NCLB: Military Recruitment in the High Schools

[Moses]

"Imagine my friend's surprise when he received a call from a recruiter that had just visited his class that day. The recruiter told him he had also scheduled an appointment the next day during (my friend's) third period class so they could discuss plans for his life and the military.

I do not think that recruiters should be allowed onto high school campuses, let alone come into classes. The majority of kids on campus are not 18 and have not had enough experiences to make such life altering decisions.

The reason that recruiters are popping up in high schools everywhere is to be blamed on the No Child Left Behind Act. It plainly states that "on a request made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary school students' names, addresses, and telephone listings ... (will be given)."

As kids, we need to demand a stop of these aggressive tactics. The act states that we or our parent can contact the school district and request our name not be given out. This act violates our freedom of choice, and our privacy. I don't want this happening to any of my other friends; one was enough."

Drew Carson, junior
Roseburg High School

www.newsreview.info/article/20041122/NEWS/111220057

[Moses]

Military Recruiters Target Schools Strategically

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.

Recruiters distribute key chains, mugs, and military brochures at McDonough's cafeteria. They are trained to target students at schools like McDonough across the country, using techniques such as identifying a popular student -- whom they call a "center of influence" -- and conspicuously talking to that student in front of others.

Meanwhile, at McLean High, a more affluent public school 37 miles away in Virginia, there is no military chaperoning and no ROTC class. Recruiters adhere to a strict quota of visits, lining up behind dozens of colleges. In the guidance office, military brochures are dwarfed by college pennants. Posters promote life amid ivy-covered walls, not in the cockpits of fighter jets.

Students from McDonough are as much as six times more likely than those from McLean to join the military, a disparity that is replicated elsewhere. A survey of the military's recruitment system found that the Defense Department zeroes in on schools where students are perceived to be more likely to join up, while making far less effort at schools where students are steered toward college.

Now, as pressure mounts on recruiters to find 180,000 volunteers amid casualty counts from Iraq and Afghanistan that have surpassed 1,300 dead and 10,000 wounded, the fairness of the system by which the nation persuades young people to take on the burden of national defense is coming under increasing scrutiny.

The Globe inquiry found that recruiters target certain schools and students for heavy recruitment, and then won't give up easily: Officers call the chosen students repeatedly, tracking their responses in a computer program the Army calls "the Blueprint." Eligible students are hit with a blitz of mailings and home visits. Recruiters go hunting wherever teens from a targeted area hang out, following them to sporting events, shopping malls, and convenience stores.

[Like child predators] Officers are trained to analyze students and make a pitch according to what will strike a motivational chord -- job training, college scholarships, adventure, signing bonuses, or service to country. A high-school recruiting manual describes the Army as "a product which can be sold."

The manual offers tips for recruiters to make themselves "indispensable" to schools; suggests tactics such as reading yearbooks to "mysteriously" know something about a prospect to spark the student's curiosity; [Like child predators] notes that "it is only natural for people to resist" and suggests ways to turn aside objections; and lists techniques for closing the deal, such as the "challenge close":

"This closing method works best with younger men," the manual reads. "You must be careful how you use this one. You must be on friendly terms with your prospect, or this may backfire. It works like this: When you find difficulty in closing, particularly when your prospect's interest seems to be waning, challenge his ego by suggesting that basic training may be too difficult for him and he might not be able to pass it. Then, if he accepts your challenge, you will be a giant step closer to getting him to enlist."

Varying targets

The Defense Department spends $2.6 billion each year on recruiting, including signing bonuses, college funds, advertising, recruiter pay, and administering the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. The military pitches the test to schools as a free career exploration program, but which its manual notes is also "specifically designed" to "provide the recruiter with concrete and personal information about the student."

Nearly all efforts are aimed at impending or recent high school graduates. But the marketing message is not targeted equally, acknowledged Kurt Gilroy, who directs recruiting policy for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Although the military strives to maintain a presence everywhere "to give everyone an opportunity to enlist if they so choose," he said, it concentrates on places most likely to "maximize return on the recruiting dollar [because] the advertising and marketing research people tell us to go where the low-hanging fruit is. In other words, we fish where the fish are."

But targeting some schools more than others raises questions about fairness. While some students at targeted schools are eager to join, others may be unduly manipulated into signing up.

