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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Why Does the Military Treat Soldiers Like Children?

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Ted Rall

Why Doesn’t the Pentagon Let Its Employees Be All They Can Be?

The U.S. military isn’t supposed to allow child soldiers to enlist (though reality can differ). So why does it treat recruits like children?

Other than religious avocations, it’s impossible to think of another major employer that asks as much of prospective workers as the Pentagon, yet offers so little. Salaries are lower than for comparable private-sector jobs. The skills one acquires don’t translate easily to other fields. The risks couldn’t be higher. But most baffling, for a force supposedly dedicated to defending our freedom, is that they get little freedom of their own.

You’ve heard the drill sergeant line in movie boot-camp scenes: “You are now the property of the United States of America.” That’s true. Once signed up, soldiers and sailors can be assigned anywhere, to any job, completely at their commanders’ discretion. Sometimes they take your skills, desires or ambitions into consideration. Not always.

Active duty, recruiters tell young men and women, lasts two to five years — after which they’re supposed to wind up in the reserves, free to go home unless there’s a national emergency. But the President can invoke the “stop-loss” provision, which means you can get stuck as long as eight.

It’s time for the military to catch up to the modern workplace.

American workers are getting more of a raw deal in many ways: lower wages and benefits, companies that ignore the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, no more pensions. Yet the fraying of the postwar labor-management social contract has also provided employees with greater flexibility. You may have to work three crappy jobs to make ends meet, but crappy jobs are easy to replace. You can move to another city and probably find three crappy jobs there. You certainly don’t have to worry about one of your crappy employers shipping you off to Afghanistan, much less coming home in a coffin.

The military’s insistence on treating its workers like property to be disposed of at whim is obsolete, making it increasingly difficult — even in a high-unemployment economy — to compete for recruits.

One example making recent headlines is the Air Force’s increasingly severe shortfall of fighter pilots. A new signing bonus totaling nearly a quarter million bucks (albeit spread over nine years), isn’t enough to compensate for starting salaries ($34,500 to $97,400) — not when the airlines are paying a median salary of $103,210 to commercial jet pilots. Nor are benefits like lower taxes and on-base housing.

“The military is difficult on the family with all the moving around,” Rob Streble, a former Top Gun and an official of the union that represents US Airways pilots, told The Los Angeles Times. “I added more stability by joining the airline.”

“People have no idea how hard it is when you have to move your family all the time,” admits John Wigle, a former F-15 pilot who is now a program analyst in the USAF’s operations, plans and requirements directorate.

Freedom was a determining factor for me.

The recruiter manning the desk at the Army Recruiting Office in Kettering, Ohio was way into me when I walked through the door at age 18. I had what they’re looking for: I was human, sentient, and ambulatory. I was also a catch: a straight-A engineering student who’d gone to an Ivy League school on full scholarship. When Reagan slashed financial aid for me and millions of other college students, I considered other options.

I aced the Army aptitude test. This didn’t surprise me, considering the lugs sitting in the test center next to me. Anyway, I test great. I drew the attention of a big über recruiter for the entire Midwest who wouldn’t stop calling. He made a lot of promises. We’ll fast-track you for officer! When you get out, we’ll pay your college tuition! What’s that, you want to draw cartoons for Stars and Stripes, just like Bill Mauldin during World War II? Sure, why not?

As a child of divorce, I’d learned to get promises in writing. Which, of course, military recruiters can’t and won’t do. (At the time, the Army paid “up to” $5,000 a year for college. Columbia was $13,000.) Sure, despite Reagan’s efforts, we weren’t at war. So getting killed was unlikely. But they could send me anywhere in the world, assign me to any job they wanted (from a military website today: “The Military will make every effort to match your interests and aptitudes with its needs. However, job assignments are ultimately made based on Service needs, as well as individual skills and test scores”), and the bottom line was, there’d be nothing I could do but salute and say yessir. That was the end of my flirtation with a military career. I wanted the basic freedom to choose where I lived and what I did for work.

I’m not alone. 89% of young Americans say they’d never consider a military career.

It will be a bummer for military officers, by temperament the biggest control freaks ever, but sooner or later they’re going to have to face reality: slavery is over. If you want to find quality sailors and soldiers, you have to treat them like adults. Let recruits choose their positions and where they live. Act like they’re workers. Which they are. For example, why can’t soldiers put in for vacation as opposed to applying for leave? If their chosen job is no longer needed, fine — they should be free to go. Yes, even during wartime — at least during the optional wars of choice the United States has fought since 1945.

