Hey, Guardsman! Whose side are you on?

[From the Editors: This letter is directed at the members of the National Guard or its reserves. While other comrades who didn’t enlist in the imperialist armed forces to serve the capitalist state may find it illuminating, this anonymous comrade is speaking directly to those who have.]

So, you enlisted in the National Guard or the Reserve components. Perhaps you joined because you were poor; maybe you were seduced by the promise of a military pension and GI Bill benefits. Perhaps you were “lost” and looking for a sense of community and purpose. Or, maybe you consider yourself a patriot, and believe so strongly in “American values” that you joined to “serve” a country you think you love.

But now, you’re beginning to feel that something is wrong. You know something is wrong.  Except you can’t quite put your finger on exactly what it is. You can’t find the words to express it.

Take it from me: I was an active-duty Sergeant in the army for seven years. I deployed twice: once to Poland, once to Iraq. I worked as a 25 Series soldier, and my job mostly involved routers and switches, with the occasional SINCGARS or Harris radio network. I know where you’ve been, because I’ve been there, and I’ve experienced a lot of the same things you have: shitty commanders, abusive first sergeants, nit-picking NCOs, unlivable barracks that should be condemned, pay issues… The list goes on and on. 

I’m writing this so that you can hear these words from someone who’s been in your position and knows exactly what you’re up against. Whatever you might think of socialists, communists, “reds,” you can rest assured that this socialist does not hate you. I see myself in you — my past self — and I want to help you, just like I wish I could go back in time and help him.

And that’s why I share these truths with you — because you won’t hear them from anyone else.

Here’s the BLUF: Your command team does not give a fuck about you. You do not serve the American people. Despite what your officers and NCOs tell you, I promise and assure you that you are a human being with free will; no amount of “lawful” orders or army regulations can change that. You do not, in fact, have to comply — especially when those orders violate your spiritual, moral, and ethical beliefs! When your conscience tells you to disobey orders, you can listen to it! You don’t need to sacrifice your humanity! No matter what you’ve already done, it’s never too late to start doing what’s right.

Your command team hates you.

On both of my deployments, I worked closely with National Guard units of all stripes, from many different states, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico. There were a few common issues that they all had, regardless of where they came from. For instance, the loophole that commanders use to save money: putting soldiers on back-to-back 29-day orders so as not to have to pay BAH. Another variation of this is when your command calls you for AT (active training, the “two weeks a year,” with a very “generous” interpretation of the length of two weeks), but only puts you on 29-day orders.

Your two-faced commanders talk a big game about how much they care about you, how you’re their brothers and sisters in arms, and how they’d “never leave a fallen comrade behind.” But riddle me this: why would an authority figure who claims to love you as if you were their own kin, work so hard to shortchange you of the money you need to support your family? Think for yourself! What is your commander’s real priority? Do they care about you and your family’s well-being? Or do they care about pleasing their bosses to get that top-block OER? 

It’s common knowledge that career-oriented officers and NCOs would gladly throw their soldiers under the bus to impress their bosses. You know, deep down, that you are disposable to them; they would sacrifice you in an instant to advance their own careers. Occasionally you’ll come across a decent one who legitimately cares for their subordinates, but their OERs and NCOERs don’t reflect that. When you are evaluated by your superiors, and your superiors are the only ones whose input materially impacts your evaluations, it shouldn’t be a surprise that your superior’s opinion of you is what counts most for a promotion.

Let the servants sleep in the barn!

I recall reading in 2021 that National Guardsmen were forced by their command to sleep in parking garages in the middle of winter during Trump’s Beer Hall Putsch on January 6^th. For all the praise of the Guard for their service in securing our so-called “democracy,” how were you actually rewarded by your commanders and the politicians who called upon you? They made you sleep in a parking garage. They “housed” you like machinery. They put you in a warehouse, in  the middle of January, at night, in Washington D.C. — in our country’s capital. The same capital, by the way, where the same slimy legislators you protected — both Republican and Democrat alike — wax poetic about promising “our nation’s veterans” the world, while dumping them  on the street. Riddle me this: what country treats their “heroes” this way? 

The sad fact is that you’re not their heroes. You’re their servants, their executioners, their human shields. The ruling classes of big businessmen, landlords, developers, bankers, and financial speculators don’t see you as heroes. They don’t even see you as human beings. They see you as killing machines and meat shields, “built” to do their dirty work for them. In other words, they see you as disposable. You are literally no better than used parts to the ruling classes! 

They’re all too eager to disrupt your lives by summoning you to protect them at a moment’s notice… but why should you protect them? They would never, in a million years, extend the same courtesy or service to you and your family. Do you think that United States Senators and Congressmen make themselves sleep in parking garages? I promise you, they do not! So why should you — why should anyone?

