Tomgram: Rory Fanning, Talking to the Young in a World That Will Never Truly
Be "Postwar"
By Rory Fanning
Posted on April 7, 2016, Printed on April 8, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176125/ ;
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Right now, you can still get signed,
personalized copies of the new books of two remarkable, bestselling authors
at this website. In return for a donation of $100 or more ($125 if you live
outside the United States), you can choose either Andrew Bacevichs
spectacular book Americas War for the Greater Middle East: A Military
History or Adam Hochschilds riveting new work on the war that began the
most devastating conflict in history, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the
Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. (Note, however, that the offer on
Hochschilds book will end this Saturday morning.) Visit the recent
TomDispatch pieces by Bacevich and Hochschild to get a sense of their new
books. Worth Fighting For, written by todays author, ex-Army Ranger Rory
Fanning, remains on offer as well. Check out our donation page for the
details on all of them. A final note: Adam Hochschild has been on book tour
for nearly two weeks. For those of you who already contributed, copies of
his book will be in the mail early next week. Thanks for your patience!
Tom]
The third time around, the Pentagon evidently wants to do it right -- truly
right -- this time. What other explanation could there be for dispatching
12 generals to Iraq (one for every 416 American troops estimated to be on
the ground in that country, according to Nancy Youssef of the Daily Beast).
And keep in mind that those 12 dont include the generals and admirals
overseeing the air war, naval support, or other aspects of the campaign
against the Islamic State from elsewhere in the Middle East or back in the
U.S., nor do they include generals from allied forces like those of
Australia and Great Britain also in Iraq. Youssef offers a conservative
count of 21 flag officers, including allies, now in that country to
oversee the war there. Among other things, they are undoubtedly responsible
for ensuring the success of the major goal proclaimed by both Washington and
Baghdad for 2016: an offensive to retake the countrys second largest city,
Mosul. Only weeks ago, it got off to a rousing start when the Iraqi army
recaptured a few obscure villages on the road to that city. Soon after,
however, the offensive reportedly ground to a dispiriting halt when parts of
the American-retrained and rearmed Iraqi Army (which had collapsed in June
2014 in the face of far smaller numbers of far more determined Islamic State
militants) began to crumble again, amid mass desertions.
In the meantime, in both Iraq and Syria, U.S. operations seem to be on an
inexorable mission-creep upward, with ever more new troops and special ops
types heading for those countries in a generally under-the-radar manner,
assumedly with the objective of someday justifying the number of generals
awaiting them there. Somewhere in a top-heavy Pentagon, there surely must be
an office of déjà vu all over again, mustnt there? (And talking about déjà
vu, last week the U.S. launched yet another air strike in Somalia,
supposedly knocking off yet another leader of al-Shabab, the indigenous
terror movement. If you could win a war by repeatedly knocking off the
leaders of such movements, the U.S. would by now be the greatest victor in
the history of warfare.)
Meanwhile in Afghanistan... but do I really have to tell you about the
ground taken by the resurgent Taliban in the last year, the arrival of ISIS
in that country, the halting (yet again) of withdrawal plans for U.S. forces
almost 15 years into the second American war there, or other tales from the
crypt of this country's never-ending wars? I think not. Even if you
havent read the latest news, you can guess, cant you?
And this, of course, is exactly the repetitive world of war (and failure)
into which the young, especially in Americas poorest high schools, are
being recruited, even if they dont know it, via JROTC. It's a
Pentagon-funded program that promises to pave the way for your future
college education, give meaning to your life, and send you to exotic lands,
while ensuring that the countrys all-volunteer military never lacks for new
troops to dispatch to old (verging on ancient) conflicts. As Ann Jones has
written, It should be no secret that the United States has the biggest,
most efficiently organized, most effective system for recruiting child
soldiers in the world. With uncharacteristic modesty, however, the Pentagon
doesnt call it that. Its term is youth development program. So lets
offer thanks for small favors when someone -- in this case, ex-Army Ranger
and TomDispatch regular Rory Fanning (author of Worth Fighting For: An Army
Rangers Journey Out of the Military and Across America) -- feels the urge
to do something about that massive, militarized propaganda effort in our
schools. In my book, Fanning is the equivalent of any 12 of our generals
and we need more like him both in those schools and in our country. Tom
The Wars in Our Schools
An Ex-Army Ranger Finds a New Mission
By Rory Fanning
Early each New Years Day I head for Lake Michigan with a handful of
friends. We look for a quiet stretch of what, only six months earlier, was
warm Chicago beach. Then we trudge through knee-deep snow in bathing suits
and boots, fighting wind gusts and hangovers. Sooner or later, we arrive
where the snowpack meets the shore and boot through a thick crust of lake
ice, yelling and swearing as we dive into near-freezing water.
It took me a while to begin to understand why I do this every year, or for
that matter why for the last decade since I left the military Ive continued
to inflict other types of pain on myself with such unnerving regularity.
Most days, for instance, I lift weights at the gym to the point of crippling
exhaustion. On summer nights, I sometimes swim out alone as far as I can
through mats of hairy algae into the black water of Lake Michigan in search
of what I can only describe as a feeling of falling.
A few years ago, I walked across the United States with 50 pounds on my back
for the Pat Tillman Foundation in an obsessive attempt to rid myself of my
war. On the weekends, I clean my house similarly obsessively. And its true,
sometimes I drink too much.
