the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Dec 20, 2004
Social Security "is headed towards bankruptcy down the road. If we do not act soon, Social Security will not be there for our children and grandchildren." So said George Bush.
But, as we all know, George Bush lies. And this is one of the biggest lies he’s ever told.
Social Security is not running out of money. On the contrary, it consistently runs a big surplus, currently 150 billion dollars per year. The accumulated Social Security surplus now amounts to almost two trillion dollars. And, according to the Social Security Administration itself, the surplus will be more than six trillion dollars by 2020.
But–or so Bush tells us–there’s the "baby boom generation" getting ready to retire. It’s true that when most of that baby boom generation has retired, Social Security will be paying out more money than it takes in–for a very short time. But the larger Baby Boom generation will soon be followed into retirement by the much, much smaller Baby Bust generation. The gap problem–if there turns out to be one–is only temporary. And it could be more than covered by requiring the wealthy, for example, to pay Social Security tax on all their income, and not just the first $90,000. Or the government could borrow from the military budget to pay out a few years of Social Security, just as it has borrowed from Social Security for years to pay for military contracts to the big corporations.
Instead of looking at the cold hard facts, Bush blows smoke–like the following stupid comparison: In the 1950s–says Bush–16 active workers paid for every Social Security beneficiary. Today, only three active workers are paying for each retiree. Eventually, there will be only two.
Forget about the fact that Bush pulled these figures out of the air–just like he pulled his so-called proof about weapons of mass destruction out of the air. The social and economic meaning of these claims is false.
Yes, there are fewer active workers–that simply reflects the enormous and steady increases in productivity, which are transforming the entire economy. Today, only a tiny part of the population produces enough food not only for the rest of the country, but for other parts of the world as well. The same is true for industry and services. Today, for example, a small workforce of a few thousand in the factories and offices can do the work that used to be done by tens and even hundreds of thousands of people.
Productivity means that not only can workers provide for themselves, each one produces so much that they could provide for many other people. It’s that increasing productivity that gives every worker the possibility to have much longer paid vacations, more holidays, shorter work days–and earlier retirement. The possibilities for providing a decent retirement for everyone are not shrinking, as Bush and others would have us believe. Soon it will be possible for one active worker, through the increasing wealth he or she creates, to provide the retirement for two workers.
The problem is not how much wealth workers produce. What gets in the way is big capital that takes more and more of the benefits of productivity, using it to fatten their own profits, to enrich the privileged few, to allow them to amass ever greater wealth.
Bush’s proposal to "save" Social Security is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to hand over more of the wealth our labor creates to Wall Street. Bush even admitted this in a statement after his "economic summit," when he said that his plans for Social Security should "reassure" the financial markets. They sure will–because they would take a very big chunk of money that should go for our pensions and turn it over to the financial companies and the rest of the capitalist class.
Social Security is not in a "crisis." The only reforming that needs to be done is to increase it and extend it so we can all have an adequate pension.
Dec 20, 2004
Earlier this month, the UAW and four other unions agreed to set aside a part of a contract with the State of Michigan that the workers had already voted to accept.
In October, these unions negotiated contracts for Michigan state workers that included health care benefits for same-sex domestic partners.
On December 1, the State of Michigan said it would set aside that provision, based on the passage of Proposal 2 in the November election.
Proposal 2 was a proposal to amend the state constitution to recognize a marriage between a man and a woman as the only kind of marriage "or any union for any purpose."
When leaders of the UAW and the other four unions agreed to set aside the new contract provision, they said they’d wait for the courts to decide if Proposal 2 outlaws same-sex domestic partnership benefits.
In the months before the election, these unions never said one word about Proposal 2–allowing something strongly supported by only a vocal minority of the population to pass easily with a majority of the votes.
They never made any kind of stand against this disgusting, reactionary attack into people’s private lives. A simple question, spoken loudly and insistently–"Why do you care what other people do so long as they harm no one?"–could have had a big impact on the result.
Instead, the unions said nothing–on this or any of the others of Bush’s reactionary campaign attacks, not to mention nothing about the disgusting Iraq war. The largest organizations representing working people left the field wide open for the small minority in the fundamentalist religious Right to push their agenda.
