The “We Are Not Your Soldiers” tour will reach into high school classrooms with the participation of veterans of the US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and activists from World Can’t Wait.
Barack Obama says he will expand the US military by 92,000. Where will these troops come from? The military recruiters have a huge budget to recruit youth who are in high school now. They roam the hallways and lunch-rooms, call students at home, and set up at malls where kids hang out
The military cannot fight expand the “war on terror” in Afghanistan without this fresh cannon fodder. Military recruiters now have almost unlimited access to reach high school students because the “No Child Left Behind” law ties funding for schools to whether recruiters can get to students.
The tour will bring students the desperately missing truth of what the “war on terror” is, no matter who is president. The military is already selling the idea that Obama will end the war in Iraq, so people who join now won’t be sent to war at all. This is a lie! Many people don’t know that Obama has plans to expand the unjust war on the people of Afghanistan, and also to attack Pakistan, and perhaps, Iran.
The tour will explain, through the words of veterans themselves, how the U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed a million people; displaced more than four million, and destroyed the infrastructure of both countries
When recruiters come into their school, students need to know exactly what they are being recruited for. Not freedom, not democracy and not better “career options.” Most people dying in Iraq are civilians, not combatants. The US has tens of thousands detained in their own countries. Women in the US military report widespread sexual assault by their own peers.
Speakers on the tour will give students reasons not to go into the military, and help organize collective resistance recruiters” lies. We think we can help create a situation where students and teachers are stepping out of their silent hatred for recruiters, and spreading visible mass resistance to joining this military as a part of stopping this war of terror for empire.
Classroom presentations will include:
- a short presentation by a World Can’t Wait youth organizer and either an Iraq/Afghanistan war veteran or a military family member;
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- an open discussion;
- a 10-minute video clip of testimony by Iraq veterans from the March 2008 Winter Soldier hearings about what they witnessed and perpetrated and footage of high school students protesting military recruiters.
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a short survey that students will take to give us all a sense of what they think.
Tell high school and community college students and teachers about the tour.
Contact: youth_students@worldcantwait.org 347 385 2195
Speakers for the Tour:
Iraq Veteran Phil Aliff Phil served in the US Army from 2004-2008 as a corporal with the 10th Mountain Division. After doing a tour in Iraq from 2005-2006, Aliff started the first active duty chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War at Fort Drum. He spoke at Winter Soldier, a national event where Iraq Vets testified to the war crimes they participated in and witnessed in Iraq & Afghanistan. Phil was a part of leading protests against the war and the whole Bush program on college campuses, on the streets and outside the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Iraq Veteran Matthis Chiroux served in the US army until 2002-2007, with a short tour in Afghanistan. After he was honorably discharged, he was ordered to deploy to Iraq in the spring of 2008. He refused, and instead challenged members of the Out of Iraq Caucus in Congress to follow through on their contention that the occupation of Iraq is illegal, and support his stand. 13 did. The US military is currently attempting to revoke his honorable discharge for refusing to fight in Iraq. He organized an antiwar veteran’s protest at the last presidential
debate in October 2008, and was arrested along with 14 others. He is currently fighting the charges.
Emma K aplan : Youth & Student Coordinator of World Can’t Wait. She has organized protests against the Bush doctrine of torture, military recruiting centers, and against police brutality. She speaks to youth at concerts, in classrooms and on campus, calling on this generation to take responsibility for the crimes their government is committing in their names. Recently she participated in the protests with Port Military Resistance, where people formed human blockades to prevent the Stryker brigades from being sent to Iraq.
“We Are Not Your Soldiers” Tour
by Emma Kaplan
The military itself reportedly has a new recruiting approach: “Obama will get the US out of Iraq.”
However, many people don’t know that Obama is calling for increasing US military forces by 92,000 more troops, in addition to replacing those who leave, in pursuit of the endless “war on terror.”
We have seen from Abu Ghraib to Haditha that the way the U.S. military fights this war spreads tremendous civilian death and suffering. This will spread in Afghanistan when Obama sends the surge of US troops he promises, and into Pakistan and any other country the U.S. pre-emptively invades under the Bush doctrine.
