The Coming Military Recession

By Beverly Darling
Sun 25 Mar 2007
WorldNews.Com

Political pundits, the mainstream media, and the Bush Administration have been silent about the approaching storm. But like an onrushing freight train that is still miles away, it is coming. It cannot be stopped, and the impact will (and even now) be devastating.

What is it? It is the inevitable Military Recession and it occurs after every major U.S. war or conflict. Due to the urgent need to expand the U.S. Army or use National Guard and Army Reserve Troops, along with increasing the demands to produce fighting equipment and weapons, there is a shortage of workers.

Because of this, millions of people find employment as soldiers or replace the jobs once held by Reservists and National Guard troops. Others are hired to manufacture tanks, trucks, humvees, or armaments. But what happens when these troops return home and there is a decrease in war production? The ‘employment bubble,’ due to militarization, bursts and the consequences can be devastating.

Starting right after World War One, the U.S. Government was ill-prepared to deal with the return of millions of soldiers. They were met with an inflationary increase of fifteen percent on basic necessities. Due to the decrease in war manufacturing, millions of people were laid off and labor and racial violence became common.

In 1919, over five million workers participated in over 4000 strikes. Some strikes turned violent as workers were pitted against strike-breakers and corporate security firms. 60,000 workers led the Seattle Shipyard Strike, which turned into a General Strike. When they refused orders to return to work, several working strikers were killed.

In Boston, tens of thousands of police officers walked-off the job. Riots and looting erupted across the city. 350,000 steel workers also went on strike demanding higher wages. Many of the workers and union leaders were falsely accused of being anarchists or communists. This led to thousands of false arrests and uprisings that left many dead.

During and after the Vietnam Conflict, the U.S. Government was once again unprepared to deal with the enormous requests by returning soldiers for healthcare and mental care. Some veterans found it extremely difficult to adjust to society as they carried and internalized the wounds and memories of a horrific war. They were met with cynicism and a nation filled with social unrest, racism, and economic disparity.

In the early years of the Vietnam Conflict, the jobless rate among returning soldiers were over ten percent, compared to only six percent of non-veterans. Unemployment for disabled veterans, along with Blacks and Hispanics, reached twenty-four percent while twenty-two percent of soldiers who were immediately discharged remained unemployed.

While the Nixon-Kissinger Administration expanded the war into Laos and Cambodia, unemployment for returning veterans soared to twenty-one percent. For Blacks and Hispanics joblessness reached thirty-six percent.

Over 600,000 veterans could not find work or were unable to seek employment due to depression, drugs, and attempted suicide. Tragically, the Great Society Programs that aided the poor and minorities were slashed.

The Winter Soldier Investigation turned into a delegation that met with the Veterans Administration and demanded better health care and improved benefits, especially in the area of job training and recovery. While some returning veterans suffered from unemployment, others were addicted to drugs or experienced homelessness.

...For some returning Gulf War veterans, only minimum wage jobs awaited them. Timothy McVeigh’s frustration over his low-paying jobs and his anger at an increasingly all-powerful government, which resulted in the bombing of a federal building, was a reflection and symbolic of how other veterans felt.

Many veterans believed their government had abandoned them along with their rights, liberties, and economic well-being. Some veterans also felt alienated after returning home with illnesses, such as the Gulf War Syndrome.

Since the government did not recognize the deadly sickness, many veterans found it difficult to schedule an appointment with the VA, let alone acquire proper treatment.

Even after World War Two, not all returning soldiers and American workers benefited from the GI Bill, Federal Highway Act, or the expansion of Social Security. Many Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans experienced extreme racism and poverty.

Michael Harrington’s book, ‘The Other America,’ dispelled the notion that everyone in America benefited from post war prosperity. Instead he exposed hidden and run-down communities filled with veterans, the elderly, single mothers, and low-income laborers.

As more people fled to the suburbs, the inner cities experienced economic ruin and over crowded housing projects. Blacks made only fifty percent of what Whites were paid. Native Americans made one thousand dollars less than Blacks. Once the U.S. Government was finished with Latin American workers-Bracero Program, millions were underpaid and forcibly deported.

Already the affects of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan can be felt here in the U.S. Violent crime is skyrocketing.

Divorce rates, domestic disturbance calls, and suicides are on the increase, especially in the military community.

The Walter Reed Scandal has revealed that the U.S. is not ready to deal with the enormous demands from hundreds of thousands of returning Iraqi vets that are suffering from physical and mental debilitating problems.

The Pentagon is now trying to silence economists that claim care for wounded soldiers due to the Iraq and Afghan Wars will cost over 2.5 trillion dollars. Bush also underestimated the daily cost of his war that now exceeds over 200 million dollars.

Forty-four percent of U.S. police forces have members deployed as reservists in Iraq. The same can be said for firefighters, medical and prison staff, along with professionals and the service sector. Thousands of Iraqi refugees have had to flee and seek refuge in the U.S. When the war is over, will there be full employment, quality care, and adequate social benefits for all?

The current administration and government are not visionaries like President Truman, who after World War Two raised the minimum wage from forty to seventy cents and discussed the possibility of a Full Employment Act; or like President Eisenhower, who ended the Korean War, expand Social Security, and then initiated the Federal Highway Act that put millions of Americans to work.

As a matter of fact, if the Bush Administration’s handling of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is any indication of how it plans to prevent a post war economic Military Recession, then America may be on the threshold of an economic depression.

It is now known that Bush did not have a contingency plan or a Plan B in case his ‘splendid little war’ in Iraq failed. Do you really think he has a strategy for the coming Military Recession?

Bush used to quote a famous saying, ‘Whatsoever a man sows shall also be what he reaps.’ Is it only a matter of time before the U.S. begins to reap what it has sowed and planted in Iraq?

Beverly Darling - beverly@wn.com