Even when the unions negotiated these health benefits, they accepted the limits placed by the Right, since the benefits were only for same-sex domestic partners. They reinforced the idea that the only legitimate partnership for heterosexual couples is a legally sanctioned marriage; and that the only reason to accept this health care coverage was because gays and lesbians can’t legally marry in Michigan.
They may have campaigned against Bush, but they helped pave the way for his victory.
And now, by quietly accepting the state’s decision to get rid of this provision, and saying they’ll wait for the courts to decide–they’re allowing these reactionary attacks to continue.
Dec 20, 2004
There have been two separate cases of tuberculosis reported within a recent two week span in Detroit. One case involved a staff member at a school and the other a kitchen worker at the MotorCity Casino.
In response to the school case, the school’s principal sent a general information letter to all parents, but only parents of a more restricted group of students who were deemed "at risk" were told their children needed to be tested. Those parents were given the option of having their kids tested at the school or taking them to a private doctor for testing.
At the casino, a small number of workers were tested. There was no testing set up for customers of the casino or many other casino workers who may have had contact with the worker who contracted the disease. Instead the Detroit Health Department downplayed the problem by claiming that you have to come in close contact with someone with active TB for 30 days in order to get the disease.
In September, an employee at the main State of Michigan office building in Detroit was found to have TB. In that case, the State also tried to limit the number of workers who got free TB tests. After it came out that Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm got tested after having spent only a little time in the building, workers forced the State to test everyone who worked in the building. Fifty-eight people were found to have tested positive for TB. It has yet to be determined whether these are latent cases, or if any of these workers will be shown to have active cases of tuberculosis. Only people with active cases, meaning they actually show symptoms of the disease, can spread it.
Public health scientists have known how to prevent and treat tuberculosis for almost a century. Every case should send up an immediate red flag to provide testing to everyone, with the necessary follow-up and treatment. That would be the best way to prevent the spread of a serious infectious disease, especially in cases like these that involve people who come into contact with many others.
That it does not happen is a mark of the growing impoverishment of the public health system. It is like everything else that is not being taken care of: bridges that are falling apart, potholes in the roads, and schools that still have asbestos in them.
This lack of a complete system of public health puts everyone’s lives at risk.
Dec 20, 2004
Rep. Billy Tauzin, chief author of the new Medicare drug law, will retire from Congress to go to work for PRMA, the lead lobbying group for major brand drug manufacturers. His PRMA salary is expected to be at least two million dollars a year.
The Medicare law created a perpetual profit machine for drug companies. It includes a section that forbids the government from negotiating discount drug prices for people on Medicare.
Congressman Tauzin’s new change of address is just a formality. He’s already been working for the drug industry for a long time.
Dec 20, 2004
The school district of Dover, Pennsylvania voted last month to force science teachers to teach "intelligent design" alongside evolution in science classes.
The Dover school district was the first in the country to require the teaching of intelligent design, but it’s not the only one. The Grantsburg School District in Wisconsin now requires it, and the issue has been raised in 24 states just this past year.
Earlier this year, the school board for the entire state of Ohio okayed new standards that encourage teaching intelligent design alongside evolution.
"Intelligent design" states that life is so complex that it must have been brought about and developed by some "intelligent agent." It’s really a newer, more vague form of Creationism, which holds that the Christian God created the world along the lines laid out in some books of the Bible.
Those who support intelligent design claim it to be a scientific theory, just like Darwin’s theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is a theory. They say it’s only fair to present one theory alongside another.
The problem with the "scientific theory" of intelligent design is that there’s absolutely no science to support it. It’s not at all a theory in the scientific sense, something like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity–an explanation of what we can observe about the world that has proven more powerful than any other known explanation. These theories are able to be tested against new observations, and they’re able to make predictions about what we can expect to see.
Natural Selection is a true scientific theory: everything we know about the natural world, we’ve been able to understand by applying Darwin’s theory–from sickle cell anemia to the development of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis.
"Intelligent design" hasn’t been able to explain anything, or stand up to any scientific tests. Nobody’s been able to make any predictions based on what it says. It doesn’t do anything to advance our understanding of the world. To present such a "theory" in a science classroom is to make a mockery out of science. Creationism is nothing more–or less–than a myth.
