Fight to Live, Live to Fight

Veteran Activism after War

Benjamin Schrader

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781438475202
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

While veterans are often cast as a "problem" for society, Fight to Live, Live to Fight challenges this view by focusing on the progressive, positive, and productive activism that veterans engage in. Benjamin Schrader weaves his own experiences as a former member of the American military and then as a member of the activist community with the stories of other veteran activists he has encountered across the United States. An accessible blend of political theory, international relations, and American politics, this book critically examines US foreign and domestic policy through the narratives of post-9/11 military veterans who have turned to activism after having exited the military. Veterans are involved in a wide array of activism, including but not limited to antiwar, economic justice, sexual violence prevention, immigration issues, and veteran healing through art. This is an accessible, captivating, and engaging work that may be read and appreciated not just by scholars, but also students and the wider public.

1

Autoarcheology of War

In Michel Foucault’s series of lectures entitled The Hermeneutics of the Subject, he outlines a number of methods related to an introspective line of understanding that looks to locate the intricacies that are tied between the concepts of the subject and truth. Within this journey, he examines the concept of knowledge and “true discourse” when he states, “making the truth your own, becoming the subject of enunciation of true discourse: this, I think, is the very core of this philosophical ascesis.”1 It is in this spirit, of making my experience the subject of enunciation, that I hope to draw out why my work is important. By turning the gaze inward, hopefully a new discourse can be found and a personal account of political affect, as described by John Protevi, may be seen. Furthermore, by examining this particular narrative through different lenses, the political can shift as a different understanding of the Iraq War can be told and used as a lesson of war and violence. The narrative thus becomes its own body politic as similar stories can be heard from veterans across the nation, highlighting how war and veterans’ subsequent return has affected society. This account can be seen as a model for examining narrative accounts, which highlight the politics of narrative international relations. However, it should be noted that Foucault’s appeal to “true discourse” and “the subject” contains multiple layers. For Foucault, truth is a contentious claim, not solely focused upon accuracy, because my truth may look very different from the truth of those who I interview throughout this book, or even different than those I fought beside. Our subjectivities and truths become sites of struggle that work to contest and complicate the everyday narratives. Our stories and our activism are a struggle toward a truth that can serve us, and a subjectivity we can inhabit, as it becomes a poignant field of struggle. Ultimately, this narrative is an insight into my own construction of how I came to understand my relationship to the Soldiers’ Contract, as well as my relationship to the military dispositif.

Joining the Army

One day while driving down Patterson Road in Grand Junction, Colorado, my best friend, Garett, told me he had a dream in which he saw himself in the military. “I’m thinking of joining,” he said, “which is crazy because I told myself that I would never join after the torture that my dad put me, my brothers, and mom through.” His father had been a drill sergeant in the army and had received a Purple Heart, among other medals for his time in Vietnam. He died from complications with shrapnel that eventually formed cancer after being in his body for more than twenty years. I told Garett that I had tried to join many years before, but as I was overweight at that time I was not able to join. I knew the recruiters, and told him, “Well, if you want to go, I would be down, let’s go talk to them.” I had spent the prior year in college but knew that I could not afford to continue to take out loans, as well as I knew I was not ready for college since I had spent the last few years partying and not taking my studies seriously.

Initially we tried contacting the Colorado National Guard but only got the answering machine and didn’t hear back from them, so we went to the regular US Army recruiters. I had been to the recruiting station before and recruiters SSG Fortenberry and SSG Petty greeted us; the latter would die at the same time that we were in Iraq. The job of the recruiter is to be your best friend; he is there to reassure you, make you excited to join, and make sure that you qualify. The first time I had attempted to join a couple years before, I was barely overweight and told to come back the next month, which discouraged me. This was the first time I had seen the recruiters since my initial rejection, though they had called me regularly. The two men seemed genuinely happy to see me, perhaps because they knew that besides my past weight problems I was a quality candidate, as I had a high school diploma and no criminal past.

SSG Petty was a Cavalry Scout, and one of the videos that he showed us was actually a Special Forces video, but he said that this would basically be our job if we chose to be Cavalry Scouts. The video was very exciting as soldiers zipped around on dirt bikes and dune buggies and were shooting weapons neither of us had seen before. We decided that this would be a fun option if they offered it for the Army Reserves. Within a couple of days, we were on a plane to Denver to go through MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station). They flew us over the night before and put us up in a hotel. Early the next morning we would be rushed through breakfast and then put through a number of lines, tests, background checks, and paperwork. I had gone through the process before and knew that much patience was needed to get through the long day. Once we had both passed all the tests and were done being poked and prodded we were taken to the contracts office. Garett went ahead of me, and when he came out he told me, “So I decided to sign up for active duty for three years, but got guaranteed to be stationed in Germany. Do you want to do the same, because if you do we can go on the buddy program?” It didn’t take me long to decide that it would be fun going to Germany, so I agreed, and within an hour the contracts would be drawn up and we would sign our lives away for at least the next three years.