During an invasion or serious attack against the U.S. by another nation, obviously, all bets are off. But don’t worry — that hasn’t happened since 1812.

(Ted Rall’s website is tedrall.com. His book “After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back As Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan” will be released in 2014 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.)

COPYRIGHT 2013 TED RALL

The Pulitzer Prize Makes Journalists Miserable

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Ted Rall

It’s a beautiful day in New York, and I presume in a lot of other places across America. But for thousands of journalists, it is a miserable time. We are on tenterhooks awaiting tomorrow’s announcement by Columbia University regarding who won this year’s Pulitzer prizes.

You might think of the Pulitzer Prize is an honor, a great reward for a job well done, the epitome of a journalist’s career. And of course, that’s what our moms and dads think. In reality, the Pulitzer Prize exists to make us all miserable.

The truth is, journalism would be much better off if the Pulitzer and all prizes simply ceased to exist. The worst aspect about it is the fact that it transforms everybody except one – or three, if you include the finalists – practitioner of a given category into a loser. It’s really no different than the high school homecoming dance; that guy is handsome, that girl is beautiful, and obviously you are not. Or anyway, you’re not as handsome or beautiful. And worst of all, all of your classmates have validated that decision by voting for it.

In any given category, whether it’s biography or criticism or editorial cartooning, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of people creating brilliant work every single day. But only one will win the Pulitzer Prize in each category. It’s shitty.

And that’s assuming that there is a way to judge the handsomest or prettiest homecoming king or queen in any kind of objective way. Often the people on the committee to elect these things choose their friends. And even if they can avoid that, parochial tastes always come into it.

The Pulitzer Prize and other awards in journalism and in other fields, of course, are no different. You know that. Over the years, as an editorial cartoonist, I have spoken to many people who have been on the committee that judges the editorial cartooning category. The small group of editors, cartoonists, and academics who are tasked with picking the three finalists that are then sent up to the main committee, which can then decide which of the finalists will get a prize, to not award in that category at all, or, as in the year that I was a finalist, pick someone else entirely, someone who was not one of the finalists.

I’ve heard some amazing stories. One year, when I filed comics journalism daily by satellite phone from Afghanistan, one of the members of the committee dismissed my entry because it was vertical. Editorial cartoons, apparently, are supposed to be horizontal. Another year, the year that I was a finalist, the reason that the main committee decided to snub me personally – and I did hear that it was personal – was because I didn’t draw in the same exact drawing style as most other editorial cartoonists. I have heard stories of drinking buddies being awarded Pulitzer prizes, plagiarists getting Pulitzer prizes after their plagiarism was known, and worst of all, that the methodology of selection almost guarantees middlebrow results. You’d expect to see a “12 angry men”-throwdown from time to time over who should win these things, but that’s not at all how it is. In fact, everybody’s eager to kick off to the free open bar at the end of the day, and no one wants to spoil the mood by getting into a fight over who should have won their category. So instead, everyone’s really collegial. The results tend to be three people that everyone can agree upon, not the best of the best. And you can really see the results. If you look at the list of Pulitzer winners in any given category over the years, you’ll certainly see some deserving names, some of the top practitioners in the field, but you also see a lot of people whose work is mediocre, and some that are downright embarrassing. I personally think of the American editorial cartoonists who won during World War II for editorial cartoons that were – yes, really – sympathetic to Hitler and the Nazis. What the hell were these guys thinking?

But even if it were possible to objectively decide who does the best novel or play or poetry of the year – and obviously it isn’t – there’s something incredibly depressing about an event that stands to disappoint so many people year after year after year. The results matter, of course, because the public and employers care about such things, and it’s possible to use an award or prize is a way to promote your career. I’ve won more than my fair share of awards, and they have certainly helped me. But the truth is that every cartoonist and every other creative person writes or draws their own Pulitzer prize every single day, when they start out with a blank piece of paper and then decide what goes on it. We are all going to be judged by our body of work. There are brilliant cartoonists and other creators who never received prizes; and then there’s of course the Nazi guy.

So to any journalists or anyone else fretting over tomorrow’s announcements at 3 PM Eastern time tomorrow, try to remember a few things. First, you’re probably not going to win. Second, if you do win, you probably don’t deserve it.