Obama has been an enthusiastic supporter of the No Child Left Behind Act, which gives the U.S. military unlimited access to high school students” contact information, using bribery and lies. The 92,000 new recruits he’s seeking to kill and die for US empire are mostly in high school right now.
When asked in one presidential debate, “Will you vigorously enforce a statute which says colleges must allow military recruiters on campus and provide ROTC programs?” Obama said “yes.”
It becomes clear that if we want the crimes of our government to stop, we must bring into being a movement of resistance against them.
The truth behind the horrific crimes youth are being recruited to carry out is largely hidden and unchallenged.
Not anymore! World Can’t Wait is launching a national tour with Iraq veterans, speaking about their experience of fighting in the U.S. military. What sort of things are you forced to do when you join up? What is happening to the veterans who come back with horrific injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder, brain injury, and emotional pain?
The tour will also feature a World Can’t Wait youth organizer, with experience in advocating the need for a whole generation to take responsibility for the crimes their government has committed through mass independent political resistance, and refusal to let their peers be taken into the military.
We will help students challenge recruiters with the truth about the war. This war needs to stop now! There is no waiting to see what Obama will or won’t do.
Building a movement against military recruiting could be the key to stopping this war. We have already seen many positive responses from both teachers and students about the need for people to speak the truth. There is a huge ability for this to go viral, but this depends on us.
Will you become involved and spread this?
How to do it:
Get in touch with progressive teachers using the materials on this page. Ask them to bring this tour into their class rooms.
Send an email to your friends and former teachers.
Contact schools that have had anti-recruiting or anti-war actions.
Call teachers you have met in the past and use the content of the flier
Spread it on your personal myspace, and facebook.
If you are a teacher, bring this in and spread it to other teachers.
After the tour comes to your classroom or school:
– Help organize to get the tour into other schools through getting in contact with teachers, fundraising and networking.
-Write to World Can’t Wait about your thoughts on the tour and personal letters prompting other people to join in.
– Anytime recruiters come to campus, plan an action. Challenge the recruiters when they come to your class room.
Help Launch The Not Your Soldiers Tour–Donate Today
Funds are needed! We need $4,000 in funds to make this tour a reality!
I’ve been to some rotten places in the world. Luckily, I haven’t had to shoot anyone. I have contributed to operations that either put evil men into the ground or resulted in the capture of someone evil who was later put on trial by his countrymen.
When we give the Iraqis photographs of his fingerprints on the remains of an IED that killed a bunch of women and children in a market, his countrymen aren’t too thrilled by that. Right now, we’re fighting religious extremism, the drug trade, and simple hatred.
When a terrorist organization is offering ten American dollars for someone to go dig a hole and put something in the ground for them, that’s just wrong. And these twisted men who say America is evil because we allow people to live in their own way because that’s how they want to live. They hate America because we let women walk around unattended (as in without a male escort) and wear whatever they want (even if there’s almost nothing there), and that we actually have an industrialized, modern economy that doesn’t keep the entire population in poverty save the elite ruling class.
And, the majority of the Heroin that makes its way into Europe and America comes from Afghan poppy fields. I am totally against drugs, especially a drug like heroin that is so powerfully addictive. A drug that regularly ruins and kills people whether by overdose or by gang violence like what’s going on in Mexico right now as the cartels are fighting over the lucrative cocaine trade routes into the USA from Colombia. More than 60,000 people have died because of the drug trade in Mexico alone in the last two years. Now try to count all the other countries that are either suppliers of on the supply routes. You’ll get into the millions in this decade alone, I’m sure.
And, I defy you to corroborate the estimates of “one million” Iraqi civilians that have been killed in the violence. And, out of all those dead civilians, how many of them were killed by Americans? Not many, I promise you. The vast majority of killing in Iraq has been perpetrated by the insurgents themselves, I guarantee it. During the bad years, we would find fifty or more dead men and women across Baghdad every morning. I know that there weren’t any infantrymen or snipers of Special-Ops types out there when these people died, so who was it? If it wasn’t us Americans, then: who?
