BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Another BuzzFlash special value book, $5.00 below retail price and that includes shipping and handling.

On the homefront, unless you have a family member in the military, the Iraq War is a distant, almost abstract conflict. That's the way the Busheviks want it.

In fact, privatized military personnel may equal the number of GIs in Iraq. War has become corporatized. If Iraq were really a threat to our national security, we would all be putting our lives on the line, not lining up for an I-Phone.

The extended Bush and Cheney families are model examples of sending others to fight a war without putting the lives of any relatives on the line.

How to resolve this class delegation of war to the poor, rural, minorities, and those seeking citizenship?

Good question, and this book provides some suggestions.

Whether we join the military or not, don't we all owe some form of service to our nation -- whether in Vista, the Peace Corps, social service or the armed forces?

Right now, we have a structural injustice in terms of waging war. We basically delegate the job to those who are not part of the upper classes or elite power structure. Bush and Cheney send off "expendable" Americans and immigrants seeking citizenship, while doing phony public relations photo-ops praising them as they use these Americans as cannon fodder.

Nathaniel Fick - The Washington Post:

In their compelling and inspiring cri de coeur , Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer trace this societal shift, arguing that the schism between America's military and its opinion-making class threatens the nation's welfare. Both authors qualify as opinion-makers, and both have personal connections to the military. Roth-Douquet, a self-described "former agitator, feminist, Ivy Leaguer, Clintonite," is married to a Marine pilot. Schaeffer, a novelist, painter and film-maker, saw his plans for his children -- "top college, good grades, smart jobs, wife/husband, Subaru/Volvo, membership at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, IRA started early, kids, college fund" -- derail when his youngest son enlisted in the Marines after high school.

Publishers Weekly:

In this impassioned, convincing manifesto, Schaffer (Keeping Faith) and Roth-Douquet, a former Clinton White House and Department of Defense staffer, call for class integration of the military. Their arguments are personal: Roth-Douquet is a military wife and Schaffer's son is a marine, and the authors fall within the demographic they critique.

Alternately narrating, they relate their experiences with the military and detail the liabilities of the present all-volunteer "corporate" force: the hindered policy-making ability of a civilian leadership without significant ties to the military, the weakening of the armed forces themselves, and "the sense of lost community and the threat to democracy that results when a society accepts a situation that is inherently unfair." While Schaffer proposes a lottery draft and Roth-Douquet suggests the military "convince" people to sign up, they both call for all young people to submit to some form of national civilian service. Though the authors occasionally exaggerate ("we are fast approaching the day when no one in Congress and no president will have served or have any children serving"), they make a clarion call in the face of increasingly controversial foreign policy and a military stretched thin.

From the Publisher:

Military service was once taken for granted as a natural part of good citizenship, and Americans of all classes served during wartime.
Not anymore.

As Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer assert in this groundbreaking work, there is a glaring disconnect between the "all volunteer military" and the rest of us. And as that gap between the cultural "elite" and military rank-and-file widens, our country faces a dangerous lack of understanding between those in power and those who defend our way of life.

In America, it is increasingly the case that the people who make, support, or protest military policy have no military experience. As a result, the privileged miss the benefits of military service -- leadership, experience helpful to their future roles in public life, and exposure to a broader cross section of citizens -- while the military feels under-supported and morally distanced from the rest of the country. And when only a handful of members of Congress have military experience or a personal link to someone in uniform, perhaps it becomes too easy (or too hard) to send the military into combat.

Based on research and including the voices of many young military members who understand firsthand the value of service, AWOL is also a very personal book. Frank Schaeffer, father of a former enlisted Marine, knows the anguish and pride that millions of American parents feel every day as their children are off fighting a war in a foreign land. Kathy Roth-Douquet, wife of a career officer, has experienced the struggle of trying to keep the family together with a husband at war as well as the often untold satisfaction of raising children in an ethic of service. To the authors and numerous other families who are intimately acquainted with the glory and the sacrifice of military service, America needs a wake-up call before it's too late.


BUZZFLASH REVIEWS