06/23/16 – Emily Yates – The Scott Horton Show

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Introducing Emily Yates.
She's a writer of songs, poetry, essays, and articles.
She is a U.S. Army veteran, was a journalist, public affairs specialist in the U.S. Army, and she is now a volunteer with Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace, which is really great.
And she's got this article at truthout.org called, Thanks for your service, but don't tell the kids about it.
We need them to enlist.
Very important piece here.
I hope you guys will help pass it around.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Emily?
I'm doing all right.
Thanks.
How are you?
I'm doing real good.
Appreciate you joining us on the show.
Appreciate you writing about this and doing the work you're doing here.
I like the article starts with a scene at a local high school.
You want to tell us about that?
Yeah.
So a group of veterans and I, two other veterans and I, and one of our civilian allies who works with Civilian Soldier Alliance, we went to a career fair at the Pittsburgh High School in California, and Pittsburgh, California, not to be confused with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
And we had actually been invited to be there, and we had a table set up to do a bit of what we call truth in recruitment.
Some people call it counter recruitment, but we prefer to call it truth in recruitment because it's more just about educating kids who are constantly being accosted, essentially.
I mean, I guess metaphorically accosted, but they're constantly being confronted with military recruiters in their high school.
And we've noticed that recruiters tend to only target lower income neighborhoods in high schools.
So we went out there to basically talk to the kids about our experience.
This was a career fair for graduating seniors and to give them the rest of the story that the recruiters who were there were not giving them.
All right, well, so a couple of things here.
I mean, first of all, it's just so obvious how important it is that the person who is giving this message to the kids, you and your associates here are veterans yourselves.
You're not just anti-war, but you have that personal experience that makes your testimony that much more powerful, of course.
And just speaking from my own experience of being a kid in government school in ninth grade during the first Gulf War, there's full consensus for it everywhere.
And if anyone wearing camouflage, if anyone who had said, hey, you know what, I was in a war, say Vietnam, and I'm telling you that this is not true, that they're trying to pull the wool over your eyes, that you can't trust them and that there's something suspicious going on here or any kind of message like that.
It would have been in my own experience, well, it was when I heard George Carlin and others talk like that back then.
It was huge because the consensus is so tight, but it's very brittle because it's based mostly on lies.
So if somebody credible like yourself comes in and says, hey, kids, you don't have to believe them.
You don't have to agree to this consensus that your dad and your coach and your principal all say is correct.
It's really not.
Then blam.
That can be just right there, a huge, you know, like a giant crack in a very thin edifice.
And then they can be free from there.
They can they can not have to be stuck, corralled into the narrow sets of decisions, choices that they're presented with.
And so I just I guess I'm just thanking you more because I'm just telling you how important this is, that that you are the one doing the work that you're doing and not just somebody like me who's never been a veteran and who doesn't have the, you know, the so-called gravitas to speak exactly to the issues that you are speaking to, which is the narrative that the recruited kids are being sold by their recruiters.
Yeah, you know, and it's interesting because, you know, out of the three veterans, the three of us veterans who were there at the school, you know, not all of us, two of us were our anti-war veterans and the third one was not.
He he was just a he was a former recruiter who had actually been a recruiter at that very high school.
Not very long ago, he just got out of the army.
And so it was it was actually really cool because we we all could agree, even though not all of our politics were aligned, that recruiters are not giving kids the whole picture when they're presenting the option of the military to them.
And the fact is that we live in a completely different climate now than we did during previous wars.
And and most kids, you know, as opposed to in Vietnam or during the Vietnam War, where there was a draft and everybody knew about the war because they were likely to be called up for it, whether or not they actually went, they were likely to be called up for it.
That, you know, we have a different a different time now where, you know, wisely our politicians decided to do away with the draft.
And now we have fewer Americans actually engaged with what it means to, you know, be involved in the quote unquote global war on terrorism.
And, you know, the all volunteer army, as they call it, really banks on a poor economy and not very many education options for kids.
There are not very many other ways for them to find money for school.
