All of this, and also, itâs literally not even true that the US military is comprised of poor people: itâs predominantly petty bourgeois and white
Things have changed in the decades after the inflation of the armed forces through conscription during the Vietnam âwarâ (read: Genocide) and the subsequent defeat and deflation. In the transition to a primarily volunteer force, something counterintuitive to the first-worldist left occurred. The first-worldist left expected the military to be utilized as some kind of refuge for the poor periphery of the united $tates population. However that is not what happened. Especially in the decade after 9/11, the military has transitioned into a gun club for amerikkkaâs wide-eyed middle class sons. The imperialist volunteer vengeance force that was raised to fight international âterrorismâ in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as those who were trained to rain missiles on a dozen more) were less and less the victims of a âpoverty draftâ which had been imagined into existence by those who remembered the inequities of conscription and service in the 1960s.
This has been documented by the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation in their study on the recruitment demographics of the united $tates military, which found that only about 10-11% of the united $tates military recruits come from the poorest quintile (defined as making less than $33,000 annually), with a fourth of the military coming from areas whose median income is more than $65,000 annually.[1] They gathered this information using addresses of personnel at the time of recruitment, which has faced much criticism by those who argue for the existence of a poverty-draft. What problems do they see with this method? Well, according to the Boise Weekly the statistics are unreliable because â[m]any recruits are college dropouts who list their last addressâtheir college dormâwhen they sign upâ, which they believe would provide an inflated statistical portrait of average income.[2] They assert that this is the case without actually presenting any evidence.
As for the validity of the claim that, by and large, the military is made up of college dropouts who use their college residence as their permanent address: that is already a questionable assertion. It also raises questions about the kind of people they assume are âforced into the military by povertyâ who are still equipped with the financial support to move out on their own to attend university. Furthermore, their label of âuneducatedâ seems a hardly fitting descriptor for a military which does not accept people without a highschool diploma.[3] This is a deliberate deception; their assertions rarely contain vital evidence and rely on definitions of âeducationâ that hardly fit the bill. Even more interestingly, this article assumes that those who do not finish college or do not attend must automatically be poor and forced into the military for that reason. This assumption is further jeopardized by the fact that most amerikans have not earned a college degree. It is true that the Heritage Foundation, being quasi-fascist troop-worshippers, have their own motives for promoting a class-collaborationist and prosperous image of the military, however we judge their study on its merits rather than the inconvenience of its results.
Moving to the question of race in the military, it should not be surprising at this point that it is dominated by white people, who hold a numerical majority in every branch. Dealing with recruits, the study finds that Black recruits are overrepresented by 4% when compared to the overall population of Black youth aged 18-24, while at the same time white recruits are overrepresented by 5%. The only notably overrepresented group among recruits are Indigenous people, by almost 300% (though still making up only 2% of the total recruits). One must question whether these figures imply the armed forces are any less white-dominated with whites representing a 65% majority among new recruits during the height of the Iraq war.[4] However the traditional first-worldist claim is that the military disproportionately composed of the poor and nationally oppressed who are the primary targets for recruiters. This claim is put in further jeopardy by the fact that as a whole, veterans are half as likely to live in âpovertyâ by u.$. standards, and in fact have consistently higher incomes than non-veterans.[5]
However, this does not even recognize or attempt to explain why there is an ongoing deflation of the armed forces. This reflects a potentially more revealing trend in the development of the armed forces of the imperialist core; a strategic shift in the imperialist military program after the double-defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hands of the national resistance forces. With the intense mechanization of the military and strategic shifts in its campaigns, it has become politically useful to narrow down the military into a highly technical force, a force with access to some of the most expensive and destructive equipment in the world with which to maintain its military domination. Whereas before it seemed that just about anyone was eligible for military service, so long as they fit into very loose guidelines, it is now much more difficult to get accepted, with 80% of applicants being turned down.[6]
That 5th source is the VAâs own statistics, by the way:
People who go into the US military are generally well-off to start with, being petty bourgeoisie or labor aristocracy, and are even more well-off as a reward for participating in national oppression and genocide. They would absolutely not be sympathetic even if they were poor â poverty is not an excuse for becoming a racist stormtrooper, whether as a cop or as a soldier â but itâs worth noting that the âpoor disadvantaged troopsâ conception is itself an imperialist-to-fascist-spectrum myth
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