But that hasn’t stopped the people who support it, because it’s not about science for them; it’s really about religion. They don’t like the fact that a scientific understanding of the development of life undermines their religious view of the world. And they want to get rid of that understanding by any means possible–including the most dishonest talk about "theories."
Today, these forces of the fundamentalist religious Right are pushing even harder than usual, because–they say–they won the November election.
THEY didn’t win the election. Poll after poll has shown that these people with their reactionary religious attitudes are nowhere near the majority in this society. They’re not even anywhere near the majority of those who voted for Bush!
But they’re doing their best to throw the entire society backward, to a day when NOTHING in the world can be explained–because everything is "explained" by pointing to a god.
These forces throwing society backward sound louder and louder, only because the forces that can move society forward have grown quieter.
Dec 20, 2004
On November 12, the Baltimore City school board approved three new charter schools and seven existing charter schools for next year–with funding taken from the public schools. In mid-December, two more charter schools won approval to open in Baltimore next year.
These schools are given $4,300 per student from public school funding. Yet they don’t have to meet the same requirements that public schools do. In Baltimore city, four of the seven existing charter schools wouldn’t even put their students through the same standardized tests that public school students took. These schools operate independently from the school board, choosing their own staff, hours and curricula for the students.
Parents send their children to charter schools because they feel–with reason–that the public schools have failed to educate their children. In Baltimore, for example, only one in three students met standards in reading in high school.
But what are the results for charter schools after 12 years in existence, educating about one million students (out of 50 million ) all across the country?
The latest studies show charter schools are less likely than public schools to meet national standards. There have been national and local studies comparing charter schools to public schools. All the studies show similar results–namely, that students in charter schools don’t do as well as similar students in public schools.
This should come as no surprise since the people running them drain off money for their own interests, whether business, religious–or even as university laboratories.
The charter school movement promises what it doesn’t deliver–and steals from publicly-supported schools to do it.
Dec 20, 2004
Several United Nations agencies released their annual reports in December. Among all the figures reported in these documents, perhaps the most sobering is by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund): more than one billion, or almost half the world’s children, are living in conditions of "extreme deprivation."
Some 640 million of these children lack adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health care and 140 million–mostly girls–have never been to school. According to another report, published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, five million children die of hunger every year.
Most of these children live in poor countries, and many are victimized by ongoing wars which disrupt the functioning of society. But many children live in dire poverty even though their parents work.
The working class in rich countries has not escaped growing impoverishment either. The UNICEF report pointed out that thepercentage of children living in poverty in 11 industrialized countries has also been increasing over the last decade. These countries include Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. But leading the pack is the United States, with childhood poverty worse than that of any other rich country. In the U.S. today, nearly one quarter of all children–22%–live in poverty.
Why are the world’s children getting poorer? The world’s resources aren’t diminishing. But those resources aren’t being used for the world’s people.
UNICEF reported that 40 to 70 billion dollars would be enough to effectively combat poverty worldwide. That’s a tiny fraction of the 956 billion dollars that the world’s governments officially spent on military expenses last year. The U.S. alone is responsible for more than half of that spending.
The money is certainly there. But those who need it to buy food and medicine don’t have access to it. A small handful of people have hoarded the world’s wealth, using it more and more on luxury, speculation and war.
That’s the balance sheet of another year under capitalism: the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and society has sunk deeper into violence and deprivation. Time to throw capitalism onto the garbage heap!
Dec 20, 2004
On the night of December 3, 1984, the chemical factory of the U.S. company Union Carbide exploded in Bhopal, India. It was one of the largest industrial catastrophes in history, unleashing a poisonous cloud of methyl isocyanate, cyanide and phosgene.
Between 3,000 and 10,000 people died immediately or in the first days which followed–the exact number is unknown. The neighborhood next to the factory was a shanty town and in the panic, many bodies were burnt in funeral pyres to avoid epidemics.
Twenty years later, 150,000 people still suffer from the aftereffects of the explosion. The ground water used for the city is still polluted and the ruins and waste of the factory are still there, slowly poisoning the soil.