And recruiters really prey on kids who want to go to college.
And they say, well, we'll give you your free college money.
And, you know, for me, when I joined at 19, I was you know, I wanted the college money.
I also wanted the job experience.
And, you know, I had looked into the Peace Corps and they wouldn't take anyone without a bachelor's degree.
So I was like, well, what can I do?
What can I do to get work experience?
And the military seemed like a decent option.
But the thing that I didn't realize was, you know, that there was, I mean, this was right before the Iraq war started when I joined.
And I had no understanding of the political context behind going into the Middle East, behind going into Afghanistan, which is, you know, not the Middle East, contrary to popular opinion.
It's further east of the Middle East.
And, you know, I didn't really have any understanding of what was going on.
And neither do most students these days because they don't have to.
So, you know, when we go to talk to kids, it's partially about our, I mean, it's about telling them about our experience in the military, the good, the bad and the ugly, you know.
And it's also about like helping them understand that when you join, you're participating in a very political time and a political statement, you're making a political statement in the military, whether or not you think you are or want to be.
And you're basically giving your body and your mind to the government to use as it will.
And and a lot of kids don't understand that that means no matter what, no matter what is asked of you, no matter whether you agree with it or whether you feel like you're being abused by a system that you trust or that you're told to trust, you know, it's a lot more complicated than what the recruiters are selling you, which is, oh, you're going to go be a hero or you're going to fight for freedom.
You know, once once I was in for a very short amount of time, it didn't take that long to realize that we weren't fighting for anyone's freedom.
We were fighting for, you know, corporations money.
We were, you know, we were we were we were basically cannon fodder, you know, although we don't have cannons anymore, mortar fodder, fodder, let's say.
We, you know, and that kind of thing might have been better understood by students who are growing up with a draft where everyone is liable to be called up whether they want to or not.
But, you know, now that it's being pitched as like, look, it's this like wonderful option for you, we've, you know, I especially felt obligated, really felt compelled to go and just help them be like, look, but what about help to help them to look at it from another angle and to say, like, yes, joining the military, you can maybe you will get your college money, but, you know, it's not free.
You're definitely working hard for it.
You'll have too much post-traumatic stress or you'll be injured or you'll be in some other way, disabled or prevented from accessing those benefits.
You know, if you even come back from the war, you know, recruiters will really go out of their way to keep you, you know, you know, you're not going to be able to get out of the Recruiters will really go out of their way to keep from talking to students about war, about what it actually means to be in one, to be in a war.
They don't talk about, you know, they won't ever talk about improvised explosive devices.
You know, they won't talk about, you know, mortars and rockets being lobbed onto a base that, you know, where you don't even, you know, you're not even actively fighting, but you're being resisted.
And, you know, just to sort of say the narrative that you're getting about this conflict is not exactly is not complete.
And so so we can say, look, here's here's more of the narrative.
You know, we have our former recruiter coming in, bringing his whole bag of meds.
He's got like a sack full of medications that he takes now because this is how he can cope.
You know, and I can come in and say, look, if, you know, many women and men in the military get sexually assaulted while you're in, this happened to me.
You know, this happened to plenty of people I know.
And the chain of command isn't there for you.
And, you know, it's kind of breaking the myth that it's that you go into some sort of family or camaraderie.
Like, yeah, you bond with the people you serve with, but it's because misery loves company.
It's not because you're all part of like some great noble effort to bring freedom and democracy to the world.
Yeah.
Well, and that's, of course, what they always try to reduce it to is never even mind what country you're in.
Never mind.
Let the grownups worry about what the policy is and whether whether you should be here or not.
But the four or five or 10 of you are going out on a mission.
You better take care of each other.
And then that's a very narrow frame of reference.
And of course, everybody does want to help protect each other and bring each other home safe and all that kind of thing every night.
And so accomplish the mission, accomplish the mission.
But as Robert Gates would say, it's looking at war through a soda straw with no real context as to actually who you're killing or why.
Exactly.
