Pentagon prepares to call up reserves
By John Catalinotto
Pentagon officials leaked plans in late October to mobilize
up to 265,000 members of the Army Reserve and National Guard
for their planned aggression against Iraq. This was roughly the
same number mobilized during the 1991 assault on Iraq.
This means that about a quarter million workers, men and
women, will be jolted out of their civilian lives and moved
somewhere in the world far away from their homes and loved
ones. They may or may not be ordered into combat.
Phil Anderson, a Senior Fellow for International Security at
the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the
media, "No matter how you cut it, it will be a huge call-up. In
the worst-case scenario, if you assume a large-scale operation
in Iraq, you don't have any choice but to mobilize."
The assumption underlying this large mobilization is that
even if the invasion of Iraq takes place rapidly, U.S. forces
will occupy that country for years. The pundits have not yet
openly discussed the possibility that the reservists might well
resist taking part in such a war and occupation. But it is
generating anti-war sentiment in the U.S. population before it
has even begun.
There was a large call-up of reservists last year when the
Bush administration took advantage of the aftermath of the
Sept. 11 attacks to carry out plans to invade
Afghanistan--plans it already had in place. The number of
reservists on active duty reached 85,595 last June. It now is
at 58,133, according to Army Lt. Col. Dan Stoneking, a National
Guard and Army Reserve spokesperson.
Overall, between 125,000 and 130,000 reservists have been
deployed or rotated in the past year, he said.
The call-up for Iraq would involve at least twice as
many.
In recent years, the 870,000 members of the National Guard
and Army Reserve have been called up for deployment in the
Balkans and the Persian/Arabian Gulf.
This experience contrasts sharply with that of past
reservists and National Guard. During the U.S. war against
Vietnam, it was drafted and enlisted troops that saw most of
the combat. Rarely were reservists put at risk.
George W. Bush, faced with possibly being drafted during the
Vietnam War, used his father's influence to get a last-minute
appointment to the Texas National Guard, thus escaping combat.
He signed up for six years but only served four.
Now he is ordering a more working-class group of reservists
and National Guard to disrupt their lives--and possibly kill or
be killed.
He and the entire administration, which is so linked to the
profit-hungry oil companies and the military-industrial
complex, have been pushing hard for war at whatever cost, no
matter how isolated the U.S. is or what anguish it brings to
the Iraqi people and the working class in this country.
They arrogantly assume everyone here will just go along with
their orders--an assumption based on wishful thinking on their
part, not on reality or experience.
Reprinted from the Nov. 14, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Donate to
support pro-labor, anti-war news.
Email
this article
Printable
page