In part, it seems, Ive been in search of creative ways to frighten myself,
apparently to relive the moments in the military I said I never wanted to go
through again -- or so a psychiatrist told me anyway. According to that
doctor (and often I think Id be the last to know), Im desperately trying
to recreate adrenalizing moments like the one when, as an Army Ranger, I
jumped out of an airplane at night into an area I had never before seen, not
sure if I was going to be shot at as I hit the ground. Or Im trying to
recreate the energy I felt leaping from a Blackhawk helicopter, night vision
goggles on, and storming my way into some nameless Afghan familys home,
where I would proceed to throw a sandbag over someones head and lead him
off to an American-controlled, Guantánamo-like prison in his own country.
This doctor says its common enough for my unconscious to want to relive the
feeling of learning that my friend had just been blown up by a roadside bomb
while on patrol at two in the morning, a time most normal people are
sleeping. Somehow, at the oddest hours, my mind considers it perfectly
appropriate to replay the times when rockets landed near my tent at night in
a remote valley in Afghanistan. Or when I was arrested by the military after
going AWOL as one of the first Army Rangers to try to say no to
participation in George W. Bushs Global War on Terror.
Im aware now, as I wasnt some years back, that my post-war urge for
limits-testing is not atypical of the home-front experiences of many who
went to war in Afghanistan or Iraq in these years and, for some of them,
judging by the soaring suicide rates among Global War on Terror vets, the
urge has proven so much more extreme than mine. But more than a decade
after leaving the army as a conscientious objector, I can at least finally
own up to and testify to the eeriness of what we all brought home from
Americas twenty-first-century wars, even those of us who werent physically
maimed or torn up by them.
And heres the good news at a purely personal level: the older I get the
less Im inclined towards such acts of masochism, of self-inflicted pain.
Part of the change undoubtedly involves age -- I hesitate to use the word
maturity yet -- but theres another reason, too. I found a far better
place to begin to put all that stored up, jumpy energy. I began speaking to
high school students heavily propagandized by the U.S. military on the
charms, delights, and positives of war, American-style, about my own
experiences and that, in turn, has been changing my life. Id like to tell
you about it.
Filling in the Blanks
The first time I went to speak to high school students about my life with
the Rangers in Afghanistan, I was surprised to realize that the same nervous
energy I felt before jumping into Lake Michigan or lacing up my gym shoes
for a bone-shaking work-out was coursing through my body. But here was the
strangest thing: when I had said my piece (or perhaps I really mean my
peace) with as much honesty as I could muster, I felt the very sense of
calmness and resolution that Id been striving for with my other rituals and
could never quite hang onto come over me -- and it stayed with me for days.
That first time, I was one of the few white people in a deteriorating
Chicago public high school on the far south side of the city. A teacher is
escorting me down multiple broad, shabby hallways to the classroom where I
was to speak. We pass a room decorated with a total of eight American
flags, four posted on each side of its door. The recruiting office, the
teacher says, gesturing toward it, and then asks, Do they have recruiting
offices in the suburban schools you talk to?
Im not sure. I havent spoken to any on this topic yet, I reply. They
certainly didnt have an obvious one at the public high school I went to,
but I do know that there are 10,000 recruiters across the country working
with a $700 million a year advertising budget. And I think youre more
likely to see the recruiters in schools where kids have less options after
graduation.
At that moment, we arrive at the appointed classroom and Im greeted warmly
by the social studies teacher who invited me. Photos of Ida B. Wells,
Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, and other revolutionary black leaders hang
neatly on a wall. He first heard about my desire to talk to students about
my wartime experiences through Veterans for Peace, an organization I belong
to. There is no counter-narrative to what the kids are being taught by the
instructors in Junior ROTC, as far as I can tell, he says, obviously
bothered, as we wait for the students to arrive. It would be great if you
could provide more of a complete picture to these kids. He then went on to
describe the frustration he felt with a Chicago school system in which
schools in the poorest neighborhoods in the city were being shut down at a
record pace, and yet, somehow, his school district always had the money to
supplement the Pentagons funding of the JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer
Training) program.
The kids are just beginning to filter in, laughing and acting like the
teenagers they are. Im not encouraged.
Okay, everyone, settle down, we have a guest speaker today, the teacher
says. He oozes confidence of a sort I only wish I possessed. The volume in
the room dies down to something approaching a hush. They clearly respect
him. I only hope a little of that will spill over in my direction.
I hesitate a moment and then start, and heres a little report from memory
on at least part of what I said and what happened:
Thanks, I begin, for having me in today. My name is Rory Fanning and Im
here to tell you why I joined the military. Ill also talk about what I saw
while I was in that military, and why I left before my contract was up. The
silence in the classroom stretches out, which encourages me and I plunge on.
I signed up for the Army Rangers to have my student loans paid for and to
do my part to prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11... My training was
sometimes difficult and usually boring... A lot of food and sleep
deprivation. Mostly, I think my chain of command was training me in how to
say yes to their orders. The military and critical thinking dont mix too
well...
As I talk on about the almost indescribable poverty and desperation I
witnessed in Afghanistan, a country that has known nothing but occupation
and civil war for decades and that, before I arrived, I knew less than
nothing about, I could feel my nervousness abating. The buildings in
Kabul, I was telling them, have gaping holes in them and broken-down
Russian tanks and jets litter the countryside.
I can hardly restrain my amazement. The kids are still with me. Im now
explaining how the U.S. military handed out thousands of dollars to anyone
willing to identify alleged members of the Taliban and how we would raid
houses based on this information. I later came to find out that this
intelligence, if you could call it that, was rooted in a kind of
desperation. I explain why an Afghan in abject poverty, looking for ways to
support his family, might be ready to finger almost anyone in return for
access to the deep wells of cash the U.S. military could call on. In a
world where factories are few, and office jobs scarce indeed, people will do
anything to survive. They have to.