And don’t forget: While Guardsmen were sleeping on concrete, command teams were yakking it up in high-class hotels.While their subordinates froze in a parking garage, your officers were sipping champagne on freshly made beds. As you and I both know, this is just one high-profile incident that happened to get leaked to the press. This kind of shit happens all the time, and rarely makes the news. Again, ask yourself: What kind of people, who claim to love you as if you were their brothers and sisters, would ever force you to sleep outside in a parking garage in winter, with no beds, no bathrooms, and no heating, while they party at the Marriott?

Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) – Not Much of A Relief At All!

Guardsmen also must deal with the complications of “part-time” military service. This usually means having to balance a civilian career in addition to one’s National Guard obligations. On paper, it’s true that you are legally protected by the SCRA from getting fired if and when your military service interferes with your civilian career. On paper, it seems like a good law. The SCRA states that employers are not allowed to fire Guardsmen and Reservists from their careers if they come down on military orders to deploy that are longer than 30 days, and the law imposes heavy fines and penalties on businesses found guilty of breaking it. Sounds reasonable, right?

But, in reality, the SCRA is a paper tiger. Everybody knows at least one person who’s gotten hemmed up by their civilian job in spite of this law! In reality, what ends up happening is that your boss starts building up a case against you  for random infractions, such as being 3 seconds late to work, and then fires you anyway, once they have sufficient “evidence.” While you and I both know that the real reason you were fired is that your military service interfered with your boss’ profits, on paper, they can say to the court, “Hey, we fired him because he was tardy! Not because he’s in the Guard!”

What real, tangible benefits does the Guard really provide for you and your family? What do you get out of being in it? You get dehumanized by your command teams; they sleep in hotels while you sleep outside in the winter. They play tricks with your schedule to cut your pay. There’s an epidemic of sexual harrassment and assault. Your service can oftentimes result in you getting fired from your day job.And the list goes on!

The Case of 2LT Nazario – Camouflage Uniforms Won’t Hide Your Race From Killer Cops

In 2020, George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin and his fellow Minneapolis Police Department pigs, and in the aftermath, the masses rose up in the biggest rebellion this country’s seen in decades. You and I both know these kinds of murders-by-cop happen in this country on a daily basis. Killer cops are just a fact of life in the United States — especially for Black people. In 2020, in a bout of righteous anger, the people stood up against their oppressors. They told the state and the capitalists who run it that they would not stand quietly as members of their community were gunned down, hanged, or choked to death in the streets. The rebellion struck terror into the oppressors, leading politicians in 34 separate state governments and Washington, D.C. to activate their National Guard units — not to help during an emergency, not to protect the demonstrators, not to provide medical assistance, and certainly not to stop the waves of police murders that the “boys in blue” commit every single day. Instead, the National Guard was placed on riot control duty, to assist in “containing the insurgency,” to protect the private property, bought politicians, and corrupt institutions of the ruling capitalist class.

Some of you reading this were most likely deployed during the 2020 rebellion. I’m not here to judge, condemn, or castigate you. Instead, I am here to ask you to reconsider this event in a different light from what you’ve been told. Were you really serving the “American people,” or were you serving the ruling capitalist class, their state, their politicians, and their killer cops? Were you protecting the people, or were you protecting the system that oppresses them — that oppresses all of us? 

Despite what your command has told you, you have more in common with the protestors than you do your command team, the police, and the wealthy exploiters whom you’ve been made to  serve and protect.

Consider the case of 2LT Caron Nazario. Lieutenant Nazario is an Afro-Latino man serving in the Virginia National Guard. When Lt. Nazario was pulled over by the police, he did everything he was “supposed to do.” Maybe he mistakenly believed that these pigs were his brothers-in-arms. Maybe he thought that since they both receive taxpayer-funded salaries, they must both be “serving the American people.” Maybe he assumed, “Our uniforms might be different, but we have each others’ six.” Unfortunately for Lieutenant Nazario, he couldn’t have been more wrong. Out of concern for his safety as well as the safety of the officers, Lt. Nazario did not immediately pull over his vehicle. Instead, he kept driving and waited until he could pull over in a well-lit area — a gas station. Lt. Nazario wanted to ensure that the police would be safe during the traffic stop, because it was nighttime in a rural area. Upon pulling over in a gas station parking lot, the two cops — Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker, both white men — approached Lt. Nazario’s vehicle — guns drawn. They shouted commands at him like a dog. One of the cops threatened to electrocute Nazario with his taser. Lt. Nazario attempted to diffuse the situation by respectfully asking officers what the issue was. He tried to hand them his military ID card. When Nazario said that he was afraid to leave his car, because the cops had repeatedly threatened to murder him, they replied, “Yeah, you should be,” and pepper sprayed him. (Side note — pepper spray is considered a chemical weapon under the Geneva Conventions.) When Nazario reached out of the vehicle with his hands up, he clearly displayed the OCP uniform top of the United States Army. The cops violently pulled the lieutenant from his car. They drew their weapons and pointed them at the lieutenant, with every intention of shooting at the slightest perceived provocation. The cops then proceeded to beat Nazario, repeatedly striking him with their knees until he fell to the ground, at which point they repeatedly stomped on his body with their combat boots. The cops also illegally searched Nazario’s car. After the initial beating, other officers arrived at the scene, and put a stop to the excess. The other officers told Gutierrez and Crocker that they were in the wrong. Even so, these two white stormtrooper-cops threatened to ruin Nazario’s military career with fraudulent felony charges, if he dared to speak out or file a lawsuit.

