The US cult of military service
Soon after Vice President Kamala Harris introduced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, the attacks on his military record began. Quick comparisons were drawn in the media to the “Swiftboating” of Democratic candidate John Kerry in 2004. Too be straight about it, debating the finer points of Walz’s military record misses the larger point being made here, that the cult of military “service” in the United States is a widespread and dangerous one.
Responding to attacks from Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, Walz told a campaign rally—filled with enthusiastic hospitality workers—in Las Vegas:
“I was born in a small town in Nebraska where community was a way of life. There’s some Nebraskans in the house. You think I’m kidding. You think I’m kidding. 400 people, 25 kids in my class, twelve were cousins. That’s small town. That’s small town. But you know what?
“My parents and my community taught me generosity towards my neighbour and to work for the common good. My dad was a chain-smoking Korean War-era veteran who, two days after my seventeenth birthday, took me down to sign up to join the National Guard. I was proud for the next 24 years to wear the uniform of this country.
“Thank you to every single one of you who wore that uniform. And I have to tell you, like my dad before me and millions of others, the GI Bill gave me a shot at a college education. And just like Tillie, my dad was a teacher.
“My older brother was a teacher. My sister was a teacher. My younger brother was a teacher. And we married teachers. The privilege of my lifetime was spending two decades teaching in public schools. And you might have heard coaching football to a state championship.”
Walz ticks all of the boxes for one kind of Democratic presidential campaign: small-town America, family tradition, military service, teaching and football. He was introduced by Tillie Torres, a Las Vegas teacher. The message was pretty clear that military service was the natural and honourable stage in one’s life from a nobody to a somebody in the Great American community. Connecting military service to teaching is also a sinister one given that high schools across the country are one of the main recruiting grounds for the US military.
I was pretty shocked that one of the first widely circulated pictures of Walz was a stern-faced, seventeen-year-old version of himself in 1981-era combat fatigues holding an M-16. For a candidate that caught the attention of the US media by calling the Republicans “weird”, a seventeen-year-old clutching a machine gun is not? Walz was, by many accounts, a popular teacher with his students and liked by his colleagues. But the role model of the soldier-teacher is not a good one, especially for young men.
I don’t know if he ever directly encouraged any of his students to join the military or what happened to them after they signed up. But young people, especially high school boys, can be easily impressed by the glamour of the uniform and combat through films, television and video games. This was particularly true during the 1980s and 1990s, when political leaders and their friends in Hollywood spent a lot of time rehabilitating the military following the US defeat in Vietnam, along with demonising the Vietnam anti-war movement.
Walz joined the National Guard in 1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the beginning of a massive military build-up and a resurgent anti-Communism and US imperialism. It wasn’t until the end of the decade, however, that the US could again send large numbers of ground troops to fight wars in far-flung corners of the globe. Panama, the first Gulf War, and after 9–11, the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq—the latter two dubbed the “forever wars”. The disastrous results for the countries that the US invaded and the large numbers of US soldiers who suffered debilitating physical and mental health conditions are still with us.
Walz was deployed only once overseas, to Italy during the forever wars, and saw no combat. He spent seven months abroad before he returned home. Others from Minnesota were not so lucky. More than 8,000 Minnesota National Guard soldiers and Airmen were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 to 2011. Sixteen members of the Minnesota Guard died in Iraq and another 79 were awarded Purple Hearts for combat injuries. Nearly 100 soldiers with some connection to Minnesota were killed in combat during the forever wars.
Walz retired from the National Guard in May 2005; he was elected to Congress during the Democratic sweep in 2006. Reason magazine summarised his record on the forever wars:
“For all his strong feelings about war powers, however, Walz has also shown a tendency to shrink from tough political fights on the issue. During the debate over the surge, Walz voted to force the US military to withdraw from Iraq within 90 days. Yet less than five months later, he voted to continue funding the war. It was a position that put him at odds with a majority of his Democratic colleagues ...
“A similar pattern unfolded throughout Walz’s congressional career. According to voting records compiled by Peace Action, an antiwar advocacy group, Walz often voted to repeal the War on Terror-era authorizations for the use of military force (AUMFs), while also voting against restrictions or cuts to military funding.”
Walz proved to be a reliable vote for the Democratic leadership during his years in Congress.
Another aspect of the military service cult is never to discuss what the military actually does beyond blandishments of “serving” or “protecting” our nation. Walz spent his entire military career in the Minnesota National Guard. A cursory survey of its history reveals one that parallels many others. But it’s not a good history: from suppressing the Dakota uprising in 1862 to the failed effort to crush the Minnesota Teamsters strikes of 1934 to strikebreaking at Hormel in 1986 to defending the 2008 Republican convention from demonstrators.
This is not just a Minnesota story. The National Guard has deep roots in the history of the United States, stretching back to the earliest days of English colonisation of North America in the early 1600s, when colonists organised militias to defend themselves from Indigenous attacks and destroy native resistance to their expansion. Slave patrols in the Old South were replaced, according the NAACP, by “militia-style groups who were empowered to control and deny access to equal rights to freed slaves. They relentlessly and systematically enforced Black Codes, strict local and state laws that regulated and restricted access to labor, wages, voting rights, and general freedoms for formerly enslaved people”.
Following the 1877 Railroad Uprising—which was the closest the United States ever came to a workers’ revolution—the National Guards or state militias in many states had to be reorganised after they demonstrated too much sympathy for the strikers across the country. The legacy of this era is hiding in plain sight. “Cities across the US still bear the physical legacy of the 1877 railroad strike”, according to the logistics Center for Transportation. “To quell social unrest, many states and cities—with financial support from wealthy business owners—constructed armories resembling medieval castles to house National Guard units and suppress labor movements.”
When Walz was governor of Minnesota during the Black Lives Matter rebellion following George Floyd’s police murder, he deployed National Guard troops to Minneapolis, a move was praised by President Donald Trump at the time. This was no aberration in its long history. Minnesota is quite proud of the National Guard’s role in foiling “domestic unrest”. The Minnesota Military Museum boasts:
“Since its formation ... the Minnesota National Guard has been called upon to support the State of Minnesota 91 times in response to a variety of civil disturbances. Minnesota has experienced a wide range of race, labor and other social conflict since its inception and these upheavals received varied responses from state governments to include the deployment of the National Guard.”
The National Guard in many states recruits soldiers by emphasising their heroic role during natural disasters, as this video demonstrates. National Guard members are sold as do-gooders or “citizen-soldiers” who rarely if ever see combat. But the post-Cold War reorganisation of the US military has meant that the National Guard is more integrated into military operations abroad, in sharp contrast to the Vietnam War era. Since the end of the draft in 1973, the US military has had to rely on various means to recruit its soldiers.
The cult of military service sprouted in the era of the volunteer army. While it means that professional politicians like Tim Walz may ride this into the White House with Kamala Harris, for others, it is a road to the graveyard.
First published at joeallen-60224.medium.com. Joe Allen is a socialist based in the United States. He is the author of Vietnam: The (Last) War the US Lost.