I point out the almost unbearable alien quality of Afghan life to American
military officials. Few spoke a local language. No one I ever ran into
knew anything about the culture of the people we were trying to bribe. Too
often we broke down doors and snatched Afghans from their homes not because
of their ties with either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, but because a neighbor
had a grudge against them.
Most of the people we targeted had no connection to the Taliban at all.
Some even pledged allegiance to the U.S. occupation, but that didnt
matter. They still ended up with hoods over their heads and in some
godforsaken prison.
By now, I can tell that the kids are truly paying attention, so I let it all
out. The Taliban had surrendered a few months before I arrived in
Afghanistan in late 2002, but that wasnt good enough for our politicians
back home and the generals giving the orders. Our job was to draw people
back into the fight.
Two or three students let out genuine soft gasps as I describe how my
company of Rangers occupied a village school and our commander cancelled
classes there indefinitely because it made an excellent staging point for
the troops -- and there wasnt much a village headmaster in rural
Afghanistan could say to dissuade historys most technologically advanced
and powerful military from doing just what it wanted to. I remember, I
tell them, watching two fighting-age men walk by the school we were
occupying. One of them didnt show an acceptable level of deference to my
first sergeant, so we grabbed them. We threw the overly confident guy in
one room and his friend in another, and the guy who didnt smile at us
properly heard a gunshot and thought, just as he was meant to, that we had
just killed his friend for not telling us what we wanted to hear and that he
might be next.
Thats like torture, one kid half-whispers.
I then talk about why Im more proud of leaving the military than of
anything I did while in it. I signed up to prevent another 9/11, but my two
tours in Afghanistan made me realize that I was making the world less safe.
We know now that a majority of the million or so people who have been killed
since 9/11 have been innocent civilians, people with no stake in the game
and no reason to fight until, often enough, the U.S. military baited them
into it by killing or injuring a family member who more often than not was
an innocent bystander.
Did you know, I continue, quoting a statistic cited from University of
Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, that from 1980 to 2003, there
were 343 suicide attacks around the world, and at most 10% were
anti-American inspired. Since 2004, there have been more than 2,000, over
91% against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other
countries. I didnt want to be part of this so I left.
Full Disclosure
Chicago-area high school students arent used to hearing such talk. The
public school system here has the largest number of Junior ROTC students --
nearly 10,000 of them, 45% African American and 50% Latino -- of any school
district in the country. And maybe so many of these kids are attentive
exactly because the last thing JROTC instructors are likely to be discussing
is the realities of war, including, for instance, the staggering number of
homeless Iraq and Afghanistan veterans unable to assimilate back into
society after their experience overseas.
When I urge the students to join me in a conversation about war and their
lives, I hear stories about older siblings deluged by telemarketer-style
calls from recruiters. Its so annoying, one says. My brother doesnt
even know how the recruiter got his information.
Recruiters have contact information for every junior and senior in this
school, I say. And thats the law. The No Child Left Behind act, signed
soon after 9/11, insists that your school hand over your information to the
Department of Defense if it wants to receive federal funds.
Soon enough, it becomes clear that these students have very little context
for their encounters with the U.S. military and its promises of an uplifting
future. They know next to nothing, for instance, about our recent history
in Iraq and Afghanistan, or our permanent state of war in the Greater Middle
East and increasingly in Africa. When I ask why so many of them signed up
for the JROTC program, they talk about leadership opportunities and
structure for their lives. They are focused, as I was, on having college
paid for or seeing the world. Some say they are in JROTC because they
didnt want to take gym class. One offers this honest assessment: I dont
know, I just am. I havent given it much thought.
As I grill them, so they grill me. What does your family think about your
leaving the military? one asks.
Well, I respond, we dont talk about it too much. I come from a very
pro-military family and they prefer not to think of what we are doing
overseas as wrong. I think this is why it took me so long to speak honestly
in public about my time in the military.
Did other factors weigh on your decision to talk openly about your military
experience, or was it just fear of your familys response? an astute
student asks.
And I answer as honestly as I can: Even though, as far as I know, I did
something no one in the Rangers had yet done in the post-9/11 era -- the
psychological and physical vetting process for admission to the Ranger
Regiment makes the likelihood of a Ranger questioning the mission and
leaving the unit early unlikely -- I was intimidated. I shouldnt have been,
but my chain of command had me leaving the military looking over my
shoulder. They made it seem as if they could drag me off to jail or send me
back into the military to be a bullet stopper in the big Army at any time if
I ever talked about my service in the Rangers. I did after all, like all
Rangers, have a secret security clearance. Heads shake. The military and
paranoia go hand in hand. So I kept quiet, I tell the kids. I also
started reading books like Anand Gopals No Good Men Among the Living, a
reporters brilliant story of our invasion of Afghanistan as told from the
perspective of actual Afghans. And I began meeting veterans who had
experiences similar to mine and were speaking out. This helped boost my
confidence.
Is the military like Call of Duty? one of the students asks, referring to
a popular single-shooter video game.
Ive never played, I respond. Does it include kids who scream when their
mothers and fathers are killed? Do a lot of civilians die?
Not really, he says uncomfortably.
Well, then its not realistic. Besides, you can turn off a video game. You
cant turn off war.
A quiet settles over the room that even a lame joke of mine cant break.
Finally, after a silence, one of the kids suddenly says, Ive never heard
anything like this before.