The brutality Lieutenant Nazario suffered at the hands of the racist police is not exceptional; it is the norm for Black people in this country. The cops treated the lieutenant with all the same brutality and violence afforded to Black people by law enforcement every single day. Lt. Nazario’s camouflage uniform, his military ID, and the respect he showed his fellow “soldiers” did nothing to protect him from this brutality. The cops saw right through that army camo to the only thing that mattered: the color of the lieutenant’s skin. Why were the police so violent in this instance? Because that is their real job. The role of the police in the United States isn’t to protect and serve the people; it’s to protect private property and the state, to serve the property-owning classes, and to enact White Terror against the racially oppressed masses.

The police you work alongside, when you’re activated for riot control duty, will never see Black people as human beings, let alone as soldiers “serving their nation.” If you’re Black, they see you as a potential criminal and a threat to the established, oppressive order, and they’ve already decided your fate: imprisonment or death. You are no different than the thousands of racially oppressed people who suffer the same brutality every single day in America.

Tying It All Together

Your employer, the United States Armed Forces, is not on your side. In fact, it is your enemy; it is your oppressor. It will work you ragged to the bone, push you until your body literally falls apart, crush you under psychological stress, and then throw you back onto the streets once you’re no longer useful. You endure all of that suffering and misery not to “serve your nation,” not to “protect the American people,” but to protect the interests of powerful men who couldn’t care less if you live or die, and who won’t take notice when you and your family go hungry, when you can’t afford rent, when you’re left to rot with untreated chronic pain and PTSD.

We live in a capitalist society, a society organized around  the production of commodities for the profit of the rich. Every facet of our lives has been designed to ensure that businesses can maintain their profit margins. We are paid unlivable wages, so that we can spend more than half of our incomes on unlivable housing that quite literally poisons us and our children. The capitalist class, the property-owning class, the class that employs the politicians and the police as its public servants and stormtroopers, is constantly devising ways of keeping the masses poor, overworked, underhoused, and desperate for scraps. Why? Because the less they have to pay us in wages, the more profit they get to keep for their greedy selves! 

Consider your boss at your civilian job. Why are they so eager to fire you the minute your service interferes with their business? Because keeping you on the books is a business expense. Because your civil rights cut into their profits. Even if they’re not paying your wages, from their sick perspective, they’re still paying for your health insurance and your retirement benefits; they’re still clogging their computer systems with your information; the list goes on. When you’re deployed overseas, you’re no longer producing commodities for your civilian boss, which means you’re not actively making them a profit. So, they see you as just another wasted expense to be eliminated. Who is profiting from your deployments? KBR, by selling you food that isn’t fit for a pig. The myriad U.S. military contractors, by manufacturing all kinds of worthless equipment that does nothing but sit in a conex (shipping container) until the next cyclic inventory. The overpaid contractors who make bank off providing you with whatever training. The monopolist oil companies, whose overseas investments you risk your life and murder civilians in foreign countries to protect. The predatory industrialists, who send dollar-per-day jobs abroad to the sweatshops that spring up in every country that the U.S. military terrorizes, invades, and occupies.

Although your command team is not a profitable enterprise, they are still bound to the logic of capitalism. They have budgets to manage and deadlines to meet, and your BAH is, from their perspective, nothing but an enormous drain. So, even if your commander is not a capitalist per se, even if they don’t own a factory or a sweatshop or an oil company, they’re still bound by the logic of capital, and they still ultimately serve the monopolists who rule this country. The politicians beholden to the greedy capitalists who pay your bosses are always looking at the property book and asking “How can we work these soldiers harder, while cutting costs? What spending cuts can we make to their housing, nutrition, and other benefits?” 