David Walsh, a psychologist who has written a book about the impact of media on the adolescent brain, says teenage brains are not yet fully developed. Studies have shown that teens' brain structures make them less independent of group opinion and less likely to consider long-term consequences than adults a few years older.

For the masses of teenagers who are not peer group leaders, Walsh said, an aggressive sales pitch can sway their decisions -- especially if the recruiter knows how to get coaches, counselors, and popular students to endorse enlisting.

Indeed, the Army trains its recruiters to do exactly that.

"Some influential students such as the student president or the captain of the football team may not enlist; however, they can and will provide you with referrals who will enlist," the Army's school recruiting handbook says. "More important is the fact that an informed student leader will respect the choice of enlistment."

Walsh says an approach like this is certain to persuade some teens at targeted schools to join up, while essentially identical teens at other schools will make other choices.

"What we end up doing is maintaining the gap between the haves and the have-nots, because they are the ones who are targeted to put their lives on the line and make sacrifices for the rest of us," Walsh said. "The kids with more options, we don't bother with them."

Different paths

Principals and teachers play a role in determining whether military recruitment succeeds. In schools where educators are skeptical of the military, recruiters are shut out beyond the minimum required by President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act: two visits a year per service, as well as a list with every student's name, address, and phone number.

In other schools, the people who fill those same influential roles serve as advocates for the military.

At McDonough, guidance counselor [!!!!!!!!!!!!] Wanda Welch, who notes that her son recently completed four years in the Air Force, talks of the virtues of defending the country. Sitting near military posters and brochures, she says she appreciates the services recruiters give to the school and tells students that "if they don't know what they want to do, enlisting can be a good choice." [What the?! ]

At McLean, counselor Isobel Rahn, who notes that she came of age amid the Vietnam War protests, says the school requires recruiters to sign in like any other outsider because "we protect our kids."

Sitting near a poster announcing visits from 23 colleges in the coming two weeks, she says she tells students that the military offers benefits but that "the con in 2004 is that you can get killed."

Over the past year, as casualties in Iraq have filled the news, recruiting has become much more difficult. For the 2003-04 recruiting year, which ended in September, the Army's active-duty and reserves recruiting effort narrowly met its quota, but the Army National Guard missed its goal of 56,000 soldiers by about 5,000 -- its first shortfall in a decade.

"I think Iraq has hurt recruiting," said Sergeant Kevin Bidwell, who commands the Army recruiting station that includes McDonough High. "People automatically think that as soon as they join up, they're going to go over there."

Bidwell said he tells prospects that such a fear is a "misperception,because objectively you don't know for sure. The Army is a million strong, and if you look at statistics over there, there's under 100,000 from all four branches." Actually, about 140,000 US troops are serving in Iraq. [So he lies, of course]

The number of students who go from the halls of McDonough to boot camp is substantial: 15 of its 322 seniors last year had decided to enlist by graduation, according to a state website. Local recruiters say that number will rise as they continue to contact targeted McDonough students over the next two years.

Far fewer students enlist coming out of McLean. Precise statistics are not available, but Rahn said that each year between three and seven of her roughly 400 seniors join the military.

Marketing gap

Those familiar with military recruiting say lower family incomes make McDonough students more likely to enlist, but that marketing also plays a major role.

(continued)

[Moses]

Richard I. Stark Jr., a retired Army officer who once worked on personnel issues for the secretary of defense, said he thinks the targeted hard sell draws in students who otherwise might not join, while failing to find potential recruits at other schools.

"It's hard to imagine that it doesn't influence the proclivities of those people to make a judgment for themselves about the military," Stark said. "Once you start [recruiting at a school heavily], it's like a snowball. As more people from the school join the military, they go back on leave, walk around in their spiffy uniforms, brag about accomplishments. That generates interest by more recruits."

Stark said the recruiting marketing gap is a problem only insofar as it deprives the military of qualified students from a full range of high schools and all walks of life. But the recruiting system has drawn more aggressive critics.

Representative Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York, says society places what should be a shared burden of defense only on those poor enough to be induced to risk their lives for a chance at college or a signing bonus. Those who sign up with the infantry for five years get $12,000 in cash or a smaller bonus, as well as up to $70,000 in college aid.

"These young people are not 'volunteers,' " Rangel said. "They're not there, because they're patriotic. They're there they need the money."