And and it's really I feel like our desire as as humans to take care of one another and our desire as Americans to, you know, serve our country in some way is really exploited in that way, because it's you know, it's really saying like, hey, kids, you're young and you have all of these great ideals and great intentions.
And why don't we put you in a position where you feel like you're living up to those?
You want to feel like you're living up to those.
But in reality, you're not.
You're not even giving getting the chance to take care of yourself and you're not getting the chance to take care of your battle buddies because, you know, the first person in the military who stands up and says, I don't believe in this and I think that I would be doing my buddies a bigger favor by dissenting and saying, I don't agree with what we're being asked to do.
You know, they're vilified and forced to, you know, either have to apply for conscientious objector status, which is really difficult to acquire, or flee, which then gets you labeled a coward or a traitor because this is the indoctrination that you go through in the military.
You know, it's rather we're having our brains twisted to think that we're doing our buddies a favor by staying in the war and fighting and accomplishing the quote unquote mission.
But nobody really knows what the mission is.
Nobody really knows how it's going to be accomplished.
It's really just, you know, when I it didn't take me long during my first deployment in Iraq to realize like we're basically here, even though the Iraqis don't want us here.
We're coming here and then essentially just defending ourselves.
Like we're not making any real moves toward long term stability in this country.
We're just basically taking stopgap measures, you know, to keep like we're going there and then trying to keep them from killing us.
And it's not the Iraqis in general who are just trying to kill Americans because they hate Americans.
It's about people who want to be self-determining, who are basically being told that they can't self-determine because what they want isn't the same as what the U.S. wants.
And so then soldiers with all these good intentions who really want to, in some way, I think many most want to see Iraqis and Afghans liberated and governing themselves.
We're brought into this situation where we're kind of told like, well, they can't do this.
We have to do it for them.
And then it demeans them and it dehumanizes them and devalues their own ability to decide what they need in their country and in their own villages.
And what we're doing is we're creating this incorrect narrative around Iraq saying that, well, we had to get Saddam out and they should be grateful for us.
And they were so grateful for us for getting Saddam out.
And now we've helped create this democracy for them, which they're ungrateful and they're incapable of sustaining.
And meanwhile, leaving out the whole part of the narrative that there was no sectarian conflict of the extremes that we see today when Saddam was in power because he was a secular ruler and he was basically, he was ruling the people not based on their religious beliefs and not dividing them by that, but basically like, are you in the Ba'ath party or are you not?
And so even though it was an oppressive regime, they still had their basic needs met as long as they didn't speak up and make trouble.
Whereas now, Iraq, they don't even have electricity most of the time.
They don't have clean water or sewage or safe schools.
ISIS came into being when we removed the infrastructure and power center from Iraq and essentially made it so that extremists could come in and so that ISIS could come to power.
And so, but the thing is that most high school students, most soldiers, well, even once you're in, we don't have the understanding of the political background of what's been going on in the Middle East.
We don't know what the context is for invasion.
We don't know all of the reasons why there's so much conflict going on.
Who drew the borders of Iraq?
Why is it that Sunni and Shia and Kurds are all under this same governance?
Why don't they all come back?
The point being about the soldiers that they trust the so-called democracy to work all these things out and to only use them in violent battle when it's absolutely necessary.
And they just trust that that's how it is.
It's a self-correcting system.
They wouldn't send us to war if they didn't need to send us to war.
And so, sure, I'm willing to do my part.
And so, again, back to looking at all of this through the eyes of a 17-year-old and what they're being told that like, hey, look, you're poor, you're brown, you're not going to be able to go to college unless you come and work for us first.
And don't worry, we'll make sure that you don't have to serve in a combat role.
That's only for the other suckers, not you.
And all kinds of, you know, as you said, a very narrow set of of, you know, sales pitches that they're given that exclude, of course, as you're saying, all of this context and background about what war they're even fighting in.
And, you know, the 17-year-old may not even think that, well, geez, maybe I need to stop and figure out whether this war is even worth fighting or not.