[quote name=\”Ryan Turner\”][quote name=\”Marcus09\”]Ryan, you crack me up about joining the military and still trodding upon the means by which many of the people you will be working beside even knew that the military was an opportunity for them. If you think you aren\’t going to be at risk in any military service you are lying to yourself. Recruiters walk through schools and other public locations because a vast majority of the public only knows what the military does through a distant friend or the bad stuff they saw on CNN or on random websites with zero firsthand knowledge (*cough* This one included. *cough*). Noone wants to \”sucker\” you into joining the military, the last thing these guys want is to be working along some guy who doesn\’t want to be there. Do your research, look at the risk versus reward and if it is not for you, politely tell them no thanks and get back to your job at Starbucks and $60,000 in student loans.
Firing your anger off at military recruiters to me seems silly, they are only there to provide information, if you have a problem with the political situation you need to start writing to your congressperson. Thinking differently is great, I applaud it, but instantly evaporating the United States Military is not going to make this earth into a warm and fuzzy utopia.[/quote]
dear marcus…im not trodding on thema nd i dont dissagree with what they do its only that they keep forcing it upon us with all these questioneer sheets that they make us fill out that im sick and tired of having to do[/quote]
[quote name=\”Ryan Turner\”][quote name=\”Marcus09\”]Ryan, you crack me up about joining the military and still trodding upon the means by which many of the people you will be working beside even knew that the military was an opportunity for them. If you think you aren\’t going to be at risk in any military service you are lying to yourself. Recruiters walk through schools and other public locations because a vast majority of the public only knows what the military does through a distant friend or the bad stuff they saw on CNN or on random websites with zero firsthand knowledge (*cough* This one included. *cough*). Noone wants to \”sucker\” you into joining the military, the last thing these guys want is to be working along some guy who doesn\’t want to be there. Do your research, look at the risk versus reward and if it is not for you, politely tell them no thanks and get back to your job at Starbucks and $60,000 in student loans.
Firing your anger off at military recruiters to me seems silly, they are only there to provide information, if you have a problem with the political situation you need to start writing to your congressperson. Thinking differently is great, I applaud it, but instantly evaporating the United States Military is not going to make this earth into a warm and fuzzy utopia.[/quote]
dear marcus…im not trodding on thema nd i dont dissagree with what they do its only that they keep forcing it upon us with all these questioneer sheets that they make us fill out that im sick and tired of having to do[/quote]
you are getting upset over some little pieces of paper you have to fill out? are you serious?! they get told to do something and they do it, even though they know they might die doing it. And you get sick of filling out papers?? i can\’t believe it. how conceited and stuck up are you? just leave this country and go to one that doesn\’t have paper maybe that will make you feel better.
If you want to protest against your own country, GET OUT!!! Nobody is making you stay here, or enlist in the service. the men and women who are enlisting re not kids they are 18+. Which means you are considered an adult. They choose to join and fight for their country and for the people who did it for them. You do not have to support the war but support the men and women who are fighting for you. Do not say crap about them and think you know what you’re talking about if you have never been to Iraq or Afghanistan. I bet that if one of you stuck up little protesters were to be dropped off in the middle of Iraq or Afghanistan you would shit your pants and die. These soldiers fight and die for your sorry asses and it makes me sick knowing there are people in their own country that wish they were dead. WELL FUCK YOU!!!
Do you people realize without a Military the country will fall to others. Others that may not give you the freedom to organize protests and run little websites such as this one. The US Military protects the rights that you value. Have you people thought that far ahead? If you don’t like the US, you have the right to leave…so leave! Move to a country that does not have a military. Go annoy them and leave the rest of us in peace.
