Panama, the 1991 Gulf War, and the War at Home
Teaching Activity PDF. By Robert Standish. 15 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 22 of Voices of a People’s History of the United States on Panama, the 1991 Gulf War, and the War on the Poor in the United States.
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Whenever I tell my students that I was in the military, they just stare at me in disbelief; my pacifist leanings are well known within the tiny community where I teach. However, when I tell them that I joined in order to afford the cost of college, there is a unanimous nod of understanding.The financial worry of college is heavy on their eleventh grade minds, and the idea of four years of service doesn’t sound too bad when the recruiter waves $50,000 in their faces. As odd a match as I was to the military, I soon found that I wasn’t alone. Among the reasons why my peers joined, none included such patriotic declarations as “to serve my country” or “to defend Democracy.” Instead, the reasons were, more often than not, simply financial.We were mostly just working-class kids looking for any chance at a real opportunity. Indeed, Alex Molnar’s letter to President Bush was the letter all of our parents wanted to write and the letter no politician wants to answer, because it picks at the scab of class issues in the military.
Reprinted from Teaching with Voices of a People’s History of the United States.
Published by Seven Stories Press.
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