Sergeant Isaac Horton, McDonough's Army recruiter, sees it differently. For him, enlisting is a way to improve the lives of young people with few options. In his pitches to recruits, he uses his life as an example, talking of returning home to find many of his high school friends either dead or in jail.

"If I had to do it over again, I would do it," Horton said. "Look at the crime rate in D.C. -- I'll take my chances in the military."

To show his displeasure with military recruiting, Rangel filed a bill in early 2003, before the Iraq invasion, proposing to revive the national draft. Congress killed the measure.

A class issue

Rangel's critique also has a strong sense of racial grievance, but data suggest that the military is not putting its energy into high schools attended by poor minority students. Instead of race, the clearest indicator of how hard a sell a student will receive is class. Generally, recruiters focus on the lower middle class in places with little economic opportunity. [And how convenient that Cheney-monkey Bush has decreased economic opportunity so substantially]

The Defense Department does not track the socioeconomic background of its recruits, although Rangel has commissioned a Government Accountability Office study of the matter. The military also does not collect data for how many recruits it gets from which high schools; that information gets no higher than local recruiting commands.

But in 1999, the RAND Corp. conducted a study seeking patterns among qualified high school seniors.

"It turned out that kids who were of upper income were more likely to go to college, but it also turned out that kids from lower incomes had better chances of getting need-based financial aid to college," said Beth Asch, a RAND military personnel analyst. "So when you look at who goes to the military, you tend to get those in the middle." [They are literally killing the middle class]

Local recruiters use a computer system that combines socioeconomic data from the census, high school recruiting data for all four services, ZIP codes with high numbers of young adults, and other information to identify the likeliest candidates.

The obvious school districts that get screened out are those affluent enough that most of their students are probably college-bound. But recruiters also put less energy into underclass high schools, because they do not want prospects who might be ineligible because they drop out of school, have criminal records, or do not score high enough on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.

Every three months, each service hands recruiting station commanders a quota to meet. The Army pegs its signing bonuses to the specific jobs with the greatest openings. Highly qualified recruits are much more coveted than low-scoring prospects, who can do only basic tasks.

But this year, the Army is relaxing its rules to help fill its quotas. The number of high school dropouts allowed to enlist will rise 25 percent -- accounting for 10 percent of recruits this year, compared with 8 percent last year. [How convenient that there are so many more drop-outs thanks to Bush's NCLB law!] The percentage allowed to enlist despite borderline scores on a service aptitude test will rise by 33 percent -- from 1.5 percent last year to 2 percent this year. [Scooping up more learning disabled kids]

For recruiters on the ground such as Bidwell, it will be a tough year. So focusing on schools and ZIP codes that have had the highest rates of enlistment is good business sense.

"They have a higher propensity to enlist, so why not concentrate your efforts there?" Bidwell said.

(Military Recruitment Handbook follows)

[Moses]

Year-round effort

The military's recruitment handbook suggests ways that officers can make themselves influential in targeted schools every month:

July: Many faculty members are prior service or are current members of the United States Army Reserve. Try to identify these individuals and develop them as COIs [centers of influence]. Your goal is to develop as many COIs as possible in the schools. . . . Also, have something to give them (pen, calendar, cup, donuts, etc.) and always remember Secretaries' Week with a card and flowers.

August: The football team usually starts practicing in August. Contact the coach and volunteer to assist in leading calisthenics or calling cadence during team runs.

September: HS [high school] registration may be hectic. Go to the HS, offer your assistance in registration and any other administrative help you can give. Remember: You need all the blueprint information on your HS you can get. . . . Deliver donuts and coffee for the faculty once a month. This will help in scheduling classroom presentations and advise teachers of the many Army opportunities. . . . Hispanic Heritage Month. Participate in events as available.

October: Many schools publish the first issue of their newspaper in October. Coordinate with the . . . staff to place an advertisement. . . . Get involved with local Boy Scout troops. Scoutmasters are typically happy to get any assistance you can offer. Many scouts are HS students and potential enlistees or student influencers. . . . Order personal presentation items (pens, bags, mouse pads, mugs) as needed monthly for special events.

November: Distribute new schedules for the basketball season. Assemble and offer a color guard for the opening home game. Prior to Thanksgiving, many student organizations gather food baskets for needy citizens. Offer your assistance and get involved. Offer your RS [recruiting station] as a collection point and volunteer to distribute the food baskets.