It was a catastrophe waiting to happen as soon as the factory opened in 1980. Union Carbide built the factory cheaply in India, in order make and sell the pesticide Sevin. The equipment used to store the gas to make the insecticide, a gas that is extremely difficult to handle and store, resembled equipment of the 1940s and 1950s in the U.S. This type of equipment was no longer allowed in the U.S., which was one of the main reasons prompting Union Carbide to locate the factory in India. The company expected to make enough from operating the factory to cover the cost of its construction in just three years. There was no emergency plan for accidents, no instruction on what to do and no protective equipment. In 1981 a worker died; in 1982, 25 were poisoned. The same year, a team of inspectors from the U.S. noted some hundred failures of safety rules. Further, since the sale of Sevin wasn’t as high as Union Carbide had hoped for, it slowly reduced new investments in Bhopal as well as the number of workers, letting the plant degrade. The night of the catastrophe the refrigeration system didn’t function right, the alarms that were supposed to sound with a change in temperature weren’t connected, the decontamination towers and the incineration flare stack were partly dismantled.
Since December 1984, Union Carbide has done everything possible to escape its responsibility for the disaster. The third biggest chemical corporation in the world, it was able to come up with 3.3 billion dollars to defend itself against a takeover by a competitor, but it refused to pay the three billion dollars in compensation that the victims asked for. Finally in 1989, the corporation agreed to pay 470 million dollars, the minimum it could get away with. Most of the money went to middle men and to bribes and corruption, with the victims getting very little.
It is a sinister joke to call the Bhopal disaster an accident since it was clear it was going to happen. The corporate heads had to know that their factory in India was a bomb waiting to explode. The only unknown question was when it would happen. And since the factory was located in the midst of a city of 900,000 people, they had to know it would kill or injure tens of thousands of people. Clearly, this was a premeditated crime. But that didn’t prevent the heads of Union Carbide at the time and the stockholders of Dow Chemical, which bought the company in 1999, from enjoying the flood of profits, amassed in part from Bhopal, while refusing to accept its liabilities.
Dec 20, 2004
The first week of November, French troops clashed with the Ivory Coast army and riots broke out against the French, initiating a new period where French imperialism exercised its open repressive force in Ivory Coast. The following is from an article of Le Pouvoir aux Travailleurs (Workers’ Power) of November 23, published by the African Union of Internationalist Communist Workers, and gives an account of this situation.
Only people who know nothing about the life of most people in Ivory Coast can be surprised that so many people went into the streets to demand the immediate departure of French troops from Ivory Coast. The exploited, the oppressed of this country are completely right to oppose the presence of French imperialism in this country. They are completely right to remember colonialism, with all its pillage and its humiliation–even the youth who didn’t live in this period. They are completely right to remember that French troops never left the country when Ivory Coast theoretically became independent, and have ever since protected the regime in power. French troops protected the long dictatorship of Houphouët-Boigny, they protected Bédié, Guéi. They also protected Gbagbo, whatever he demagogically says today....
This protection all the different French administrations gave to anyone who governed Ivory Coast wasn’t disinterested. While protecting Ivory Coast leaders, the French army always sought to protect the interests of the big French companies that dominate the country’s economy.
The workers, the small peasants, the unemployed, the poor of this country, didn’t benefit from that highly praised Ivorian economic development during the rule of Houphouët-Boigny. Just as during colonialism, the main development came in extraction of wealth from the country; the main thing was the exploitation of the workers and poor peasants to enrich the big capitalist companies, especially French ones, as well as an entire layer of privileged people who came from France or Lebanon to make their fortune. Oh, this development also enriched the Ivorian privileged classes, but not the crushing majority of the Ivorian population!
What then do the leaders of French imperialism expect from the people here? Thanks for a century of pillage and exploitation? Maybe they’ll be thanked by the privileged Ivorians, but they have no reason to be thanked by the laboring classes.
For years, the French army stationed in Ivory Coast didn’t have to intervene directly against the poor classes. It left this dirty work to Ivorian forces. But the French government knows only too well that the Ivorian army, gendarmes and police can’t do more than shake down unarmed people. That’s why every French administration–whether of Chirac-Raffarin or those led by "socialists"–maintained French army bases in Ivory Coast. Just in case. Around the airport and around the Ivorian Hotel, we saw what the French army is capable of: assassinating unarmed demonstrators, men, women and children.
