Abstract
I was thrilled to read Lisa Leitz’s Fighting for Peace: Veterans and Military Families in the Anti-Iraq War Movement, a study of antiwar activist military families and veterans. My own research is on military families who avoid political activism in order to support the troops, and I have waited for an insightful examination of military families who take the antiwar path. Lisa Leitz uses the case of military peace activists to contribute to social movement literature on contradictory identities and emotions in social protest. Her analysis of the experiences of military families and service members within the context of the military institution fills a significant hole in the field of military sociology. She reveals how activists who are positioned as both insiders and outsiders in the antiwar movement shape military peace activism. As insiders to war and outsiders to the peace movement, protesters’ contrasting identities create unique “cultures of action” that shape their participation in the movement and their influence as activists. Their protesting of a war that is deeply personal for them grants visibility and authority to the peace movement and pushes the boundaries of antiwar activism.
A military spouse and peace activist herself, Leitz’s entry point into her research is a personal one. The contradictions she experiences between her connection to the military and the peace movement make her examination of the antiwar activism of military families, and of the civilian/military divide, particularly rich. The methods she employs in Fighting for Peace consist of participant observation (Leitz was active in the military antiwar movement during her research), in-depth interviews with activists, an extended ethnographic case study of how military peace groups fit into the larger network of antiwar organizations, and finally a content analysis of media coverage of antiwar protests. Her varied methods capture the complexity of her subject, from individual activists, to sub-movements, to protest tactics, to large-scale movement networks and their discursive context.
Leitz begins by describing why peace activism is so risky for military families within the context of the military institution. Military members who engage in antiwar activism often experience a host of consequences, ranging from official sanctions by the military, to estrangement from their military friends, to the psychological consequences of working through grief and loss during antiwar activism. Leitz describes the experiences of active-duty military members, veterans, and family members who, despite the risks, find a place in the antiwar movement. She finds the military-civilian divide extends to the civilians and military members involved in the peace movement. At protests and marches, veterans and military families are often separate from civilian peace groups. Echoing concerns leftover from the Vietnam protests, military peace groups often assume that civilian antiwar protesters are anti-troops. In turn, some civilian antiwar protesters marginalize military members for what they see as complacency about war—”how could you marry someone whose job it is to kill?” a civilian protester asked Leitz during her activist work (p. 108). She argues that these divisions and assumptions, together with military activists’ experiences and knowledge of war, create a unique “culture of action” within the larger peace movement.
One strength of the book is the complex description of military members. Not all military members enter the military with the same ideas and opinions. A military peace activist seems like a contradiction, but members are pulled into antiwar activism through their varied identities and experiences. The process of becoming an activist often starts with disillusionment about the war or the military’s care for service members. Just as military members have specific duties in the service, activists see their antiwar activism as a duty to their fellow service members and loved ones. Service members must figure out how to protest within the confines of military directives that prohibit political activity and public protest. They combine care-package drives with antiwar activism. Military antiwar activists actively redefine military values like patriotism, while honoring military values through practices like ensuring that veterans always march first in protests. Their personal connection to war contributes to the military-civilian divide in the movement, but their participation helps bridge that divide by bringing insider knowledge and emotional connection to the peace movement.
Leitz expands social movement theory by building on Bernstein’s theory of identity deployment during activism. When they enter the peace movement, veterans and military families develop a collective identity that centers on their emotional connection to war. Through military activists, Leitz adds three new ways that identities can be deployed in social movements to influence the audience. Military peace activists have novel identities that add personal narratives and visibility to the antiwar movement. Military antiwar activists also deploy identities of authority as “truth tellers” who have legitimate first-hand knowledge of the military and war. Finally, military peace activists deploy oppositional identities that allow them to redefine ideas like patriotism and supporting the troops to work within the antiwar movement. Through deploying these identities, military families can strengthen antiwar support from civilians and politicians and bring more service members into the movement.
In a particularly poignant chapter, Leitz highlights how military antiwar activists harness the power of collective grief to bring bystanders into the movement. Shared emotions like grief and worry bring veterans and military families into the movement, and these same emotions are also powerful movement tactics. One such tactic used by military peace activists is to build Arlington-style memorials at different public sites across the country. With a cross for each service member killed in the war, the memorials cover public spaces, visually reminding military members and civilians alike of the human cost of war. As a tactic, memorials make it possible for protesters to honor the troops while critiquing the war. The emotional impact of the memorials makes it difficult for other military members to criticize the peace movement. They become spaces for collective mourning, allowing individuals connected or not connected to the war to honor the dead. Leitz describes an experience where dozens of Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton in Southern California volunteered to help activists set up thousands of crosses. Actions like these challenge the civilian-military divide and create a shared space for both memorializing and protest.
Fighting for Peace is an engaging read and will be valuable for undergraduate and graduate courses on the military, social movements, and qualitative research methods. The book contributes to social movement theory by offering new insight into the role of emotion work and identity mobilization, particularly for sub-groups within larger social movements. Leitz’s nuanced and thoughtful analysis of the experiences of military families provides a useful contribution to military sociology scholarship. Given their unique positioning to war, politics, and protest, military veterans and their family members warrant more sociological consideration; I hope this book will inspire further work. As Leitz notes in her conclusion, official military operations may have ended in Iraq in 2011, but the war is not yet over for military families or for military peace activists who continue to advocate for loved ones who have served.