What we were told, but not very clearly—and which would later become a very stressful aspect of our service—was that our contract was actually for eight years, three years of active duty service, then five years of Individual Ready Reserve. Furthermore, what they quickly say while reviewing the contract with us was that during those eight years, at any time, we were at the will of “the needs of the Army.” Meaning, if they needed us to stay longer, they would extend our service beyond the three years of active duty service, which did end up happening. However, at the time all of this seemed a distant possibility since there was no reason why they would need to extend our service; we weren’t at war, as it was July of 2001. We also decided to go on the delayed entry program, not leaving until October of that year.

About a week after we had signed up, our buddy Jeff had decided that he wanted to join us in Germany, so he went through the same process and we were all then on the buddy program together. Once we had signed up, the recruiters kept in contact to ensure that we were preparing for basic training. We did so primarily by working out and watching Stanley Kubrick’s famous film Full Metal Jacket. By repeatedly watching the film, we built up an idea of what boot camp would be like, which on one level terrified us, but we felt that it prepared us for the worst. The recruiters assured us that boot camp would be much easier than it appeared in the movie, but that it definitely did resemble it in many ways. And like generations of soldiers before us, we turned to popular culture to build conceptions of war. Previous generations had looked up to John Wayne and Audie Murphy; we had directors like Kubrick and Oliver Stone.2 While the tenor of the films changed, the glory and excitement had not. Movies prior to Vietnam seemed to glorify the soldier as a hero, and while many post-Vietnam movies showed layered complexities of war, the masculinity of being a soldier still shone through.

Less than two months after signing my contract to join the military, I was awakened one morning by my roommate telling me that there had been an attack on the World Trade Center in New York. I told him to fuck off, and he said, “Seriously, come check it out.” I got up and went into his room as the first tower fell. My mind began to swim and my stomach knotted up, as I knew that this would change everything with my upcoming entrance into the military. At the time, I was working at a river rafting company and was scheduled to lead a trip that afternoon. The trip was different than any other trip I had guided, as the shadow of the moment ominously loomed over the day. To add to the awkwardness, the family who was on the float trip was from New York. The silence was piercing, and I remember asking, “Have you been in touch with your friends and family?” The father replied, “Yeah, we’re actually from Upstate New York, but we have talked to most of our friends and family back home.”

That night I went to hang out with Garett and Jeff to discuss the situation. While we were all scared about the future, we were still adamant about joining the military—I more so than Garett and Jeff because of my conservative political leanings, but Garett was still determined, and Jeff decided he was still along for the ride. There had been some talk of what could happen if we didn’t go, and we thought that we probably didn’t want to find out. Our recruiters had called the next day to see how we were doing, but they also called to tell us that we had signed contracts and that we could go to jail if we didn’t go, which confirmed our thoughts. We would later find out that our recruiters were lying to us, since our contract was not solidified until we were sworn in before we left for basic training, but either way we planned on going. I was proud to be going, as I thought at the time that we were doing the right thing. On October 15, 2001, we would leave Grand Junction, fly to Denver, be sworn in, and fly out to Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Boot Camp

… there are psychiatrists who recommend fear, violence, and threats in every case. Some see the fundamental imbalance of power as sufficiently assured but the asylum system itself, its system of surveillance, internal hierarchy, and the arrangement of the buildings, the asylum walls themselves, carrying and defining the network and gradient of power.

—Michel Foucault, Psychiatric Power

Much as Foucault points out in the preceding quote, basic training was an imbalance of power. After a week of waiting for space to open up in a new training company, we were given our initial physical test; those who passed would go on to the training company, and those who failed would have to wait longer and try again. We were told that the next chance we would have to do this would be a month away, so it motivated us that much more to pass the first time. The sergeant who was in charge of us until we went to our training platoon was now unleashed and was finally allowed to “smoke us” now that we had passed our physicals. He had us going back and forth between the “front-leaning rest position” (better known as the push-up position) and standing at attention for hours. He would call out “Bawk-Bawk,” to which we were to reply “Chicken-Chicken”; he would then call it out again and we were to reply, “Chicken Head.”3 The cadence was from a popular rap song that came out that year, meant to degrade women, which seemed like a taunt he enjoyed directing at us.4 Later that morning we would get on a bus and go get all of the issued equipment that we would need, and then on to our training company, Echo Company.

As the bus pulled up, the drill sergeants were waiting outside for us; they then boarded the buses and began screaming at us to get off the buses. It was a torrent of yelling, as curse words and degradations were being thrown at us as we tried to exit the buses and get in line as quickly as possible. Once outside we were told to empty our duffle bags on the ground for their inspection, though they barely looked at the contents strewn across the lawn, yelling at us to “get our shit back in our bags.” One smaller drill sergeant walked around with a clipboard and got the recruits’ names, and told them which platoon they would be in. Once we were told our platoon, and all of our stuff was back in the duffle bags, we were told to get our stuff up to our barracks as quickly as possible and to get back downstairs for formation. I was put into 3rd platoon, while my friends Garett and Jeff were put into 2nd platoon, which was distressing, but it seemed that I had much bigger problems to worry about at the time.

