NO LIE LEFT UNTRIED- RECRUITING IN THE SCHOOLS

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No Lie Left Untried -

Recruiting In The Schools

By Dave Lindorff

10-11-5

 

When it comes to a reputation for selling snake oil, surely the army

recruiter has long been right down there in the muck with the used

car salesman and the patent medicine huckster. It's common knowledge

that the promises made by recruiters about postings and future

positions and training are worthless, and that once someone signs on

as a recruit, her or his fate is at the whim of the military. That

said, recruiters these days, desperate to fill the pipeline to Iraq's

slaughterhouse with new bodies, are resorting to an interesting new

spiel this days.

 

Word comes in from students in the Philadelphia area that recruiters

at area high schools are warning them to enlist now, when they can

pick the type of service they'd like to do, " because there's a draft

coming next year and then you'll have no choice. "

 

It's an interesting come-on because the White House and Pentagon keep

saying that there are no plans for a draft.

 

Granted, two years ago they began a crash program at the Selective

Service System to rebuild the local and regional draft boards, which

had been allowed to languish for years with seats going unfilled, and

which are essential to a functioning system of conscription. And

granted that this year was the worst year for enlistments and

reenlistments for all branches of the uniformed services since

Vietnam, with even the Marines failing to reach their quota, and with

the army raising its maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42.

 

Still, a draft would be a bitter pill for elected officials in 2006,

especially with the entire House up for re-election and with support

for the war in Iraq now in the toilet.

 

So we're left with two alternatives: either the recruiters know

something that the rest of us and our elected political leadership in

Congress don't know, or there is no draft coming next year and the

recruiters are using lies to scare young kids into signing on the

dotted line.

 

If it's the former, it's time for our representatives to hold

hearings to find out what's up. If it's the latter, schools should be

banning the recruiters from high school campuses and from college

information fairs, just as they would if an unaccredited school were

lying and saying it offers an accredited degree. Lying recruiters

have no place in a school, even if the " No Child Left Behind " law

mandates that schools provide the names, addresses and home phone

numbers of all high school juniors and seniors to recruiters.

 

While they're at it, schools should all get their act together and

provide every student aged 16 and up with an opt-out form as provided

by law, so that they or their parent(s) can return it and have that

child's contact information kept from recruiters.

 

A growing grassroots movement of students and parents is resulting in

more and more students turning in such forms. The principle's office

in my school district of Upper Dublin, PA reports that this year a

significant percentage of the junior and senior class have turned in

the opt-out forms that were sent out as part of a back-to-school

school information last August. In Montclair, NJ, 94 percent of the

junior and senior class reportedly opted out this year, giving

recruiters a pretty small group to harangue.

 

For information about protecting your child from these deceitful and

threatening recruiters of cannon-fodder for Bush's Iraq War, contact

the American Friends Service Committee's National Youth and

Militarism Movement office. (Their website has an opt-out form that

can be downloaded and printed out, to be turned in to your local high

school or school board.)

 

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