What I feel is the other side of that response. That first experience of
mine talking to Americas future cannon fodder confirms my assumption that,
not surprisingly, the recruiters in our schools arent telling the young
anything that might make them think twice about the glories of military
life.
I leave that school with an incredible sense of calm, something I havent
felt since my time began in Afghanistan. I tell myself I want to speak to
classrooms at least once a week. I realize that it took me 10 years, even
while writing a book on the subject, to build up the courage to talk openly
about my years in the military. If only I had begun engaging these kids
earlier instead of punishing myself for the experience George W. Bush, Dick
Cheney, and their cohorts put me through. Suddenly, some of my resident
paranoia seems to melt away, and the residual guilt I still felt for leaving
the Rangers early and in protest -- the chain of command left me believing
that there was nothing more cowardly than deserting your Ranger buddies --
seems to evaporate, too.
My thought now is full disclosure going forward. If a teenager is going to
sign up to kill and die for a cause or even the promise of a better life,
then the least he or she should know is the good, the bad, and the ugly
about the job. I had no illusions that plenty of kids -- maybe most of them,
maybe all of them -- wouldnt sign up anyway, regardless of what I said. But
I swear to myself: no moralism, no regrets, no judgments. Thats my credo
now. Just the facts as I see them.
A New Mission
Im on an operation and that feels strangely familiar. Think of it as a
different way to be a Ranger in a world that will never, it seems, be truly
postwar. But as with all things in ones mind: easier said than done. The
world, it turns out, is in no rush to welcome me on my new mission.
I start making calls. I create a website to advertise my talk. I send out
word to teacher friends that Im available to speak in their schools. Im
prepared for my schedule to fill up within weeks, but a month passes and no
one calls. The phone just doesnt ring. I grow increasingly frustrated.
Fortunately, a friend tells me about a grant sponsored by the Chicago
Teachers Union and designed to expose kids to real world educational
experiences they may not hear about in school. I apply, promising to speak
to 12 of the 46 schools in Chicago with JROTC programs during the 2015/2016
school year. The grant comes through in September and better yet it promises
that each student I talk to will also get a free copy of my book, Worth
Fighting For.
I dont for a second doubt that this will ensure my presence in front of
classrooms of kids. I have nine long months to arrange meetings with only 12
schools. I decide that Ill even throw in some extra schools as a bonus. I
create a Facebook page so that teachers and principals can learn about my
talk and book me directly. Notices of both my website and that page are
placed in teacher newsletters and I highlight the Chicago Teachers Union
endorsement in them. Im thinking: slam dunk! I even advertise on message
boards, spend money on targeted ads on Facebook, and again reach out to all
my teacher friends.
It's now April, seven months into the school year, and only two teachers
have taken me up on the offer to speak. He was comfortable and engaging
with the students and in the students reflections the following day he was
someone that the students clearly enjoyed talking with. I will definitely
ask him to come back to speak to my classes every year, wrote Dave Stieber,
one of those teachers.
Its finally starting to dawn on me, however. In our world, life is scary
and Im not the only one heading for Lake Michigan on cold winter mornings
or gloomy nights. Teachers out there in the public schools are anxious, too.
Its dark days for them. They are under attack and busy fighting back
against school privatization, closures, and political assaults on their
pensions. The popular JROTC program is a cash cow for their schools and they
are discouraged from further rocking a boat already in choppy waters.
Youll bring too much tension to our school, one teacher tells me with
regret. Most of my kids need the military if they plan on going to
college, I hear from another who says he cant invite me to his school
anyway. But most of my requests simply go out into the void unanswered. Or
promises to invite me go unfulfilled. Who, after all, wants to make waves or
extracurricular trouble when teachers are already under fierce attack from
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his unelected school board?
I understand and yet, in a world without a draft, JROTCs school-to-military
pipeline is a lifeline for Washingtons permanent war across the Greater
Middle East and parts of Africa. Its unending conflicts are only possible
because kids like those I've talked to in the few classrooms Ive visited
continue to volunteer. The politicians and the school boards, time and
again, claim their school systems are broke. No money for books, teachers
salaries and pensions, healthy lunches, etc...
And yet, in 2015, the U.S. government spent $598 billion on the military,
more than half of its total discretionary budget, and nearly 10 times what
it spent on education. In 2015, we also learned that the Pentagon continues
to pour what, it is estimated, will in the end be $1.4 trillion into a fleet
of fighter planes that may never work as advertised. Imagine the school
system we would have in this country if teachers were compensated as well as
weapons contractors. Confronting the attacks on education in the U.S.
should also mean, in part, trying to interrupt that school-to-military
pipeline in places like Chicago. Its hard to fight endless trillion-dollar
wars if kids arent enlisting.
Just the other day I spoke at a college in Peoria, three hours south of
Chicago. My brother hasnt left the house since returning home from Iraq,
one of the students told me with tears in her eyes. What you said helped me
understand his situation better. I might have more to say to him now.
It was the sort of comment that reminded me that there is an audience for
what I have to say. I just need to figure out how to get past the
gatekeepers. Believe me, Ill continue to write about, pester, and advertise
my willingness to talk to soon-to-be-military-age kids in Chicago. Im not
giving up, because speaking honestly about my experiences is now my therapy.
At the end of the day, I need those students as much as I think they need
me.
