten thousand dollars, an enlistment bonus, and thousands more in college tuition assistance when I get out.” If you get out. He’s looking for an opening. It’s not “Should I enlist?” He wants to know why he shouldn’t enlist.
“What do you think?” Ryan asks, while looking at the floor.
I think recruiters target poor kids. The chance of Ryan’s being killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are minuscule. The chance of his losing a leg or arm or eye are probably less than two percent. Sadly, the chances of his suffering from exposure to radiation are probably astronomically high given the fact that hundreds of tons of depleted uranium munitions have been expended in Iraq during the first gulf war and Bush’s crusade.
The idea of advising Ryan to not serve his country is repulsive to me. Americans have always served ideas bigger than themselves: “freedom,” “opportunity,” “liberty,” “justice,” “truth,” “equality.” Most of these ideas are enshrined in our Constitution: they are called the Bill of Rights.
Ryan hands me an Army National Guard brochure: “BE ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST POWERFUL WEAPONS.” “Citizen. Soldier. Defender of Freedom.” “Your country needs you.”
“Ryan, you’re not American’s most powerful weapon and you’re not an army of one. You also need to know that there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, there was no link between Saddam Hussein, al-Qaeda and 9/11, and the people in Iraq, at least the Shia, didn’t vote because of Mr. Bush’s Iraqi Freedom; they voted because the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa – a religious order – vote or go to purgatory or wherever Muslims go. They also voted because they wanted American troops our of their country.” There is another prolonged pause.
“What the recruiter won’t tell you, Ryan – or for that matter, what most American newspapers won’t print – is that not only have we killed over a hundred thousand Iraqis, demolished many of their cities, allowed their museums to be ransacked, crippled their water and electrical system, desecrated their Qur’an; but we also sold over 200 state-owned Iraqi enterprises to foreigners, multinationals like Halliburton – and Iraqis aren’t even entitled to any of the contracts to rebuild their own country. We’ve decimated their country and economy. And then there are the US prison camps – Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Force Base, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba – it’s much worse than a “few bad apples,” we’re torturing people to death. Amnesty International has branded the US prison camps a human rights failure. Muslims around the world fear us and hate us. We’ve lost the moral high ground.”
Ryan is intensely staring at his hands; his fingers are claws. He wants to know why he shouldn’t enlist.
“Mr. Stapp, didn’t you enlist during the Vietnam War?”
“Yes!”
“Why did you enlist?”
“For the GI Bill, so I could go to college – my family was poor; because I thought it was the right thing to do; I didn’t know any better; I just signed up.”
Ryan unlocked his fingers, placed his hands palm down on the desk, extended his fingers, slumped in is chair.
“Ryan, let me ask you this: why wouldn’t the recruiter let you bring your enlistment papers to school for me to read?”
There is an tense silence. He still wants to know why he shouldn’t join.
“Okay – if you are going to enlist, make sure you get everything the recruiter promises you – in writing. Your enlistment papers are a contract with Uncle Sam. If they promise you enlistment bonus money, or free tuition money, or officer’s candidate school, make sure you get it in writing. And before you sign any enlistment papers, please bring a copy to school so I can read them and talk to you about what’s in them, what they mean. And one other thing, promise me – promise me – if you do end up in Iraq and you encounter a destroyed Iraqi tank or armored vehicle, stay the hell away from it. It was probably destroyed with depleted uranium munitions, which means if you breathe any of the contaminated dust, you could get cancer. Of course, the army will deny that DU can cripple you, but over 200,000 troops who returned from the 1991 Gulf War are now dead or debilitated with ailments ranging from leukemia to kidney failure to brain damage: all attributed to service in Iraq – that’s 1 in 3!”
“The recruiter said I would be stopping terrorism – stopping another 9/11.”
I am almost shouting through clenched teeth. “Afghanistan was about stopping al-Qaeda and terrorism. The war in Iraq isn’t about stopping terrorism. It’s about oil or egos. According to a recently released secret British memo, the intelligence and the facts for going to war in Iraq were ‘fixed’ by the Bush administration eight months before the war was started. Today, ninety-five percent of the fighters in Iraq – fighting against American soldiers – are Iraqi nationals, not foreign fighters or bloodthirsty fanatics or insurgents. The Iraqis view the US-led forces as ‘occupiers’ not ‘liberators.’ We’re increasing terrorism. Last year, terrorist incidents were at a 20-year high, and they have increased five times since then. We’re making America and the world less safe.” Ryan is looking at his hands again. I lower my voice: “Iraq is drifting into chaos and taking the US and the Muslim world with it.”
Ryan stops listening. After a brief silence, he changes the subject: a few comments about teachers, friends, the end of the school year. There is a clumsy parting. “Take care, Ryan.”
Ryan is a pragmatist and an unwitting patriot. A long time ago I taught a unit about war poetry. Talking to Ryan, I am reminded of the ending of Kipling’s poem, “Epitaphs of the War” -
“If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied.”
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