That's sort of already decided by others.
You know, if the if if coach and minister and principal and recruiter all seem to think it's legit, I guess it is, unless there's an anti recruiter like you showing up and explaining why it's not true.
So I'm really interested, I guess, in what you have found is the most effective way to get through to these kids, right?
Because you have a very limited amount of time to say what is it you say?
Don't trust that guy.
He's or what?
No, you know, I don't even try to do that.
I don't try to vilify recruiters as much as possible, as much as say, look, look, they have a quota to meet.
I say, look, look at them as used car salesmen.
You know, they're selling something to you.
And and I and I tell them about my own personal experience, you know, because I joined in a desire to make something better of myself.
And I didn't really I wasn't really going in under the pretense that I was doing something noble, but I did feel like I was doing something worthwhile.
And and, you know, then came to understand that that wasn't really the case.
And I also came to understand that, you know, the camaraderie that is, you know, that's glorified by these recruiters saying you'll be a part of something bigger and you'll be you'll be a part of a team and doing all this stuff and you'll get all these benefits.
It's like I try to help them unpack all of those claims and say, all right, but what are they really saying?
Because as soon as you go into the military, you're just a number.
You know, I try to say, like, look, why do you think we all wear the same thing?
The uniforms are the same so that they don't need to know your name.
Your name isn't important.
Who you are isn't important.
And and what you're doing only matters as as much as as much as as much as you really believe it.
And the thing is that they're so hammered by the media and this uber patriotic culture that they're brought up in, especially in these low income schools, that they they don't think even for a minute that their government could necessarily be trying to screw them over or take advantage of them.
And so we try to say, look, like these are the things that you're being promised.
But what they're not saying is what's going to be expected of you.
And, you know, you're never told that your initial contract is actually no matter how many years you sign up for for your initial active duty contract, you're still obligated for eight years, no matter no matter how many years you sign up for.
Because, you know, after your initial contract is is over, your initial term of service is over.
If it's like three to five years, you can still be called back or kept in up to eight years.
And, you know, no matter what your physical, psychological, you know, political state of being is, you know, whether you're injured or abused or what, like, it doesn't matter.
And and I think that, you know, unfortunately, kids in lower income areas are often not given the they're not made to feel like they matter as individuals a lot of the time anyway.
So it's a really it's not as big of a leap to go from being a number at your school to being a number in the military.
But we're basically what I go in to do is just try to help kids remember that they're valuable as people, you know, they don't and they have a lot that they're bringing to life and they, you know, they have their own minds that they can use.
And even though this country has not set them up for success as far as giving them quality education and giving them quality jobs to go into after their after high school, if they don't want to go to college or, you know, even giving them affordable college tuition, you know, like we had 60 years ago when community colleges or when public universities were, you know, practically free, you know, where I'm trying to say to them, look, you have options.
These these recruiters want you to think that you don't have options, but you do.
You just you have to value yourself enough to go looking for them.
And we have to understand that if we want to create better options for the kids, for the next generation of leadership in this country, you know, we have to we have to let them know that that, you know, we're helping to fight for it, but they need to be fighting for it, too.
They need to be demanding it and they need to be saying, hey, why is it that my best option for school money is to go into the military?
Is that is that right?
Is that good?
Like, is it even true at all?
Yeah, you can get financial aid from a lot of places besides a damned army, for crying out loud.
Well, yeah.
And, you know, it's interesting, though, because, you know, for the middle class, which, you know, like the middle class is still targeted, lower income, you know, class is targeted.
But even middle middle class is targeted because because we're we're still all being fed the rhetoric, the patriotic rhetoric we saw, you know, when you go to your sports games, you sing the national anthem like like professional sports and patriotism are wrapped up all in one little convenient package.
Like if you like baseball, then you love America.
You know, if you love America, then you love militarism and empire and whatever war you're in, whatever your current politicians might be up to at any given time.
Right.
Exactly.
Like, put your hand on your heart and and sing about rockets and bombs bursting in air and don't look around to the fact that, hey, haven't we kind of evolved past that as humans?