Rory Fanning, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of Worth Fighting For: An
Army Rangers Journey Out of The Military and Across America and co-author
of the forthcoming book Long Shot: The Struggles and Triumphs of an NBA
Freedom Fighter. You can reach out to him on Twitter at @rtfanning
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Tomorrows Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Rory Fanning
© 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176125
Tomgram: Rory Fanning, Talking to the Young in a World That Will Never Truly
Be "Postwar"
By Rory Fanning
Posted on April 7, 2016, Printed on April 8, 2016
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176125/ ;
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Right now, you can still get signed,
personalized copies of the new books of two remarkable, bestselling authors
at this website. In return for a donation of $100 or more ($125 if you live
outside the United States), you can choose either Andrew Bacevichs
spectacular book Americas War for the Greater Middle East: A Military
History or Adam Hochschilds riveting new work on the war that began the
most devastating conflict in history, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the
Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. (Note, however, that the offer on Hochschilds
book will end this Saturday morning.) Visit the recent TomDispatch pieces by
Bacevich and Hochschild to get a sense of their new books. Worth Fighting
For, written by todays author, ex-Army Ranger Rory Fanning, remains on
offer as well. Check out our donation page for the details on all of them. A
final note: Adam Hochschild has been on book tour for nearly two weeks. For
those of you who already contributed, copies of his book will be in the mail
early next week. Thanks for your patience! Tom]
The third time around, the Pentagon evidently wants to do it right -- truly
right -- this time. What other explanation could there be for dispatching 12
generals to Iraq (one for every 416 American troops estimated to be on the
ground in that country, according to Nancy Youssef of the Daily Beast). And
keep in mind that those 12 dont include the generals and admirals
overseeing the air war, naval support, or other aspects of the campaign
against the Islamic State from elsewhere in the Middle East or back in the
U.S., nor do they include generals from allied forces like those of
Australia and Great Britain also in Iraq. Youssef offers a conservative
count of 21 flag officers, including allies, now in that country to
oversee the war there. Among other things, they are undoubtedly responsible
for ensuring the success of the major goal proclaimed by both Washington and
Baghdad for 2016: an offensive to retake the countrys second largest city,
Mosul. Only weeks ago, it got off to a rousing start when the Iraqi army
recaptured a few obscure villages on the road to that city. Soon after,
however, the offensive reportedly ground to a dispiriting halt when parts of
the American-retrained and rearmed Iraqi Army (which had collapsed in June
2014 in the face of far smaller numbers of far more determined Islamic State
militants) began to crumble again, amid mass desertions.
In the meantime, in both Iraq and Syria, U.S. operations seem to be on an
inexorable mission-creep upward, with ever more new troops and special ops
types heading for those countries in a generally under-the-radar manner,
assumedly with the objective of someday justifying the number of generals
awaiting them there. Somewhere in a top-heavy Pentagon, there surely must be
an office of déjà vu all over again, mustnt there? (And talking about déjà
vu, last week the U.S. launched yet another air strike in Somalia,
supposedly knocking off yet another leader of al-Shabab, the indigenous
terror movement. If you could win a war by repeatedly knocking off the
leaders of such movements, the U.S. would by now be the greatest victor in
the history of warfare.)
Meanwhile in Afghanistan... but do I really have to tell you about the
ground taken by the resurgent Taliban in the last year, the arrival of ISIS
in that country, the halting (yet again) of withdrawal plans for U.S. forces
almost 15 years into the second American war there, or other tales from the
crypt of this country's never-ending wars? I think not. Even if you havent
read the latest news, you can guess, cant you?
And this, of course, is exactly the repetitive world of war (and failure)
into which the young, especially in Americas poorest high schools, are
being recruited, even if they dont know it, via JROTC. It's a
Pentagon-funded program that promises to pave the way for your future
college education, give meaning to your life, and send you to exotic lands,
while ensuring that the countrys all-volunteer military never lacks for new
troops to dispatch to old (verging on ancient) conflicts. As Ann Jones has
written, It should be no secret that the United States has the biggest,
most efficiently organized, most effective system for recruiting child
soldiers in the world. With uncharacteristic modesty, however, the Pentagon
doesnt call it that. Its term is youth development program. So lets
offer thanks for small favors when someone -- in this case, ex-Army Ranger
and TomDispatch regular Rory Fanning (author of Worth Fighting For: An Army
Rangers Journey Out of the Military and Across America) -- feels the urge
to do something about that massive, militarized propaganda effort in our
schools. In my book, Fanning is the equivalent of any 12 of our generals and
we need more like him both in those schools and in our country. Tom
The Wars in Our Schools
An Ex-Army Ranger Finds a New Mission
By Rory Fanning
Early each New Years Day I head for Lake Michigan with a handful of
friends. We look for a quiet stretch of what, only six months earlier, was
warm Chicago beach. Then we trudge through knee-deep snow in bathing suits
and boots, fighting wind gusts and hangovers. Sooner or later, we arrive
where the snowpack meets the shore and boot through a thick crust of lake
ice, yelling and swearing as we dive into near-freezing water.
It took me a while to begin to understand why I do this every year, or for
that matter why for the last decade since I left the military Ive continued
to inflict other types of pain on myself with such unnerving regularity.
Most days, for instance, I lift weights at the gym to the point of crippling
exhaustion. On summer nights, I sometimes swim out alone as far as I can
through mats of hairy algae into the black water of Lake Michigan in search
of what I can only describe as a feeling of falling.
A few years ago, I walked across the United States with 50 pounds on my back
for the Pat Tillman Foundation in an obsessive attempt to rid myself of my
war. On the weekends, I clean my house similarly obsessively. And its true,
sometimes I drink too much.