Ok, I understand this site now, it would seem that your site is a bit one sided. All of you that started this little rant about our military being in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places will listen and post all this propaganda about being anti-war this and preach freedom of speech that. It would seem that your organization does not practice what it preaches. If you can’t stand the critisism’s and delete peoples opinions and posts and subvert peoples “freedom of Speach” then what does that make you? Thank you for not posting my comments, it proves my point that this organization is nothing more than a joke and gives no credibility to your so called cause. Speaking of causes, you all would do better singling in on one item instead of trying to “kitchen Sink” the issue with every little detail that you think you know or have heard about. It seems to me that you are missing alot of facts to base opinions on. You Iraq and Afghanistan veterans that subscribe to this should be ashamed of yourselves. Its ok we really didnt need your help anyway and our military is most likely better off without you. The creators of this site should be aware that your abuse of our school systems to push your propaganda should be a criminal offense. I hope none of your members approach my children at school, and the very first teacher that preaches this anti-american garbage to my children in any classroom will had better be prepared to lose thier job.
I always wonder why websites like this always ask for donations shortly after they ask you to believe in what they are saying. I\’ll give you $50 to be quiet for a while and learn that you should protest the source of things (Washington) not the people doing what they are told.
I am a military recruiter and I should let you know first off all you facts are wrong and you are not looking really professional. You should also know we are tracking this really sad looking protest. See you there.
I hate war, but I hate people who judge me because I’ve been to war more. Possibly more than the terrorist that took part in killing some of my friends.
I am a very honest father of 2. Active duty Army soldier who has been to Iraq. I challenge all of you to take a trip there to see the good deeds that soldiers are doing on a daily basis. For you all to say recruiters lie, you are profiling in a sense. It’s like me saying all of you are idiots, I wouldn’t do something like that because you are all people with your own ridiculous opinions to express. I have never lied to one single recruit. You should also check the military records of all these disgruntled vets you have speaking for you. If you want maybe you can tail me for a week or two and find out that not everyone that has been chosen to be an Army recruiter is as worthless as you make them seem. So, all I ask of you is that you ask yourself, Am I any different than the Islamic extremist that wish to do harm to anyone who lives in my country? Am I part of the problem? Maybe then you will get some insight into what it is that your actually talking about, because I don’t think you have any clue.
[quote name=”Marcus09″]Ryan, you crack me up about joining the military and still trodding upon the means by which many of the people you will be working beside even knew that the military was an opportunity for them. If you think you aren’t going to be at risk in any military service you are lying to yourself. Recruiters walk through schools and other public locations because a vast majority of the public only knows what the military does through a distant friend or the bad stuff they saw on CNN or on random websites with zero firsthand knowledge (*cough* This one included. *cough*). Noone wants to “sucker” you into joining the military, the last thing these guys want is to be working along some guy who doesn’t want to be there. Do your research, look at the risk versus reward and if it is not for you, politely tell them no thanks and get back to your job at Starbucks and $60,000 in student loans.
Firing your anger off at military recruiters to me seems silly, they are only there to provide information, if you have a problem with the political situation you need to start writing to your congressperson. Thinking differently is great, I applaud it, but instantly evaporating the United States Military is not going to make this earth into a warm and fuzzy utopia.[/quote]
dear marcus…im not trodding on thema nd i dont dissagree with what they do its only that they keep forcing it upon us with all these questioneer sheets that they make us fill out that im sick and tired of having to do
Ryan, you crack me up about joining the military and still trodding upon the means by which many of the people you will be working beside even knew that the military was an opportunity for them. If you think you aren’t going to be at risk in any military service you are lying to yourself. Recruiters walk through schools and other public locations because a vast majority of the public only knows what the military does through a distant friend or the bad stuff they saw on CNN or on random websites with zero firsthand knowledge (*cough* This one included. *cough*). Noone wants to “sucker” you into joining the military, the last thing these guys want is to be working along some guy who doesn’t want to be there. Do your research, look at the risk versus reward and if it is not for you, politely tell them no thanks and get back to your job at Starbucks and $60,000 in student loans.
Firing your anger off at military recruiters to me seems silly, they are only there to provide information, if you have a problem with the political situation you need to start writing to your congressperson. Thinking differently is great, I applaud it, but instantly evaporating the United States Military is not going to make this earth into a warm and fuzzy utopia.