This year may well bring together a number of factors that will offer the anti-war movement an important opportunity to end the US occupation of Iraq and begin to reverse the decades-long growth of militarism in this country. However, to take advantage of this opportunity, the anti-war movement will have to think critically about its emphasis on symbolic war protests and look more closely at strategies for actually interfering with the flow of human cannon fodder needed for war, especially through counter-recruitment organizing.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq is now the quagmire that many of us predicted, and U.S. actions in the region have created less political stability instead of more. Most importantly, a developing personnel shortage within the military, caused by Bush's aggressive war policy, will soon mean the Pentagon can no longer carry out the mission that has been handed to it by the neo-con imperialists. The US Army missed its 2005 recruitment target by a wide margin, falling short of its 80,000 goal by more than 6,600 soldiers , the largest shortfall since 1979. Interviewed on MSNBC television, retired General Barry McCaffrey commented, “We’re having some very significant recruiting difficulties. There’s no question.” He added, “This is a tremendous shortfall. And it is even more significant and severe in the National Guard, which I think is starting to melt down.”
This sharp decline in recruitment has raised the very real possibility that the Pentagon could soon confront its biggest manpower crisis in over two decades. Thirty years ago, the public image and influence of the military establishment reached a low point because of controversy over the Vietnam War and the draft that was used to supply the soldiers to fight it. When massive war resistance and social upheaval forced an end to the war and the draft, the Pentagon had to begin relying on aggressive marketing to fill the armed forces' ranks and improve its relationship with the public. As a result of this shift in strategy, the military has been steadily expanding its presence in K-12 schools and increasingly targeting poor and minority students. The military has not only been invading Iraq. The military has been invading our schools!
Right now, public opposition to the war in Iraq is increasing and antagonism toward reinstating the draft is running high. The Pentagon knows that its political gains over the last 30 years would be jeopardized by a firestorm of hostility if, once again, conscription were used to force people to fight a war that the majority of Americans do not support. A draft would mean that recruiters and ROTC programs would come under fierce attack on college campuses, as would the military recruiters and military-linked programs that have invaded our K-12 schools, including the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), military aptitude testing (ASVAB), the Young Marines, and the many military-school partnerships that have been taking root at all school levels.
If the military believes it cannot get the warm bodies needed to carry out its mission, and if the draft is an unacceptable solution because of the likelihood of a severe political backlash, it leaves only the choice of changing the mission. In other words, Bush and the neo-cons would be forced to start phasing out their occupation of Iraq. Even though Bush has talked about staying the course, there is little he can do if the troops, money, and will are not there to continue, and if the career officers at the Pentagon become more vocal in defending their own vital institutional interests. In this case, the Pentagon's interests are best served by getting the troops out of Iraq rather than resorting to a draft.
The challenge for the anti-war movement is to work toward this outcome by strengthening the perception that neither a draft nor aggressive recruiting can sustain the neo-con’s war agenda. We have an opportunity to do this by making counter-recruitment organizing and the demilitarization of schools a high priority.
More anti-war activists are now realizing how critical counter-recruitment work is and are deciding that symbolic protest, though valuable, is not enough. By countering military recruitment, people can actually nonviolently stand in the way of what is being done in Iraq. If more of us get involved in stopping the machinery of war in our own schools, this could be a turning point for the anti-war movement. By working together to hamper military recruitment, we can starve the beast of militarism that has been eating away at our nation.
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March 13, 2006 Joe Parko is retired professor emeritus at Georgia State University where he taught for 28 years in the Dept. of Public Administration and Urban Studies and directed the graduate program in Non-Profit Management. He is a member of the Atlanta Friends Meeting (Quakers) and is an active volunteer with the American Friends Service Committee ( where he serves on the Middle East Peace Education Program Committee) , the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, and WRFG – the non-profit radio voice of Atlanta’s progressive community. Joe is an alumnus of Leadership Atlanta (class of 1980). He also serves as an officer on the board of directors of Progressive Healthcare Providers, a non-profit organization that provides community-based homes and training for some 350 mentally disabled adults throughout the southeast. Joe has been active in the peace and justice movement for over 40 years and has been involved in numerous non-violent direct actions. Most recently, he was arrested for leading a sit-in at the office of Senator Zell Miller on Nov. 4, 2002 in protest of his support for war on Iraq. http://www.mytown.ca/ev.php?URL_ID=107698&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201