Third, there is something seriously wrong with the kind of good fortune that makes all of your best friends and colleagues miserable. So to you winners out there tomorrow, send your favorite losers a bottle of champagne. They deserve it more than you. They certainly need it more.

AL JAZEERA COLUMN: Libya: The triumphalism of the US media

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Ted Rall

Obama and the US media are taking credit for Gaddafi’s downfall, but it was the Libyan fighters who won the war.

The fall of Moammar Gaddafi was a Libyan story first and foremost. Libyans fought, killed and died to end the Colonel’s 42-year reign.

No doubt, the U.S. and its NATO proxies tipped the military balance in favor of the Benghazi-based rebels. It’s hard for any government to defend itself when denied the use of its own airspace as enemy missiles and bombs blast away its infrastructure over the course of more than 20,000 sorties.

Still, it was Libyans who took the biggest risks and paid the highest price. They deserve the credit. From a foreign policy standpoint, it behooves the West to give it to them. Consider a parallel, the fall 2001 bombing campaign against the Taliban. With fewer than a thousand Special Forces troops on the ground in Afghanistan to bribe tribal leaders and guide bombs to their targets, the U.S. military and CIA relied exclusively on air power to allow the Northern Alliance to advance. The premature announcement that major combat operations had ceased, followed by the installation of Hamid Karzai as de facto president—a man widely seen as a U.S. figurehead—set the stage for what would eventually become America’s longest war.

As did the triumphalism of the U.S. media, who treated the “defeat” (more like the dispersing) of the Taliban as Bush’s victory. The Northern Alliance was a mere afterthought, condescended to at every turn by the punditocracy. To paraphrase Bush’s defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. went to war with the ally it had, not the one it would have liked to have had. America’s attitude toward Karzai and his government reflected that in many ways: snipes and insults, including the suggestion that the Afghan leader was mentally ill and ought to be replaced, as well as years of funding levels too low to meet payroll and other basic needs, thus limiting its power to metro Kabul and a few other major cities. In retrospect it would have been smarter for the U.S. to have graciously credited (and funded) the Northern Alliance with its defeat over the Taliban, content to remain the power behind the throne.

Despite this experience in Afghanistan “victory” in Libya has prompted a renewal of triumphalism in the U.S. media.

Like a slightly drunken crowd at a football match giddily shouting “U-S-A,” editors and producers keep thumping their chests long after it stops being attractive.

When Obama announced the anti-Gaddafi bombing campaign in March, Stephen Walt issued a relatively safe pair of predictions. “If Gaddafi is soon ousted and the rebel forces can establish a reasonably stable order there, then this operation will be judged a success and it will be high-fives all around,” Walt wrote in Foreign Policy. “If a prolonged stalemate occurs, if civilian casualties soar, if the coalition splinters, or if a post-Gaddafi Libya proves to be unstable, violent, or a breeding ground for extremists…his decision will be judged a mistake.”

It’s only been a few days since the fall of Tripoli, but high-fives and victory dances abound.

“Rebel Victory in Libya a Vindication for Obama,” screamed the headline in U.S. News & World Report.

Read the full article at Al Jazeera English.

The Year of Loving Dangerously

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Ted Rall

This autobiographical graphic novel is a collaboration between me (my story, my writing) and Bluesman cartoonist Pablo G. Callejo. Travel with me to 1984, the year I lost everything. The place is New York City. In the space of a few months, I got expelled from Columbia University, fired from my job, arrested for drugs that weren’t even mine, dumped by the girl I thought was The One, and evicted. I hit the streets with $8 and the clothes on my back.

Desperate and prepared to succumb to homelessness, I invested a third of my worldly savings on pizza. There I met a girl who took me home for the night…and so began my “Year of Loving Dangerously.”

Year, currently in development to become a feature film, is a personal account about the commodification of sex and the ends to which anyone will go to survive, seen through the lens of a cruel Reaganism where the safety net is all but gone. As life becomes even tougher for America’s has-nots — most of whom don’t have my advantages as a white, Ivy-educated male — Year is a metaphor for the class war between the 1% and the 99%.

“Ted Rall is fearless. In The Year of Loving Dangerously, he turns his formidable journalistic skills on a very rich subject—himself. The memoir is not just a revealing and entertaining account of Rall’s misspent youth, but a gritty, alternative take on Manhattan in the boom years of the 1980s.”
—Alison Bechdel, “Fun Home”

Graphic Memoir, 2009
NBM Hardback, 6″x9″, 128 pp., Price $18.95

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