4um: Iraq War Over? We Won?

Michael Yon says that we’ve won the war in Iraq and all that remains is clean-up.

The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What’s left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it’s time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won.

Granting that I haven’t been to Iraq in more than seventeen years and am relying on media accounts whereas Yon is a regular in the region, this assessment still strikes me as wildly optimistic. The United States military doesn’t seem to think that we’ve won in Iraq. Nor, so far as I can tell, do the Iraqi people. Or the Iraqi government. Or the people and governments of Iraq’s neighbors. Or the people I encounter in foreign policy think tanks.

Sure enough, though, a quick Google search for “iraq over we won” confirms it.

But, but, but....we need to win so we can hunt down bin Laden and his band of Magic carpet salesman. Mr. Obama says - repeatedly - they did 9-11 and are very bad people.

Well, there's "bad" and then there is "terrifying terrorist" bad. Ahmed will 'splain things to you.

The American soldier: Looking for a life; Feelings of honor and duty are seldom the big reason young people join up

With two wars being fought and no end in sight, it can be difficult to understand why young folks enlist in our military.

The conservative claim that most youth join up out of patriotism and the desire to "serve one's country" is misleading. The Pentagon's own surveys show that "duty to country" motivates only a portion of enlistees.

The vast majority of young people wind up in the military for other reasons, from economic pressure to the desire to escape a dead- end situation at home to the promise of citizenship.

Overall, disenfranchisement might be the most accurate word for why youth enlist.

'POVERTY DRAFT' BORN

When mandatory military service ended in 1973, the volunteer military was born. By the early 1980s, the phrase "poverty draft" had gained currency to express the belief that our enlisted ranks were made up of young people with limited economic opportunities.

Today, military recruiters react angrily to the term "poverty draft." They in fact argue that the poor are not good recruiting material because they lack the necessary education. And any inference that those currently serving do so because they have few other options is met with a sharp rebuke, as Sen. John Kerry learned last November when he seemed to tell a group of college students they could either work hard in school or "get stuck in Iraq."

President Bush led the bipartisan charge against Kerry: "The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer armed forces are plenty smart and are serving because they are patriots -- and Sen. Kerry owes them an apology."

In reality, Kerry's "botched joke" -- he said he was knocking the president and not the troops -- contained a kernel of truth. It is not so much that one either studies hard or winds up in Iraq but rather that many U.S. troops enlist because higher education is closed off to them. They may be "plenty smart," but financial hardship drives them to see the military's promise of money for college as their only hope.

Recruiters may not explicitly target the poor, but there is mounting evidence that they target those whose career options are severely limited. According to a 2007 Associated Press analysis, nearly 75 percent of the American troops killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average.

'I CAN OFFER MORE'

It perhaps should come as no surprise that the Army GED Plus Enlistment Program, in which applicants without high school diplomas are allowed to enlist while they complete a high school equivalency certificate, is focused on inner-city areas.

When working-class youths make it to their local community college, they often encounter military recruiters who work to discourage them. "You're not going anywhere here," a recruiter will say. "This place is a dead end. I can offer you more." Pentagon- sponsored studies -- such as the Rand Corp.'s "Recruiting Youth in the College Market: Current Practices and Future Policy Options" -- speak openly about college as the recruiter's No. 1 competitor.

Add race as a supplemental factor for how class determines who will enlist, and you begin to understand why communities of color believe military recruiters disproportionately target their children. Recruiters swear they don't target by race. But the millions of Pentagon dollars spent on special recruiting campaigns for Latino and African-American youths contradicts their claim.

According to an Army Web site, the goal of the "Hispanic H2 Tour" was to "build confidence, trust, and preference of the Army within the Hispanic community." The "Takin' it to the Streets Tour" was designed to accelerate recruitment in the African-American community. The nexus between class, race and the "volunteer armed forces" is an unavoidable fact.

Not all recruits, of course, are driven by financial need. In working-class communities of every color, there are often long- standing traditions of military service and links between service and privileged forms of masculinity. For communities often marked as "foreign," such as Latinos and Asians, there is pressure to serve in order to prove that one is "American." For recent immigrants, there is the lure of gaining legal resident status or citizenship.

Economic pressure, however, is an undeniable motivation.

Jorge Mariscal served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and teaches at the University of California, San Diego. Reprinted with permission from Sojourners, www.sojo.net.