In part, it seems, Ive been in search of creative ways to frighten myself,
apparently to relive the moments in the military I said I never wanted to go
through again -- or so a psychiatrist told me anyway. According to that
doctor (and often I think Id be the last to know), Im desperately trying
to recreate adrenalizing moments like the one when, as an Army Ranger, I
jumped out of an airplane at night into an area I had never before seen, not
sure if I was going to be shot at as I hit the ground. Or Im trying to
recreate the energy I felt leaping from a Blackhawk helicopter, night vision
goggles on, and storming my way into some nameless Afghan familys home,
where I would proceed to throw a sandbag over someones head and lead him
off to an American-controlled, Guantánamo-like prison in his own country.
This doctor says its common enough for my unconscious to want to relive the
feeling of learning that my friend had just been blown up by a roadside bomb
while on patrol at two in the morning, a time most normal people are
sleeping. Somehow, at the oddest hours, my mind considers it perfectly
appropriate to replay the times when rockets landed near my tent at night in
a remote valley in Afghanistan. Or when I was arrested by the military after
going AWOL as one of the first Army Rangers to try to say no to
participation in George W. Bushs Global War on Terror.
Im aware now, as I wasnt some years back, that my post-war urge for
limits-testing is not atypical of the home-front experiences of many who
went to war in Afghanistan or Iraq in these years and, for some of them,
judging by the soaring suicide rates among Global War on Terror vets, the
urge has proven so much more extreme than mine. But more than a decade after
leaving the army as a conscientious objector, I can at least finally own up
to and testify to the eeriness of what we all brought home from Americas
twenty-first-century wars, even those of us who werent physically maimed or
torn up by them.
And heres the good news at a purely personal level: the older I get the
less Im inclined towards such acts of masochism, of self-inflicted pain.
Part of the change undoubtedly involves age -- I hesitate to use the word
maturity yet -- but theres another reason, too. I found a far better
place to begin to put all that stored up, jumpy energy. I began speaking to
high school students heavily propagandized by the U.S. military on the
charms, delights, and positives of war, American-style, about my own
experiences and that, in turn, has been changing my life. Id like to tell
you about it.
Filling in the Blanks
The first time I went to speak to high school students about my life with
the Rangers in Afghanistan, I was surprised to realize that the same nervous
energy I felt before jumping into Lake Michigan or lacing up my gym shoes
for a bone-shaking work-out was coursing through my body. But here was the
strangest thing: when I had said my piece (or perhaps I really mean my
peace) with as much honesty as I could muster, I felt the very sense of
calmness and resolution that Id been striving for with my other rituals and
could never quite hang onto come over me -- and it stayed with me for days.
That first time, I was one of the few white people in a deteriorating
Chicago public high school on the far south side of the city. A teacher is
escorting me down multiple broad, shabby hallways to the classroom where I
was to speak. We pass a room decorated with a total of eight American flags,
four posted on each side of its door. The recruiting office, the teacher
says, gesturing toward it, and then asks, Do they have recruiting offices
in the suburban schools you talk to?
Im not sure. I havent spoken to any on this topic yet, I reply. They
certainly didnt have an obvious one at the public high school I went to,
but I do know that there are 10,000 recruiters across the country working
with a $700 million a year advertising budget. And I think youre more
likely to see the recruiters in schools where kids have less options after
graduation.
At that moment, we arrive at the appointed classroom and Im greeted warmly
by the social studies teacher who invited me. Photos of Ida B. Wells, Martin
Luther King Jr., Malcom X, and other revolutionary black leaders hang neatly
on a wall. He first heard about my desire to talk to students about my
wartime experiences through Veterans for Peace, an organization I belong to.
There is no counter-narrative to what the kids are being taught by the
instructors in Junior ROTC, as far as I can tell, he says, obviously
bothered, as we wait for the students to arrive. It would be great if you
could provide more of a complete picture to these kids. He then went on to
describe the frustration he felt with a Chicago school system in which
schools in the poorest neighborhoods in the city were being shut down at a
record pace, and yet, somehow, his school district always had the money to
supplement the Pentagons funding of the JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer
Training) program.
The kids are just beginning to filter in, laughing and acting like the
teenagers they are. Im not encouraged.
Okay, everyone, settle down, we have a guest speaker today, the teacher
says. He oozes confidence of a sort I only wish I possessed. The volume in
the room dies down to something approaching a hush. They clearly respect
him. I only hope a little of that will spill over in my direction.
I hesitate a moment and then start, and heres a little report from memory
on at least part of what I said and what happened:
Thanks, I begin, for having me in today. My name is Rory Fanning and Im
here to tell you why I joined the military. Ill also talk about what I saw
while I was in that military, and why I left before my contract was up. The
silence in the classroom stretches out, which encourages me and I plunge on.
I signed up for the Army Rangers to have my student loans paid for and to
do my part to prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11... My training was
sometimes difficult and usually boring... A lot of food and sleep
deprivation. Mostly, I think my chain of command was training me in how to
say yes to their orders. The military and critical thinking dont mix too
well...
As I talk on about the almost indescribable poverty and desperation I
witnessed in Afghanistan, a country that has known nothing but occupation
and civil war for decades and that, before I arrived, I knew less than
nothing about, I could feel my nervousness abating. The buildings in
Kabul, I was telling them, have gaping holes in them and broken-down
Russian tanks and jets litter the countryside.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463915/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463915/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20I can
hardly restrain my amazement. The kids are still with me. Im now explaining
how the U.S. military handed out thousands of dollars to anyone willing to
identify alleged members of the Taliban and how we would raid houses based
on this information. I later came to find out that this intelligence, if
you could call it that, was rooted in a kind of desperation. I explain why
an Afghan in abject poverty, looking for ways to support his family, might
be ready to finger almost anyone in return for access to the deep wells of
cash the U.S. military could call on. In a world where factories are few,
and office jobs scarce indeed, people will do anything to survive. They have
to.