But you don’t need to be the dutiful servants of our common oppressors. You don’t need to “just follow orders.” You, a Guardsman, share more in common with the workers, the dispossessed, the racially oppressed, and the desperately poor masses of this country — the very same masses whose righteous rebellions you are periodically ordered to suppress with bullets, chemical weapons, and tanks — as well the working and poor people of all countries, than you share with the capitalists and landlords, whose property you defend, the politicians who use you for cheap political leverage, and your abusive commanders.

The ruling class has something called solidarity. They can look past some of their differences to unite around shared political, militaristic, and economic goals. The basis for this solidarity among capitalists and other oppressing classes is that, in order to maintain their rule, they must cooperate to suppress the struggles of the oppressed. But the ethos of solidarity isn’t just for the ruling classes; in fact, it’s often impossible for them to band together, because they’re always undercutting each other in the capitalistic competition of the “free market,” always trying to get a leg up on each other. The working and dispossessed masses, too, can have solidarity with one another. Solidarity is the ethos of  striking workers, trusting their co-workers to strike at their side. Solidarity is the ethos of houseless folks looking out for one another. Solidarity is the ethos of an uprising — of the masses uniting to fight back against our oppressors. The people on your side, the people to whom you truly owe allegiance, and with whom you should be standing in solidarity, are the working and dispossessed folks you are often called on to violently suppress, such as those who rose up during the 2020 George Floyd Uprising. As a former army soldier, as someone who used to be in a similar position, I implore you to choose the side of the people over the side of your employer — your oppressor.

Betraying your commanders and disobeying their unjust, inhumane orders will be the ethical decision every single time. It is the only decision that will allow you to sleep peacefully at night; it is the only decision that will allow your  conscience to rest; it is the only decision that will preserve your connection to your fellow human beings, and to your own humanity. If you suffer from PTSD, like I do, then you already know that this peace of mind is invaluable.

The Debt Repaid

Maybe you didn’t want to kill people. Maybe you didn’t sign up to oppress the millions of poor and oppressed people in this country and the billions in countries subjugated by American imperialism across the world. Maybe you don’t want to serve the capitalists who rule this country, who use the U.S. Armed Forces to plunder the Third World, and whose greed is strangling this planet through global warming and ecocide. Maybe you really believed the bullshit they taught you growing up — after all, the ruling classes spend a lot of money trying to convince us that they’re the good guys and that the United States of America is just trying to make the world a better place, one imperialist war at a time. Maybe you didn’t know — or didn’t realize — that this was what you signed up for.

Still, the fact is that you did sign up. You volunteered for a job that might require you to murder poor and oppressed people, in this country or abroad, in service of the imperialist ruling class.

But now you know better. Now you’re beginning to question everything you’ve been taught. You’re beginning to question whether your allegiance should be to the U.S. Empire and its rulers, or to the poor and oppressed people of this country, and the poor and oppressed people of the world.

Now, the only question that matters is this: If and when you’re given the order to turn your rifles on the oppressed and to open fire, will you obey?

Whose side are you on?

You made a horrible mistake. You volunteered to be a foot soldier for American imperialism and to take an active role in the oppression of the masses. But your mistake doesn’t need to be final; you don’t need to surrender your humanity to the U.S. Empire, once and for all, body and soul. Now that you know better, you have an obligation — a moral and ethical obligation, a class obligation, a religious and spiritual obligation (for those of you who belong to various faiths), and at all times an obligation to your humanity — to do something about it. You owe a debt, not only to the poor and oppressed masses within the U.S. Empire, but to the people in every country terrorized, invaded, occupied, and plundered by American imperialism. The salaries and benefits you’ve earned as a Guardsmen were earned by serving a globe-trotting imperialist power — the most powerful empire in human history — that has used you — your bodies, your labor, your very lives — to maintain its stranglehold on the world. And in order to repay this debt, you have an obligation to disobey orders.

Don’t shoot. Disobey orders. As soon as you can, get out. Help other Guardsmen get out, too. You don’t want to stand in the ranks of history’s genocidaires; you don’t want to be lined up alongside Goering, Himmler, and Tojo, or, for that matter, alongside George Washington and Andrew Jackson. Your name shouldn’t be read next to theirs on the roll of history’s monsters; you don’t need to reserve yourself an exhibit in the museum of fascist empires. You don’t want to give your life to the American Wehrmacht. Did you sign up to be a hero? Did you sign up to protect and serve the people? Then be like Major Hugh Thompson, the man who stopped a massacre in its tracks by planting his Hiller OH-23 Raven between his fellow U.S. soldiers and the fleeing civilians at Sơn Mỹ and Mỹ Lai. Be like the soldiers who fragged their officers, rather than murder innocent people and freedom fighters in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Korea.