Don’t stereotype those in military

Jack Killen makes the argument that you can’t support the troops without supporting the war and that every service member in Iraq has made the choice to go to Iraq. This argument makes as much sense as saying that Jack Killen supports racism because he goes to IU and we have the Ora L. Wildermuth Intramural Center named after a segregationist.

Jack, obviously, has done little research about the military. People have little choice about where they serve. The majority of the U.S. military is not serving in Iraq or Afghanistan; they are deployed around the world.

Also, the claim that most people in the military are from “low socioeconomic status” households is not true – only about 19 percent are, while about 75 percent are from the supposed “middle-class.” His argument that some service members were motivated by “a romanticized desire to wield a gun and go kill some Arabs” is true for an extremely small percentage of service members I have encountered.
And no, we should not support them.

In my 10 years of experience in two branches of military service (both before and after 9/11), I have seen time and again that the military doesn’t support that view. Those are the people who get other people killed. You don’t want people like that in your unit, and therefore, they are generally shunned within the military.

If you asked around here at IU, I’m sure you would find some racist students. Hopefully, they are few and far between and shunned by their fellow students. To say that everyone at IU should pack up and go home because we have a building named for a racist and that everyone who came to IU did so just to be a racist makes about as much sense as Jack’s argument that the people in the military chose to serve in Iraq.

Iraq is a part of military life like Wildermuth is a part of IU. It might not be the prettiest part, but joining IU for the educational benefits and career opportunities doesn’t mean that you support it – it just means you accept it as part of our history.

John Summerlot
IU graduate student