But we shouldn’t let ourselves be fooled because the leaders of Ivory Coast called for demonstrations against France. Gbagbo doesn’t oppose the presence of French imperialism in Ivory Coast.
Gbagbo doesn’t reproach France for pillaging the country, exploiting its laboring classes and throwing the peasantry into poverty. Gbagbo reproaches Paris because it didn’t support him enough. He calls for popular support today to try to blackmail Paris, to obtain more aid, notably against the rebel army in the north. But what interest does the poor population have in any of the three rivals for power–Gbagbo, Ouattara or Bédié? They are fighting over who will have the privilege of representing the interests of the rich–French, Ivorian and Lebanese–against their own people.
Yes, demonstrate against the presence of the French army and especially against the presence of the exploiters that the army protects. But don’t be found behind Gbagbo, Namodou Koulibaly or Blé-Goudé. All those men play on the legitimate sentiments of the population to better deceive them.
Gbagbo’s spokesmen even found the way to divert this popular revolt against the French presence toward ethnic hatred. They spread the rumor that General Palenfo was in one of the French tanks and that this entire deployment of tanks and machine guns was designed to bring Ouattara back to power. It was a lie, but it was designed to direct the anger against the French toward the northern population as the objective ally of the French.
It’s a rotten crime. Oh, not with respect to Ouattara who leads a peaceful life in Paris! It’s a crime with regard to the northern population, with regard to the people from Burkino and Mali who live in Ivory Coast. It’s a continuation of the ethnic demagogy of the government.
We already saw the catastrophic results of this demagogy at the time of Bédié. We have seen it during the four years that Gbagbo was in power. We even see it in the current events, like what happened in Gagnoa. There the regime’s hoodlums didn’t take on the French soldiers, nor even the French or Lebanese expatriates, many of whom have enriched themselves on the backs of the population. Instead they attacked the northerners and the poor coming from neighboring countries.
Ethnic hatred is disgusting in every way. But right now the effect of it is to push some of the northerners to want the French troops to stay in the country in the vain hope that this will protect them from ethnic attacks.
They’re wrong. For ethnic attacks don’t bother the French government. Have we ever seen it intervene against the ethnic demagogy of Bédié, Guéi or Gbagbo? French troops intervened between the "new forces" and the Ivorian army. But did they intervene against ethnic lynching? No. Never. The French army isn’t there to protect the popular classes of this country. It plays the different forces off against each other and in this very way supports ethnic hatred....
Workers, unemployed, self-employed laborers, the poor of this country: French imperialism is our enemy. But our enemies are also the two armed bands of the north and south that fight each other for power, and the private militias of the rival political clans.
We need a common policy whose aim is to impose the demands of the exploited classes both of the city and countryside, whatever our ethnic or national origins. Our demands should be that the resources of this country, the work of its workers and of its peasants, should not go only to benefit a small minority which can enjoy magnificent villas while the majority of the population lives in misery and hunger.
Dec 20, 2004
From 1995 to 2000, newspaper workers in Detroit fought a bitter strike and fight against the Detroit Newspaper Association (DNA). The DNA was a joint operating agreement between Gannett, publisher of the Detroit News and Knight Ridder, publisher of the Free Press. The newspapers’ CEO–from then to now–was Frank Vega.
This month, the DNA announced Frank Vega’s sudden retirement and move to California, to be publisher of a Hearst paper, the San Francisco Chronicle.
Vega moves from leading two newspapers to heading only one. He leaves a circulation of over 700,000 for a circulation of just over 500,000, and he goes to a paper that serves a smaller metropolitan area. It at least raises the question of whether Gannett simply waited a decent interval before burying the body.
In 1995, Vega’s assurances to Gannett and Knight Ridder about a quick victory over the workers ran into a buzz-saw. First forced into a strike, then locked out, newspaper workers reacted by tying up Detroit newspapers with picketing, imaginative tactics impeding printing and distribution, and a widespread boycott. While leaders of other unions often gave little more than speeches and a bit of money after the early months of the strike, rank and file workers in the region dropped their subscriptions and supported the strike in other ways.