Like, don't we have the Internet?
We have communication.
We have we have the ability to understand so much about one another.
But yet we're still being, you know, I wonder about that.
Let me tell you something, Emily, when the first Gulf War happened, the only antiwar person that I knew of.
I mean, my parents were like, man, they weren't really for it.
The only person I knew who was really against it was a hippie girl singing Give Peace a chance at school.
She's the only one I didn't even know.
And I live in Austin, Texas.
There were gigantic protests out in front of the Capitol.
And I watched local news.
I was very interested in the war.
And I didn't even know that anybody was actually organized to try to oppose it and stop it.
I never even heard of such a thing until much later.
And yet that was back in the very early 1990s before the Internet.
And I wonder whether kids now, I mean, and hell, I even knew enough to know better than to join the army by the time I was 17, 18.
But it seems like kids now would have it's so easy to just go to antiwar dot com and say, wait, they want me to fly as Al-Qaeda's air force in Syria or whatever insane policy it is that they're doing right now.
It seems like any even kid could talk themselves right out of that job during this era.
Right.
Well, you think.
Right.
But I mean, a lot of the kids who are being targeted by recruiters are kids who, you know, they're they're really just trying to survive in life, you know, like they're trying to they really don't know their school, like get there.
They're trying to get their get their academics done.
And they're trying to, you know, participate in essentially like getting their getting their job, getting their their, you know, lives set up to have their nine to five and have their house and their family and all that.
That's that's kind of what they're trying to do.
And they don't they're not thinking about politics.
They're not being educated about politics.
And not only that, but they're being inundated with information that is, you know, the Internet's both a blessing and a curse.
Right.
It's like you can find what you can find justification for any belief that you already have on the Internet.
And, you know, and if you're being fed a sort of toe the line mentality, then you're not going to necessarily take the initiative to go and look and see like any, you know, conflicting argument against that unless you're really being a critical thinker, which, as we know, public schools are not teaching kids to be critical thinkers or teaching kids to take tests and to not think critically as much as possible.
So what we're trying to do with this truth in recruitment work is to give them a little nudge toward critical thinking.
And many of them already are, you know, they you know, maybe they have family who are in the military, they have brothers or cousins who are coming home from the war and they're really angry or broken or upset or drinking all the time or things like that.
And and they're starting to you know, they're starting to have a little bit of an inkling that maybe what they're what they're being fed isn't right, but they haven't really been nurtured in the ability to to deconstruct all of the narratives that they're given.
So they're they're, you know, kind of confused.
And, you know, the kids that we did that we talked to at Pittsburgh High School before the women from the Chamber of Commerce asked us to leave, the kids were all really, really appreciative of the information that we were bringing to them.
And we had these pamphlets about questions to ask your recruiter, basically like this is what they're going to tell you and this is what you need to ask them to get them to clarify, to get them to be honest, to be have to be honest with you about the claims that they're making.
And I'm sorry, you know, so it's really just a nudge toward critical thinking.
And the the more we can encourage kids to think for themselves and encourage them to look around and use the resources available to find out about the wars, find out what to even realize that we've been at war for 15 years in this country, you know, that's all we can really do.
We can't tell them, you know, don't join the military because, you know, you and I both know teenagers, they'll do what they want to do, you know, but all we can we can do is help them get a little bit more information and start their wheels already, which are turning, you know, keep those keep those wheels turning so that they don't end up having to just be cogs in a military machine that is that's going to take advantage of them and, you know, chew them up and spit them out and not really tell them why.
All right, so that is Emily Yates.
She is a former PR flack for the Army, but now is a free individual and writer.
This one is at Truthout.
Thanks for your service, but don't tell the kids about it.
We need them to enlist.
She is associated with Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace.
Thanks very much for your time, Emily.
Appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.
All right, y'all, Scott Horton dot org for the archive, sign up for the podcast feed there.
Help support at Scott Horton dot org slash donate and follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
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