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Book Review:

10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military.
Introduction by Cindy Sheehan
Edited by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
The New Press. 2006. 157 pages.

Reviewed by Rachel Ensign

10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military, what an excellent idea! A short book of ten short chapters aimed at young people who are being recruited to fight in Iraq. Make the book so it can fit in your back pocket; give it a clever cover, and end it with a resource guide with lots of web addresses. This is sheer marketing genius. I can foresee a whole series of such books: 10 Excellent Reasons to Join a Union; 10 Excellent Reasons to Not Shop at Wal-Mart; 10 Excellent Reasons to Support Immigrant Workers.

There’s a lot to recommend about this volume edited by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg. The writing is generally crisp. The writers keep to point, document most arguments without being scholastic, and many of the chapters are convincing. I found Cindy Sheehan’s chapter about her son Casey’s death particularly moving. It is the kind of writing from the gut that reflects a parent’s love and loss.
However, I felt that, despite its good intentions, most of this book was directed not at potential recruits but rather at their parents and anti-war activists. Both are important audiences. 10 Excellent Reasons provides a skeptical view of the US role in Iraq. Paul Rockwell chronicles US war crimes – indiscriminate attacks on civilians, torture in Abu Ghraib, the leveling of Falluja – through the testimony of troops on the ground. Adele Kubein tells the story of her daughter’s war injury, lack of care, and the bureaucratic nightmare her daughter had to go through before eventually getting treatment. Tod Ensign of Citizen Soldier brings his expertise to unpacking the political and scientific issues related to long-term health effects of modern combat.

Yet, recruiters don’t target parents and activists except for their influence on their children. Editor Weill-Greenberg’s chapter, “You May Be Lied To,” recounts her undercover foray into the recruiting game. She reveals that recruiters prey on recruits’ financial difficulties and desires for college tuition, mock fears of war and parents’ opposition to their children going off to Iraq – an important observation given that families of military personnel are incorporating themselves into the antiwar movement – and have little regard for the truth. I wasn’t surprised to hear that recruiters lie about where soldiers will be deployed or what jobs they’ll train for, but their prodding recruits to lie about pot smoking seemed both absurd and sad. There is something odd about worrying that the young men and women being sent off to foreign wars to risk life and limb might be tainted by a history of “reefer madness.”
As a high school senior, I doubt the book’s assumption that potential recruits can be persuaded to say no because they might be killed, wounded, or discriminated against while serving. Given the heady sense of immortality which is the special province of the young, are these really teenage concerns? For me, the book also fails to convey the innate rebelliousness and disillusionment of youth. It does contain plenty of weary cynicism, a sentiment that is hard to escape in a war that was brought to us through blatant government lies and willful media ignorance. But where is any of the biting humor or sarcasm that Jon Stewart puts on display most evenings?

10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military is filled with excellent reasons not enlist. It gives parents plenty of arguments they can use with children who are being bird-dogged by recruiters. A Memo to the New Press Editorial Board: You might want to consider publishing a second edition. Hand over all the writing to my generation, cut the book’s price in half and expand its political critique.