Having adopted Frank Vega’s strategy, the bosses lost far more than they expected.
The DNA even today continues to take losses from the cutthroat strategy it pursued. Today’s paid newspaper circulation remains around 710,000, compared to the pre-strike 1.1 million. And with low circulation comes low advertising revenue.
Even though Gannett could never admit it publicly, they paid a high price in that strike–one they weren’t ready to repeat elsewhere. Soon after the Detroit strike, Gannett faced expiring union contracts in Hawaii. Gannett settled quickly, with terms acceptable to the workers.
Battling as hard as they did for themselves, even though it was finally a losing effort, the Detroit strikers protected other workers. In the larger class struggle, the workers did not lose. And that may explain why Frank Vega is being semi-retired to California.
Dec 20, 2004
Since September, nurses in two county-run hospitals in Los Angeles have been refusing to accept more patients than the limit set by California’s nurse-to-patient ratio law. The nurses, who are represented by SEIU Local 660, have been able to force the hospitals to call in additional nurses.
This law was passed in California after a 10-year campaign by the California Nurses Association. But since the ratios went into effect on January 1, 2004, most hospitals in the state have simply ignored them, and the authorities have looked the other way. In fact, state officials have made it clear that they don’t have the slightest intention to enforce the law. Just last month, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, granting hospitals their wish, postponed the next phase of the law for two years.
The law regulates the maximum number of patients that can be assigned to a Registered Nurse (RN) at any time. That number varies depending on the department and medical procedure. For general emergency room cases, for example, four patients may be assigned to each RN, whereas only one patient per RN is allowed for trauma cases. Nowhere are more than six patients per RN allowed.
Of course, it makes sense to have as many nurses and other medical staff at hand as possible. The more patients a nurse has to attend to, the less time he or she can spend caring for each patient, which, in turn, increases the risk of injury or death for the patient. There are ample statistics to support this obvious fact. For example, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospital Organizations, which inspects hospitals, reported in 2002 that one-fourth of all "sentinel events," that is, unexpected patient deaths or injuries, were caused by inadequate staffing. In U.S. hospitals, at least 100,000 people die each year due to avoidable medical errors. Many, if not most, of these errors result from stress and fatigue, in turn caused by short-staffing.
But the hospital officials who cut down on staffing (and break the nurse-to-patient law) say that they don’t have enough money to hire more nurses. That, of course, is a fat lie–just look at the billions of dollars hospital chains have been spending to buy other big chains. In California, hospitals reported a total of almost 12 billion dollars profit from 2001 through 2003. And some of the hospitals breaking the law are among the most profitable.
The nurses had no choice but to take matters into their own hands–not only in their own interest but also in the interests of their patients. Their actions set an example for the rest of us: law or no law, safe and decent working conditions will be assured only when workers themselves are ready to take action.
Dec 20, 2004
On Tuesday, December 14 about a thousand union activists demonstrated outside of Mayor Daley’s downtown office. They objected to 18 months of negotiations for new contracts that haven’t gone anywhere, the threat of no back pay, layoffs and the privatization of city jobs.
Different unions were involved in the protest. The building trades were there, especially the electricians and laborers. AFSCME (American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees) and the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) were also present.
For years the city unions were closely tied to Mayor Daley’s father and then to the current mayor. A protest like this against the mayor simply didn’t occur.
The protest was a start, but only a start. To force Daley to back off will require a continuation and increase of the mobilization against him. There are 30,000 city workers, all facing the same attacks. Together they have the possibility to make their weight felt.
Dec 20, 2004
The Pentagon admits that over 5500 U.S. troops have deserted since March 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq.
The TV program 60 Minutes recently interviewed three of these servicemen. What these young former soldiers have to say is worth listening to.
Twenty-four-year-old Marine Dan Felushko enlisted in the Marines after 9/11. But in January 2003, when ordered to Kuwait to prepare for the invasion of Iraq, he refused to go and instead went to Canada. Felushko explained, "I didn’t want ‘Died deluded in Iraq’ over my gravestone. I didn’t see a connection between the attack on America and Saddam Hussein. If I died or killed somebody in Iraq, that would have been wrong. It is my right to choose between what I think is right and wrong."