I point out the almost unbearable alien quality of Afghan life to American
military officials. Few spoke a local language. No one I ever ran into knew
anything about the culture of the people we were trying to bribe. Too often
we broke down doors and snatched Afghans from their homes not because of
their ties with either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, but because a neighbor had a
grudge against them.
Most of the people we targeted had no connection to the Taliban at all.
Some even pledged allegiance to the U.S. occupation, but that didnt
matter. They still ended up with hoods over their heads and in some
godforsaken prison.
By now, I can tell that the kids are truly paying attention, so I let it all
out. The Taliban had surrendered a few months before I arrived in
Afghanistan in late 2002, but that wasnt good enough for our politicians
back home and the generals giving the orders. Our job was to draw people
back into the fight.
Two or three students let out genuine soft gasps as I describe how my
company of Rangers occupied a village school and our commander cancelled
classes there indefinitely because it made an excellent staging point for
the troops -- and there wasnt much a village headmaster in rural
Afghanistan could say to dissuade historys most technologically advanced
and powerful military from doing just what it wanted to. I remember, I
tell them, watching two fighting-age men walk by the school we were
occupying. One of them didnt show an acceptable level of deference to my
first sergeant, so we grabbed them. We threw the overly confident guy in one
room and his friend in another, and the guy who didnt smile at us properly
heard a gunshot and thought, just as he was meant to, that we had just
killed his friend for not telling us what we wanted to hear and that he
might be next.
Thats like torture, one kid half-whispers.
I then talk about why Im more proud of leaving the military than of
anything I did while in it. I signed up to prevent another 9/11, but my two
tours in Afghanistan made me realize that I was making the world less safe.
We know now that a majority of the million or so people who have been killed
since 9/11 have been innocent civilians, people with no stake in the game
and no reason to fight until, often enough, the U.S. military baited them
into it by killing or injuring a family member who more often than not was
an innocent bystander.
Did you know, I continue, quoting a statistic cited from University of
Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, that from 1980 to 2003, there
were 343 suicide attacks around the world, and at most 10% were
anti-American inspired. Since 2004, there have been more than 2,000, over
91% against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other
countries. I didnt want to be part of this so I left.
Full Disclosure
Chicago-area high school students arent used to hearing such talk. The
public school system here has the largest number of Junior ROTC students --
nearly 10,000 of them, 45% African American and 50% Latino -- of any school
district in the country. And maybe so many of these kids are attentive
exactly because the last thing JROTC instructors are likely to be discussing
is the realities of war, including, for instance, the staggering number of
homeless Iraq and Afghanistan veterans unable to assimilate back into
society after their experience overseas.
When I urge the students to join me in a conversation about war and their
lives, I hear stories about older siblings deluged by telemarketer-style
calls from recruiters. Its so annoying, one says. My brother doesnt
even know how the recruiter got his information.
Recruiters have contact information for every junior and senior in this
school, I say. And thats the law. The No Child Left Behind act, signed
soon after 9/11, insists that your school hand over your information to the
Department of Defense if it wants to receive federal funds.
Soon enough, it becomes clear that these students have very little context
for their encounters with the U.S. military and its promises of an uplifting
future. They know next to nothing, for instance, about our recent history in
Iraq and Afghanistan, or our permanent state of war in the Greater Middle
East and increasingly in Africa. When I ask why so many of them signed up
for the JROTC program, they talk about leadership opportunities and
structure for their lives. They are focused, as I was, on having college
paid for or seeing the world. Some say they are in JROTC because they
didnt want to take gym class. One offers this honest assessment: I dont
know, I just am. I havent given it much thought.
As I grill them, so they grill me. What does your family think about your
leaving the military? one asks.
Well, I respond, we dont talk about it too much. I come from a very
pro-military family and they prefer not to think of what we are doing
overseas as wrong. I think this is why it took me so long to speak honestly
in public about my time in the military.
Did other factors weigh on your decision to talk openly about your military
experience, or was it just fear of your familys response? an astute
student asks.
And I answer as honestly as I can: Even though, as far as I know, I did
something no one in the Rangers had yet done in the post-9/11 era -- the
psychological and physical vetting process for admission to the Ranger
Regiment makes the likelihood of a Ranger questioning the mission and
leaving the unit early unlikely -- I was intimidated. I shouldnt have been,
but my chain of command had me leaving the military looking over my
shoulder. They made it seem as if they could drag me off to jail or send me
back into the military to be a bullet stopper in the big Army at any time if
I ever talked about my service in the Rangers. I did after all, like all
Rangers, have a secret security clearance. Heads shake. The military and
paranoia go hand in hand. So I kept quiet, I tell the kids. I also started
reading books like Anand Gopals No Good Men Among the Living, a reporters
brilliant story of our invasion of Afghanistan as told from the perspective
of actual Afghans. And I began meeting veterans who had experiences similar
to mine and were speaking out. This helped boost my confidence.
Is the military like Call of Duty? one of the students asks, referring to
a popular single-shooter video game.
Ive never played, I respond. Does it include kids who scream when their
mothers and fathers are killed? Do a lot of civilians die?
Not really, he says uncomfortably.
Well, then its not realistic. Besides, you can turn off a video game. You
cant turn off war.
A quiet settles over the room that even a lame joke of mine cant break.
Finally, after a silence, one of the kids suddenly says, Ive never heard
anything like this before.