December: By December our future soldier population is substantial in several schools. Inform the principal, in writing, about the educational benefits earned by his or her students.

January: Obtain a list of midterm graduates and contact them as soon as possible. Turn up the tempo on contacting your juniors. . . . Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is in January. Wear your dress blues and participate in school events commemorating this holiday.[!!!!!!]

February: Contact the HS athletic director and arrange for an exhibition basketball game between the faculty and Army recruiters. This is an excellent way to build rapport in the HS. . . . Black History Month. Participate in events as available.

Prepare certificates for those faculty and staff members who have aided you in your HS recruiting efforts. . . . Continue to advertise in school newspapers and conduct class presentations. Award certificates of appreciation to key influencers.

April: Arrange now for next school year's Armed Service Vocational Aptitude Battery testing dates with the school administrator. Track and field meets begin. Offer to be a timekeeper or a coach's assistant. Baseball season starts. Offer assistance to the coach.

May: Since Memorial Day occurs in May, there are normally many patriotic events in the community and in the schools during this month. Contact the HS to find out what events they are involved with and offer any assistance possible.

June: Coordinate with school officials so you can present certificates to future soldiers who have enlisted during the school year. Assist in arranging a color guard for the graduation ceremony. Coordinate with school officials to determine whether they can use your assistance during summer school. The faculty is normally shorthanded during the summer and they will probably welcome your help. SOURCE: USAREC PAMPHLET 350-13 © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.



— Charlie Savage
Boston Globe
-11-29
www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2004/11/29/military_recruiters_target_schools_strategically/

[Moses]

Marine Remembered for Dedication to Duty, Commitment

Publication Date: 2004-12-04

  By Susan Ohanian  <br>
A community remembers a high school graduate.


A young man was buried in Vermont yesterday, his football jersey hanging at the front of the church. He is the 15th Vermonter to die in Iraqi since the war began in March 2003.

Funny thing: None of the 900 people gathered to pay tribute said anything about a high school degree being useless, about whether this young man mastered algebra and calculus. They talked instead about his talent at putting together model airplanes and his talent at football.

This young man graduated from high school in 2003, joined the Marines, and was sent to Iraq last summer.

Gov. Jim Douglas and U.S. Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., led the delegation of official mourners. Maj. Gen. Martha Rainville, the head of the Vermont National Guard, was there, too.

The governor said that this young man "was a shining example of whom Vermonters will be ever proud."

High school graduates do have their uses to this administration. Ask any military recruiter.

[Moses]

