The Creeping Draft

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/070105A.shtml

 

The Creeping Draft

By Marjorie Cohn

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Friday 01 July 2005

 

A young man in the Delayed Entry Program changed his mind about

enlisting. The recruiter said to him that September 11 changed

everything - " If you don't report, that's treason and you will be

shot. " I helped him to obtain a discharge.

-- Bill Galvin, Counseling Coordinator, Center on Conscience and War

 

Like the recruiter trying to get the youth to enlist in the

military, George Bush invoked the September 11 terrorist attacks in

his June 28 speech - six times. Bush ended his address with a

recruiting pitch: " I thank those of you who have re-enlisted in an

hour when your country needs you. And to those watching tonight who

are considering a military career, there is no higher calling than

service in our armed forces. "

 

Although there is not, and never has been, any evidence of a link

between the September 11 attacks and Saddam Hussein's regime, Bush

desperately uses the September 11 tragedy to pump up support for his

increasingly unpopular misadventure in Iraq.

 

" The president's frequent references to the terrorist attack of

September 11 show the weakness of his arguments, " House Democratic

leader Nancy Pelosi said. " He is willing to exploit the sacred ground

of 9/11, knowing that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war

in Iraq. "

 

Indeed, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) said it's because of the

lessons of the September 11 attacks that he opposes Bush's approach to

keeping the troops in Iraq without any timetable for withdrawal: " The

US military presence in Iraq has become a powerful recruiting tool for

terrorists, and Iraq is now the premier training ground and networking

venue for the next generation of jihadists. "

 

Bush is in denial about the recruiting shortfall. In his speech,

he intoned, " Some Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so

important, why don't you send more troops? If our commanders on the

ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders

tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. "

 

Maj. Chris Kennedy of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment indicates

otherwise. " We have a finite number of troops, " he said. " But if you

pull out of an area and don't leave security forces in it, all you're

going to do is leave the door open for them to come back. This is what

our lack of combat power has done to us throughout the country. "

 

As American troops continue to die - more than 1,730 at latest

count - in Bush's war-that-never-had-to-be, recruiters are having an

increasingly tough time getting kids to sign up. Although the Army met

its monthly recruiting goal in June, it still faces a nearly

insurmountable battle to meet its annual quota. The active-duty Army

is still 7,800 recruits short of the 80,000 enlistees it seeks to send

to boot camp, with only three months left in the recruiting year. This

will be the first time since 1999 that the Army will have missed its

annual enlistment quota.

 

The Army provides 105,000 of the 139,000 US troops currently in

Iraq. Recruiters for the Marines, which supplies about 22,000 troops,

report spending an average of 12 hours per recruit they enlist. This

is 3 hours more than they spent only a year ago.

 

Over $3 billion a year is spent on recruitment, or about $14,000

per recruit. So frantic are recruiters to meet their goals, many have

signed up people with serious mental diseases, and have ignored

medical and police records of potential recruits.

 

" Recruiters must meet quotas, " says Kathleen Gilberd, co-chair of

the National Lawyers Guild's Military Law Project. " Those who fail to

do so face transfer to much less desirable duties, like combat, as

well as poor performance evaluations, which can affect promotion and

careers. While recruiter fraud and misconduct have been around for

years, " according to Gilberd, " the recruitment problems of the war in

Iraq have resulted in more lies as well as more complaints about

recruiter misconduct. "

 

The Army reserve has upped its eligible age limit to 39, and the

Army is increasingly recruiting high school dropouts and kids with

lower scores. Non-citizens are being targeted. The military is now

offering expedited naturalization with relaxed requirements to those

on active duty status on or since September 11, 2001.

