The cult of military service: Tim Walz as soldier-teacher

Joe Allen argues that media attention on the military record of Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate, misses the point. Placed in its historic context, the US National Guard is far from glamourous.

This was first published on Medium.

Soon after Vice-President Kamala Harris introduced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, the attacks on his military record began. Quick comparisons were drawn in the media to the “Swiftboating” of Democratic candidate John Kerry in 2004. Too be straight about it, debating the finer points of Walz’s military record misses the larger point being made here, that the cult of military “service” in the United States is a widespread and dangerous one.

Responding to attacks from Republican Presidential candidate Donald Vice-Presidential candidate JD Vance, Walz told a campaign rally — filled with enthusiastic hospitality workers — in Las Vegas:

I was born in a small town in Nebraska where community was a way of life. There’s some Nebraskans in the house. You think I’m kidding. You think I’m kidding. 400 people, 25 kids in my class, 12 were cousins. That’s small town. That’s small town. But you know what?

My parents and my community taught me generosity towards my neighbor and to work for the common good. My dad was a chain-smoking Korean War-era veteran who, two days after my 17th birthday, took me down to sign up to join the National Guard. I was proud for the next 24 years to wear the uniform of this country.

Thank you to every single one of you who wore that uniform. And I have to tell you, like my dad before me and millions of others, the GI Bill gave me a shot at a college education. And just like Tilly (sic), my dad was a teacher.

My older brother was a teacher. My sister was a teacher. My younger brother was a teacher. And we married teachers. The privilege of my lifetime was spending two decades teaching in public schools. And you might have heard coaching football to a state championship.

Walz ticks all of the boxes for one kind of Democratic presidential campaign: Small town America, Family tradition, Military service, Teaching, and Football. He was introduced by Tillie Torres, a Las Vegas teacher. The message was pretty clear that military service was the natural and honorable stage in one’s life from a nobody to a somebody in the Great American community. Connecting military service to teaching is also a sinister one given that high schools across the country are one of the main recruiting grounds for the U.S. military.

Soldier-Teacher role model

I was pretty shocked that one of first pictures of Walz that was widely circulated was a stern-faced, seventeen years old version of himself in 1981-era combat fatigues holding an M-16. For a candidate that caught the attention of the US media by calling the Republicans “weird,” a seventeen year old clutching a machine gun is not? Walz was by many accounts a popular teacher with his students and liked by his colleagues. But, the role model of the Soldier-Teacher is not a good one, especially for young men.

I don’t know if he ever directly encouraged any of his students to join the military or what happened to them after they signed up. But, young people, especially high school age boys, can be easily impressed by the glamour of the uniform and combat through films, television, and video games. This was particularly true during the 1980s and 1990s, when political leaders and their friends in Hollywood spent a lot of time rehabilitating the military following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, along with demonizing the Vietnam Anti-War movement.

Walz joined the National Guard in 1981, the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency that saw the beginning of a massive military build-up and a resurgent anti-Communism and U.S. imperialism. It wasn’t until the end of the decade, however, before the U.S. could once again, send large numbers of ground troops to fight wars in far-flung corners of the globe. Panama, the first Gulf War,and after 9–11, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq — the latter two dubbed the “Forever Wars.” The disastrous results for the countries that the U.S invaded and the large numbers of U.S. soldiers suffered debilitating physical and mental health conditions are still with us.

Walz was deployed only once overseas to Italy during the Forever Wars and saw no combat. He spent seven months abroad before he returned home. Others from Minnesota were not so lucky. More than eight thousand Minnesota National Guard soldiers and Airmen were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 to 2011. Sixteen members of the Minnesota died in Iraq with another seventy-nine that were awarded Purple Hearts for combat injuries. Nearly one hundred soldiers with some connection to Minnesota were killed in combat during the Forever Wars.

Walz retired from the National Guard in May 2005, he was elected to Congress during the Democratic sweep in 2006. Reason magazine summarized he years in Congress towards the Forever Wars:

“For all his strong feelings about war powers, however, Walz has also shown a tendency to shrink from tough political fights on the issue. During the debate over the surge, Walz voted to force the U.S. military to withdraw from Iraq within 90 days. Yet less than five months later, he voted to continue funding the war. It was a position that put him at odds with a majority of his Democratic colleagues.”

A similar pattern unfolded throughout Walz’s congressional career. According to voting records compiled by Peace Action, an antiwar advocacy group, Walz often voted to repeal the War on Terror-era authorizations for the use of military force (AUMFs), while also voting against restrictions or cuts to military funding.

Walz proved to be a reliable vote for the Democratic leadership during his years in Congress.

“Domestic unrest”

Another aspect of the military service cult is never to discuss what the military actually does beyond blandishments of “serving” or “protecting” our nation. Walz spent his entire military career in the Minnesota National Guard. A cursory survey of its history reveals one that parallels many others but it’s not a good history from suppressing the Dakota uprising in 1862 to the failed effort to crush the Minnesota Teamsters strikes of 1934 to strikebreaking at Hormel in 1986 to defending the 2008 Republican convention from demonstrators.

This is not just a Minnesota story. The National Guard has deep roots in the history of the United States stretching back to the earliest days of English colonization of North America early 1600s, where colonists organized militias to defend themselves from Indigenous attacks, and destroy native resistance to their expansion. Slave patrols in the Old South were replaced, according the NAACP, by “militia-style groups who were empowered to control and deny access to equal rights to freed slaves. They relentlessly and systematically enforced Black Codes, strict local and state laws that regulated and restricted access to labor, wages, voting rights, and general freedoms for formerly enslaved people.”

The National Guards or state militias following the 1877 Railroad Uprising — which was the closest the United States ever came to a workers’ revolution — in many states had to be reorganized after they demonstrated too much sympathy for the strikers across the country. The legacy of this era is hiding in plain sight. “Cities across the U.S. still bear the physical legacy of the 1877 railroad strike,” according to the logistics Center for Transportation, “industry supported Eno To quell social unrest, many states and cities — with financial support from wealthy business owners — constructed armories resembling medieval castles to house National Guard units and suppress labor movements.”

When Walz was Governor of Minnesota he deployed National Guard troops to Minneapolis during the rebellion following George Floyd’s police murder, which was praised by President Donald Trump at the time. This was no aberration in its long history. Minnesota is quite proud of the National Guard’s role in foiling “domestic unrest.” The Minnesota Military Museum boasts:

“Since its formation in 1956, the Minnesota National Guard has been called upon to support the State of Minnesota 91 times in response to a variety of civil disturbances. Minnesota has experienced a wide range of race, labor and other social conflict since its inception and these upheavals received varied responses from state governments to include the deployment of the National Guard.”

The National Guard in many states recruit soldiers by emphasizing the heroic role they play during natural disasters, as this video demonstrates. The National Guard are sold as do-gooders or “citizen-soldiers” who rarely if ever see combat, but the post-Cold War reorganization of the U.S. military has meant that the National Guard is more integrated into U.S. military operations abroad, in sharp contrast to the Vietnam War era. Since the end of the draft in 1973, the U.S. military has had to rely on various means to recruit its soldiers.

The cult of military service has sprouted in the era of the volunteer army, and while it means that professional politicians like Tim Walz may ride this into the White House with Kamala Harris, for others it is a road to the graveyard.