What I feel is the other side of that response. That first experience of
mine talking to Americas future cannon fodder confirms my assumption that,
not surprisingly, the recruiters in our schools arent telling the young
anything that might make them think twice about the glories of military
life.
I leave that school with an incredible sense of calm, something I havent
felt since my time began in Afghanistan. I tell myself I want to speak to
classrooms at least once a week. I realize that it took me 10 years, even
while writing a book on the subject, to build up the courage to talk openly
about my years in the military. If only I had begun engaging these kids
earlier instead of punishing myself for the experience George W. Bush, Dick
Cheney, and their cohorts put me through. Suddenly, some of my resident
paranoia seems to melt away, and the residual guilt I still felt for leaving
the Rangers early and in protest -- the chain of command left me believing
that there was nothing more cowardly than deserting your Ranger buddies --
seems to evaporate, too.
My thought now is full disclosure going forward. If a teenager is going to
sign up to kill and die for a cause or even the promise of a better life,
then the least he or she should know is the good, the bad, and the ugly
about the job. I had no illusions that plenty of kids -- maybe most of them,
maybe all of them -- wouldnt sign up anyway, regardless of what I said. But
I swear to myself: no moralism, no regrets, no judgments. Thats my credo
now. Just the facts as I see them.
A New Mission
Im on an operation and that feels strangely familiar. Think of it as a
different way to be a Ranger in a world that will never, it seems, be truly
postwar. But as with all things in ones mind: easier said than done. The
world, it turns out, is in no rush to welcome me on my new mission.
I start making calls. I create a website to advertise my talk. I send out
word to teacher friends that Im available to speak in their schools. Im
prepared for my schedule to fill up within weeks, but a month passes and no
one calls. The phone just doesnt ring. I grow increasingly frustrated.
Fortunately, a friend tells me about a grant sponsored by the Chicago
Teachers Union and designed to expose kids to real world educational
experiences they may not hear about in school. I apply, promising to speak
to 12 of the 46 schools in Chicago with JROTC programs during the 2015/2016
school year. The grant comes through in September and better yet it promises
that each student I talk to will also get a free copy of my book, Worth
Fighting For.
I dont for a second doubt that this will ensure my presence in front of
classrooms of kids. I have nine long months to arrange meetings with only 12
schools. I decide that Ill even throw in some extra schools as a bonus. I
create a Facebook page so that teachers and principals can learn about my
talk and book me directly. Notices of both my website and that page are
placed in teacher newsletters and I highlight the Chicago Teachers Union
endorsement in them. Im thinking: slam dunk! I even advertise on message
boards, spend money on targeted ads on Facebook, and again reach out to all
my teacher friends.
It's now April, seven months into the school year, and only two teachers
have taken me up on the offer to speak. He was comfortable and engaging
with the students and in the students reflections the following day he was
someone that the students clearly enjoyed talking with. I will definitely
ask him to come back to speak to my classes every year, wrote Dave Stieber,
one of those teachers.
Its finally starting to dawn on me, however. In our world, life is scary
and Im not the only one heading for Lake Michigan on cold winter mornings
or gloomy nights. Teachers out there in the public schools are anxious, too.
Its dark days for them. They are under attack and busy fighting back
against school privatization, closures, and political assaults on their
pensions. The popular JROTC program is a cash cow for their schools and they
are discouraged from further rocking a boat already in choppy waters.
Youll bring too much tension to our school, one teacher tells me with
regret. Most of my kids need the military if they plan on going to
college, I hear from another who says he cant invite me to his school
anyway. But most of my requests simply go out into the void unanswered. Or
promises to invite me go unfulfilled. Who, after all, wants to make waves or
extracurricular trouble when teachers are already under fierce attack from
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his unelected school board?
I understand and yet, in a world without a draft, JROTCs school-to-military
pipeline is a lifeline for Washingtons permanent war across the Greater
Middle East and parts of Africa. Its unending conflicts are only possible
because kids like those I've talked to in the few classrooms Ive visited
continue to volunteer. The politicians and the school boards, time and
again, claim their school systems are broke. No money for books, teachers
salaries and pensions, healthy lunches, etc...
And yet, in 2015, the U.S. government spent $598 billion on the military,
more than half of its total discretionary budget, and nearly 10 times what
it spent on education. In 2015, we also learned that the Pentagon continues
to pour what, it is estimated, will in the end be $1.4 trillion into a fleet
of fighter planes that may never work as advertised. Imagine the school
system we would have in this country if teachers were compensated as well as
weapons contractors. Confronting the attacks on education in the U.S. should
also mean, in part, trying to interrupt that school-to-military pipeline in
places like Chicago. Its hard to fight endless trillion-dollar wars if kids
arent enlisting.
Just the other day I spoke at a college in Peoria, three hours south of
Chicago. My brother hasnt left the house since returning home from Iraq,
one of the students told me with tears in her eyes. What you said helped me
understand his situation better. I might have more to say to him now.
It was the sort of comment that reminded me that there is an audience for
what I have to say. I just need to figure out how to get past the
gatekeepers. Believe me, Ill continue to write about, pester, and advertise
my willingness to talk to soon-to-be-military-age kids in Chicago. Im not
giving up, because speaking honestly about my experiences is now my therapy.
At the end of the day, I need those students as much as I think they need
me.
Rory Fanning, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of Worth Fighting For: An
Army Rangers Journey Out of The Military and Across America and co-author
of the forthcoming book Long Shot: The Struggles and Triumphs of an NBA
Freedom Fighter. You can reach out to him on Twitter at @rtfanning
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Tomorrows Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Rory Fanning
© 2016 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176125