 

Enlistees are given a date to report within 365 days of the day

they sign up. This is called the Delayed Entry Program (DEP). If, for

any reason, they change their mind within that time, they don't have

to go. A counselor with the San Diego Military Counseling Project told

me that recruiters lie. They do underhanded things to circumvent the

DEP. A recruiter might show up at the recruit's job and tell his boss

he isn't patriotic and get the recruit fired. On the day before the

recruit is due to report, the recruiter will tell him to come down to

the office to complete some paperwork. The recruit will then be kept

there overnight and sent directly to boot camp the next day. This is

kidnapping.

 

A recruiter told the New York Times recently, " The problem is that

no one wants to join. We have to play fast and loose with the rules

just to get by. "

 

The Pentagon has recently signed a contract with an outside

marketing firm to compile an extensive database on 30 million 16- to

25-year-olds to help recruiters target potential enlistees. The data

will contain detailed information about high school students ages 16

to 18, all college students, and Selective Service System registrants.

Statistics collected include Social Security numbers, e-mail

addresses, grade-point averages and ethnicities of possible

recruitment targets.

 

The No Child Left Behind Act, which Bush signed in 2002, aims to

ensure that no child is left behind when the ships leave for Iraq. It

allows the Pentagon to gather home addresses and telephone numbers of

public-school students. Schools must provide military recruiters with

this data or risk losing millions in federal education funding. The

Pentagon's new database, however, will include much more extensive

information on these kids.

 

But the Act also contains an " opt out " clause which allows parents

to sign a form preventing schools from providing information about

their children to the military.

 

Some recruiters say the greatest single obstacle to military

recruitment is parents. " The parents of the kids being sought by

recruiters to fight this unpopular war, " wrote the New York Times' Bob

Herbert, " are creating a highly vocal and potentially very effective

antiwar movement. " This is not surprising in light of the recent

Washington Post-ABC News poll that showed 60 percent of Americans

think the Iraq war has become a quagmire. A Department of Defense

survey last November found that only 25 percent of parents would

recommend military service to their children, down from 42 percent the

year before.

 

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said of the recruiters, " They're not

going to all the schools. They're going to the schools where they

figure the kids will have less chance to go to college. It's an

insidious kind of draft, quite frankly. " McDermott faults the military

for enticing students with talk of patriotism, adventure and college

funds, instead of giving them a realistic view of combat. He is among

those in Congress trying to change the law so that students " opt-in "

for recruitment; the presumption would be against the schools

providing the data to the Pentagon.

 

" There's nothing dishonorable with serving in the military, " said

McDermott, a psychiatrist who served stateside during the Vietnam War.

" But it ought to be done with your eyes open. "

 

A woman named Kathie who posted on the Military Families Speak Out

(MFSO) website tells of her 17-year-old son who joined the Marines

through the DEP just after he finished his junior year in high school.

But, " somehow, all the glossy brochures and videos about the Marines

had failed to mention the dehumanization of military training and

war, " his mother wrote. Her son has filed for conscientious objector

status.

 

Charlie C. Carlson II, Command Sergeant-Major USA Ret., also

posted on the MFSO website. He wrote: " My son recently returned from

the Iraq War, his third war, and, being fed up with Bush lies and

back-to-back-deployments, applied to be discharged from his

'indefinite enlistment' status. Six days later he was under

investigation for making 'disloyal comments' about George Bush ...

which amounted to saying in general conversation with other soldiers

that 'Bush should never have started the war' and 'Bush is no military

leader.' " Although " his 14 years of military service up to this point

was flawless, he was an excellent soldier ... he was demoted and

sentenced to 45 days of extra duty. His crime involved nothing more

than expressing his personal political opinion as guaranteed under the

Bill of Rights, the very document that he had risked his life defending. "

 

The Military Law Task Force reports that the GI Rights Hotline

received 32,000 calls in 2004 from soldiers and sailors seeking

information about conscientious objector claims, going AWOL,

disability, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and general advice about

alternatives to remaining in the military. Since the beginning of

2005, the Hotline has fielded about 3,000 calls per month. The GI

Rights Hotline number is 1-800-394-9544.

 

Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a

professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president

of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the

executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.

 

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