The first few weeks of basic training were known as “black phase”—so named because it reflects the status of being completely out of supplies, or more particularly ammunition, regarding which we are seen at this point as starting from zero—and it is the most difficult portion of basic training. It is in these first few weeks that the initial imbalance of power is formed, primarily through a somatic process that includes discipline centered on the body and psychological degradation meant to break down the soldier. Punishments were usually focused on individuals, but if an offense was big enough one’s whole platoon would be punished. Often there was no real cause for a punishment; rather, it was a statement being made that we were not individuals. We were now property of the US Army. Drill sergeants would scream in our faces, call us names, and make us do hours of bear crawls, push-ups, sit-ups, running, etc. We would be kept up late and awoken early to ensure that our mental and physical capacities were worn down to a bare level of survival.

Throughout these first few weeks we were constantly exhausted, and it seemed that everything we did was incorrect. A button would be undone on our pockets, and we would be punished; someone next to you would fall asleep during a class, and you and he would have to do push-ups. It got to the point where I questioned which way was up and which was down. I questioned why I joined, why I was there. It is in the first few weeks that the highest attrition rate takes place, but with the attacks of September 11 having just occurred, our drill sergeants aimed to make it very difficult for anyone to get out of their contract, which made us hate them that much more.

One night in the first few weeks, my “battle buddy” Jared told me that he “couldn’t take it anymore” and that he was going to tell the drill sergeants that he was gay.5 I asked him if he was telling the truth, and he said he had a whole black book of contacts to confirm his story. The confrontation must not have gone well because the next time I saw him he was in tears and wearing a bright orange vest that read “SUICIDE WATCH,” and we had to take shifts to watch him. He later told me that he had threatened to commit suicide if they didn’t let him out, which later created a spectacle as the drill sergeants would berate him as “weak,” “a pussy,” and “a faggot.” The obviously gendered insults were intended just as much for us as they were for him, as they insinuated that a man is not like him, and that he was acting like a woman.

The military relies on creating and maintaining these gender roles during training, as it is an easy way to control and build the militarized masculine subject.6 This berating was prior to the repeal of the military’s policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which had made coming out as gay a crime within the military; but while gays can now openly serve, the maintenance of masculinity is still a very important aspect of training. This punishment was also a purposeful humiliation as Jared was used as an example of the hell that they could put us through, because if we thought we had it bad, they showed us that they could still make it a lot worse. He was eventually sent to an out-processing unit and kicked out of the army, but the message was clear: it may just be easier to finish training than to get kicked out like Jared was. A part of me looks back and sympathizes with him, but another part of me feels like he is the one who got off easy.

In Foucault’s Psychiatric Power lectures, the construction of the soldier as a subject can be related to his description of subject formation in the asylum, which occurs in progressive steps. The first step that Foucault identifies is the creation of an imbalance of power between the doctor and patient, whereas the doctor demonstrates force in order to make the patient conform to his will and the patient learns to “accept the doctor’s prescriptions.”7 Similarly, black phase is meant to perpetuate this imbalance of power, from the constant punishment, which broke down not only our bodies but also our will, to making an example of my battle buddy. The laws had been set as to who was the doctor, and to survive, the drill sergeant’s prescriptions must be taken. It was a constant mix of emotions that drove me the first few weeks: fear of being punished or, even worse, being recycled and having to start all over; a deep anger and hatred at the drill sergeants and what seemed like cruel punishment; the feeling of pride, whenever a task was completed, or when we overcame an obstacle; and the constant, extreme exhaustion. While the latter wouldn’t seem like an emotion, it definitely was one; perhaps it was an anti-emotion because when you become too exhausted you become completely devoid of all emotions, and you start to move on automatic pilot, which is what they wanted. Furthermore, this emptiness of emotions helps build the path toward hypermasculinity; the hypermasculine subject is supposed to be devoid of emotions as they were seen as a weakness.

A Reuse of Language

… it is equally a matter of re-teaching the subject to use the forms of language of learning and discipline, the forms he learned at school, that kind of artificial language which is not really the one he uses, but the one by which the school’s discipline and system of order are imposed … making the patient accessible to all the imperative uses of language: the use of proper names with which one greets, shows one’s respect and pays attention to others; school recital and of languages learned; language of command.

—Michel Foucault, Psychiatric Power

In our right cargo pocket, we were to have with us at all times our Soldier’s Blue Book. We were to memorize our chain of command, ranks, the seven core US Army values, how to address our superiors, etc. We were expected to be reading and reciting it whenever we had free time. At any time, day or night, we were subject to examination, and an incorrect answer would result in corporal punishment. The Soldier’s Blue Book contained everything from the definition of a soldier to the national anthem. It was the go-to guide for any questions we had for the first half of our training.

When we would run or march anywhere, we would chant military cadence as a group to ensure that we were all in step with one another. Protevi describes this as an “entrained acculturation through rhythmic chanting to weaken personal identity in order to produce a group subject.”8 This was especially effective because it made one feel more powerful as a group and not alone as an individual when chanting the different cadences, which as William McNeil calls it, “muscular bonding.”9 The loneliness that came with basic training, the feeling of alienation, seemed to disappear as the group became more proficient at running and marching while singing cadence. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, it helped us to stay in step with one another when marching in formati...