Brandon Hughey graduated from high-school in Texas around the time Bush declared war in Iraq. He volunteered for the army to get money for college. It wasn’t until he finished Basic Training that he began to follow the news closely. When "I found out that they found no weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq] ... and the claim they made about ties to al Qaeda was coming up short, it made me angry because I felt our lives were being thrown away as soldiers."
After the reporter read letters in the newspaper from Hughey’s home town labeling him a traitor and coward and calling for the death penalty, Hughey stood his ground. He said, "Before I joined the Army, I would have thought the same way. I’m thankful for this experience because it has opened my eyes and has taught me not to take things on the surface."
Jeremy Hinzman from South Dakota joined up for a military career and was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne. He began to have doubts during training when guys in his unit were walking to chow hall, yelling, "Train to kill, kill we will." He filled out forms to be a Conscientious Objector (CO) which would have allowed him to stay in the Army in a non-combat job. While waiting for a decision, he was deployed to Afghanistan where he did kitchen duty. Later the Army denied him CO status and he was ordered to Iraq.
Hinzman refused to go. He took his wife and pre-school son to Canada. When the reporter asked, "Weren’t you supposed to follow orders?", he answered, "I was told in basic training, if I’m given an illegal or immoral order, it is my duty to disobey it. I feel invading and occupying Iraq is an illegal and immoral thing to do. There are times when armies or countries act in a collectively wrong way."
These three men may be unusual in agreeing to speak publicly, but behind them are thousands more soldiers who in one way or another also turned their back on an army that proposed to use them as cannon fodder.
Dec 20, 2004
The Army National Guard admits that since September it has not been able to meet its recruitment targets. To counter this, in mid-December the Pentagon announced that it is tripling bonuses from 5,000 dollars to 15,000 dollars to current members who sign up for another six-year stint. It is also increasing bonuses to first time recruits from 6,000 to 10,000 dollars. To rope in new recruits, it is also increasing the number of recruiters from 2,700 to 4,100.
This is one more indication of what is going on inside the entire U.S. military in reaction to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: a whole lot of soldiers, in the regular army as well as the National Guard and Reserves, are "voting with their feet" by refusing to re-enlist. At the same time, as the news from those wars becomes ever more grim, the U.S. military is having more and more difficulty recruiting new soldiers to take the departing soldiers’ places.
No wonder, given the job that these soldiers are being ordered to do: to fight the wars and carry out the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, these soldiers are not in Iraq and Afghanistan by their own choice. They have been ordered to do the dirty work by the Bushes and Rumsfelds, and behind them, the big U.S. corporations that are looking to suck the vast wealth out of these regions for their own profit.
But the soldiers are the visible face of this policy in these occupied countries. They are the ones who patrol the cities and towns, where almost all the people hate and despise them, where there is an active resistance, and where anyone and everyone around them is a potential enemy, including even children and old people. It is the soldiers who impose the U.S. occupation, often through the worst violence, devastating these countries with bombs and shells, invading peoples’ homes, imprisoning and killing the people, including women and children. Under these conditions, it doesn’t make much difference if sometimes these soldiers also try to befriend people, help with the little reconstruction work, pass out candy to children. This doesn’t change the basic nature of the occupation and war and their bloody tasks.
The price these soldiers pay is high, over 1,300 killed so far. Those who survive the war don’t come back the same. Tens of thousands have already been seriously wounded, their heads, faces, backs, arms and legs torn apart. And, according to most studies, one out of three of all returning soldiers will continue to suffer mentally from the trauma of the war, condemned to be tortured by memories of what they lived through perhaps for the rest of their lives.
The fact that the military is having an increasingly difficult time in getting soldiers to do this job means that all the flag waving and patriotic propaganda glorifying the military and war no longer have the same draw. Especially neither does the military’s promise of cold hard cash, training and an education, even at a time when decent prospects are so scarce for young people from the working class.
It shows that the number of people who don’t want to be turned into cannon fodder for a war fought for profit is increasing. And that is a healthy sign.