September 29
GUEST: Steve Early, writer for the Jacobin, longtime union representative for the Communications Workers of America, and author of several books, discusses his latest one, Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs.
Our Veterans Duke University Press
Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon: Our Veterans
Jacobin articles by Steve Early
I really liked Steve Early's book on veterans. Maybe that is because I am an antiwar veteran myself. Or because I spent a number of years working in a high school, doing my best to frustrate Army recruiting. It could also be the year I spent in Korea, in the 7th Infantry.
I am still fascinated by soldiers, and how they are manipulated to pay the price for US imperialism. I paid that price, drafted out of my first teaching job because the Army needed cannon fodder in Vietnam. There I was teaching students about the roots of folk music, while in my briefcase were letters from my draft board.
So veterans have a special sense of what war and occupation look like. It is a view rarely shared with the public, probably because it would undermine the image of noble war-making so popular in the empire. Veterans can be truth tellers, especially in times when the empire is on the move. Times like this New Cold War.
Veterans also go through a racist and classist selection process, one that middle class whites have little knowledge of. Many inner city schools are in fact militarized charter schools that have inspections, marching drills and war making in the curriculum. To the poor in America, the message is we will feed and house you, give you some skills that may or may not help you get a job later on, and show you at least some respect in our Jim Crow society.
Our Veterans pries into all these realities. In some way, it is a mirror of what life is really like for those at the bottom of a mostly hidden caste system. The empire has many secrets.