 DefenseWatch "The Voice of the Grunt"
12-06-2004

Hack's Target

Uncle Sam Wants Your Kids – Now!
By David H. Hackworth
 <br>We’ll soon have 150,000 U.S. troops stuck in the ever-expanding Iraqi quagmire, a number that will probably grow even larger before Iraq holds elections presently scheduled for the end of January ’05.
 <br>Maintaining such a force is a logistical and personnel nightmare for every grunt in Iraq. And according to several Pentagon number crunchers, it’s also driving the top brass bonkers.
 <br>Meanwhile the insurgents continue cutting our supply lines and whacking our fighting platoons and supporters, who attrit daily as soldiers and Marines fall to enemy shots, sickness or accidents. Empty platoons lose fights, so these casualties have to be replaced ASAP.
 <br>Since this tragic war kicked off in March 2003, the United States has evacuated an estimated 50,000 KIA, WIA and non-battle casualties from Iraq back to the States – leaving 50,000 slots that have had to be filled.
 <br>The job of finding fresh bodies to keep our units topped off falls mainly to the Army Recruiting Command. But the “making-quota” jazz put out by the Recruiting Command and the Pentagon to hype their billion-dollar recruiting effort, with its huge TV expenditure and big expansion of recruiters during the past year, is pure unadulterated spin. Not that this is anything new. The Command has a sorry reputation for using smoke and mirrors to cover up poor performance.
 <br>“Hack, here’s a snapshot of how little of our 1st Quarter mission has been achieved,” says an Army recruiter. “Look at it from a perspective of a business releasing quarterly earnings information. To keep unit manning levels up out in the field, especially in Iraq, there’s no question our recruiting mission is in serious trouble.”<br> <br>“These are totals for the 41 USAREC (Recruiting Command) Battalions, so these stats represent the USAREC mission accomplishment:
 <br>Regular Army Volume (all RA contracts):
 <br>Mission: 25,322
Achieved: 12,703 (50.17 percent)
 <br>Army Reserve Volume:
 <br>Mission: 7,373
Achieved: 3,206 (43.48 percent).”<br> <br>The Army National Guard is faring no better. A Guard retention NCO says: “The word is out on the streets of Washington, D.C. ‘Do not join the Guard.’ I see these words echoing right across the U.S.A.”<br> <br>By the end of this recruiting year, the Regular Army, Reserves and Guard could fall short more than 50 percent of its projected requirement, or about 60,000 new soldiers. And according to many recruiters, quality recruits are giving way to mental midgets who have a hard time telling their left foot from their right.
 <br>Shades of our last years in Vietnam.
 <br>“The bottom line is that Recruiting Command is in trouble,” says another recruiter with almost 30 years of service. “The Army has re-instituted ‘stop loss,’ which is basically a backdoor draft. They’re stopping people from retiring or completing their enlistment and leaving the Army. They do this fairly often, mostly in August and September, depending upon how far behind they believe they’ll be at the end of September.
 <br>“I believe the Army will have to drastically change what they offer to enlistees to overcome what’s happening in Iraq. The war is ugly, and not many kids want to enlist to be blown up.”<br> <br>Moms and dads are outraged about desperate Army recruiters on a relentless campaign to sign up their teenagers. High-school kids are actually running away from recruiters like they were George Romero’s living dead.
 <br>“Recruiters have called my son a minimum of 20 times in the two years since he finished high school,” a dad reports. “The phone calls usually come in clusters. I answered five calls in a two- or three-week span. Each time a recruiter calls, he receives the same polite, respectful response from me or my son ... no interest, and please take the name off the list. When asked why the name hasn’t been removed, excuses are made. While recruiters are brief with me, when my son is on the phone, the sales tactics are clever, prolonged and very high-pressure.”
 <br>“I took the latest recruiting call. This time I also called the supervisor at the local Army recruiting office, who’s promised to take his name off the list. She made excuses for the repeated calls despite the fact that five calls were on her watch.”
 <br>Unless a miracle happens and the new Iraqi security force decides to stop running and start fighting, we’ll be in Iraq for a long time. Most likely with a draftee force.
 <br>-- Eilhys England contributed to this column.
 <br>Col. David H. Hackworth (USA Ret.) is SFTT.org co-founder and Senior Military Columnist for DefenseWatch magazine. For information on his many books, go to his home page at Hackworth.com, where you can sign in for his free weekly Defending America. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831. His newest book is “Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts.”  © 2004 David H. Hackworth. Please send Feedback responses to [e-mail].

[Moses]

The US Military is Luring and Brainwashing American Children[/b]

From Moral Individuals to Obedient Recruits...If They Survive <br>
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst <br>
12/15/04 -- “When the prisoners first arrived at the camp, widely-published photographs showed them blindfolded, chained, and manacled...” BBC News

“From the time they are driven onto the base, recruits are told to keep their heads down and eyes closed. The less they know about the base’s layout, the less likely they are to try to escape.”
The Virginian-Pilot 

Beneath the photo of two Marines screaming insanely into a young recruit’s face, the Virginian-Pilot asks, “What would make someone sign up for this?”<br>
The question implies that there must be a very good reason for anybody to volunteer for this abusive nonsense, especially since more than 350 marines have been killed since March 2003.

But the article, in a departure from the usual military-worshipping tone of that newspaper, provides a surprisingly honest answer:

“They were moved to enlist, they say, by a combination of factors. As freshmen and sophomores in high school, some watched their country endure the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and wanted to do something in response. Others are interested in money for college. Most say they sought discipline and a chance to do meaningful work.”

Others are interested in money for college? How many others? Answer: A lot.

In psychological research, it is well known that a bias known as “self report” causes interviews such as this one to produce misleading results. That is, we will give whatever explanation makes us look good, receive rewards, or avoid punishment.

This doesn’t mean that our answers are untrue, it just means that we keep to ourselves those motivations that might not place us, our family or our comrades in the most favorable light.

The fact that any of the marines interviewed by that reporter admitted their real motivation for joining this violent organization—to fund college and for other financial, work-related or other pragmatic reasons—suggests that many more would have given this answer if only it sounded a bit more “patriotic”.

