Military recruiters have "tricked out" cars with the latest in sound systems, they can dress in desert camouflage, or in a fancy Marine Dress Blue uniforms with a red stripe down the pant leg and medals on their chest.
Recruiters are there after school, at lunch, at the football game, and some even chaperon the Saturday night dance. In rural schools, where all grades meet in one building, recruiters interact with children from kindergarten all the way through high school.
We hear about child soldiers fighting in foreign lands and talk about how horrible that is, but what will we do to fill our quota of troops needed for the "all-volunteer" military of today?
Boston Globe:
POMFRET, Md. — Military recruiting saturates life at McDonough High, a working-class public school where recruiters chaperon dances, students in a junior ROTC class learn drills from a retired sergeant major in uniform, and every prospect gets called at least six times by the Army alone.
USA Today:
High schools are the latest anti-war battleground, with parents, students, educators and activists around the country stepping up campaigns to prevent military recruiters from reaching students.
Many of the efforts focus on a provision in President Bush's 2002 No Child Left Behind law that requires federally funded secondary schools to give military recruiters the same access to students as they do college or job recruiters.
CBS News:
Seventeen-year-old high school journalist and honor student
David McSwane is just what Army recruiters are looking for,
but he suspected they might be lowering their standards,
reports Rick Sallinger of CBS News Denver affiliate KCNC.
"I wanted to see how far the army would go during a war
to get one more soldier," McSwane said. So he showed up at
a Golden Colorado recruiting office saying he was a dropout.
No problem, the recruiter said — and told McSwane
in a phone call he recorded — to create a fake diploma
from a non-existent school. It can be like Faith Hill Baptist
School or something — whatever you choose," the recruiter
said.
So McSwane went on-line, got a phony grade transcript and
a diploma with the name of the school the recruiter suggested
and turned it in.
"I was shocked. I'm sitting there looking at a poster that
says 'Integrity, Honor, Respect,' and he is telling me to lie,"
McSwane said.
Then the high school senior told the recruiter: "I have a
problem with drugs. I can't kick the habit — just marijuana."
The recruiter suggested purchasing a detoxification kit.
"The two times I had the guys use it — it's worked both
times. We didn't have to worry about anything," the recruiter
said.
McSwane had a friend take a video as another recruiter,
Sgt. Tim Pickel, took him to buy the so-called detox kit.
President Bush made it possible for military recruiters to get every name, address, and phone number of every student in America. It fact he made it the law. Parents have no choice in the matter, as military recruiters have the run of almost every school in the United States. It seems though that much of the world has decided that way of getting young people into the military is wrong. Here is something by Jim Lobe, of Inter Press Service:
WASHINGTON — Pressed by the demands of the "global war on terrorism", the United States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service, according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights group that charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old
Most Americans want their kids to continue on with their education after high school. They don't want their children in the Army or Marines, but the Pentagon needs bodies, and they will do almost anything to get them. Rich kids don't go into the military, and recruiters know that, so they go to poor and rural schools and make their pitch there.
The 46-page report, "Soldiers of Misfortune", which was prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for submission to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, also found that the U.S. military disproportionately targets poor and minority public school students.
Military recruiters, according to the report, use "exaggerated promises of financial rewards for enlistment, [which] undermines the voluntariness of their enlistment." In some cases documented by the report, recruiters used coercion, deception, and even sexual abuse in order to gain recruits. Perpetrators of such practices are only very rarely punished, the report found.
Do you remember how important the UN was to President Bush so that his attack on Iraq could at least appear legal? Well, here is what the UN says about recruitment of young people for a country's military:
Among other provisions, the Protocol sets an absolute minimum age for recruitment of 16 and requires that all recruitment activities directed at children under 18 be carried out with the consent of the child's parents or guardian, that any such recruitment be genuinely volunteer, and the military fully inform the child of the duties involved in military service and require reliable proof of age before enlistment.
Like I said, in many rural schools, recruiters interact with little kids, who over the years can develop a hero relationship with the recruiter all decked out in his uniform. Over the years, the children just know the nice recruiter would never lie to them. On top of that, parents have no say in a recruiter trying to entice their son or daughter into joining up.
Recruiters have a quota. Recruitment duty is a great job, much better than going back to Iraq or Afghanistan, so the recruiter will do what ever it takes to make his or her quota. If they are looking to a long stay in recruitment, they will hit on younger and younger kids that they will be able to sign up later on.
Like I said, President Bush wanted to use UN rules when they suited his purpose. It will be interesting to see what he and the Pentagon think of this report. Do you think they will be embarrassed? Do you think they will come up with their own report showing how they are going to correct the abuses of our military recruiters? My bet is that they will feel indignant — Imagine that.