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CounterPunch

October 11, 2005

Recruiting in the Schools

No Lie Left Untried

By DAVE LINDORFF

 

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 principal's office in my school district of Upper

Dublin, PA, reports that this year a significant number 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 packet 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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