Saying they joined because they wanted to “do something” after 9/11 sounds vague and rather absurd, considering their age (many were high school freshmen or sophomores three years ago) but a lot more socially acceptable.

But by this point, for those particular young people, it doesn’t matter why they joined up—it’s too late to change their minds. No matter how young or troubled and no matter how dishonestly they were recruited, they are now the property of the US government.

In the only form of enslavement that’s legal in the US, the military now owns them—body, mind and soul. And once they’re in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever the next war may be, they can be held against their will for as long as their leaders wish.

So much for all the Bush administration’s chatter about faith, morality and family values: It wants to take your children from you, change their moral values, and transform them into playing pieces for its global game of Risk.

Luring Our Children into the Military Cult

I know kids who deeply regret signing up for the military, now that Mission Accomplished is killing more and more young people as every day goes by. Several admit now that they enlisted simply because their families had no money for college.

One quiet, polite boy from a poor neighborhood used to tell my daughter that he’d signed up because he needed “discipline”. But over time, he started telling the truth: He didn’t know how to get a job, and nobody in his family knew how to help him. His father left a long time ago, and his mother is out of the picture. He’s grown up with his grandparents, one of whom died this year, sending him into a tailspin of confusion and loneliness.

As he saw it at the tender age of 17, his future was either McDonald’s or the military. The “discipline” he thought he needed was really direction, and hope. But in our conservatively compassionate world, the only people who sought him out at his high school were the military recruiters. Like all his friends, this child wasn’t left behind when the men in uniform came to call.

I was sitting in a Virginia high school office a couple of years ago when a recruiter approached another inner-city boy clothed in ill-fitting jeans and a stained shirt:

“Hey, if you sign up today, you’ll get a $5000 bonus, right away! Wouldn’t you like $5000? You know, girls like guys who have a car. You could get a really cool used car with $5000! I’ll be back after school, meet me here and we’ll take care of the paperwork, okay?”<br>
A Tennesse kid says that he enlisted because he didn’t think he was “college material”—but now sees friends going to college who made far worse grades than he did last year, when they were high school seniors. “Now I think I could have gone to college! But now I’m trapped.” A poor boy who’s about to be shipped off to an Iraq “hotspot”, his voice is subdued, hopeless, resigned.

Two months ago, a Midwestern high school senior announced that he signed up for the Marines because his anti-war girlfriend broke up with him, and he knew this would upset her.  At the time he said "I don't care if I live or die, so why not join the Marines and go to Iraq?"

Well now he's got a new girlfriend and no longer feels nihilistic. But the die is cast: The Marines won't understand that he was just enlisting on the rebound.

For all these teens who aren’t even old enough to buy liquor, the decision to sign up is considered irrevocable. If they grow up a bit, and realize that they have signed a piece of paper before they’d learned how to do their own laundry, they are given no opportunity to say, “I made a mistake; this isn’t for me”.

If they try to do so, they’ll be hunted down like dogs, held up in the media as a coward or a “deserter”, and court-martialed by that same military that lured them in with promises of fast cars and pretty girlfriends.

Military ads appeal to confused kids who are looking for quick money, a way out of dead end jobs, or a sense of purpose. Many, in their poorly funded schools and impoverished neighborhoods, have never felt important or worthy of respect.

This is the lure of today's humilation-focused military: Sign yourself over to us, accept whatever we dish out in perfect submission, and we’ll give you a prepackaged future (if you survive) and a uniform that other people will respect.

Forget Faith-Based Values:
From Human Being to Recruit

Trouble is, the kind of “respect” that the young woman in the photo is learning and has been promised from others, if she survives the boot camp hazing, is nothing more than fear. This fear instills the longing to one day be able to do to others as others are now doing to us.

And so it goes with every youth who enters that cult-like world of radical authoritarianism and leader-worship. Rather than strengthening their minds and bodies through positive coaching and training, today's imperial armies need willing killers and cannon fodder in a hurry, so they've resorted to classic brainwashing techniques perfected by China and the USSR long ago, to purge conscience and instill the urge to hate, to kill without qualm, and to place oneself in harm's way without argument.

Even the strongest person may be unable to resist brainwashing under the inescapable conditions of boot camp and specialized training:

“It is a fallacy that intellectual awareness of what is happening can always prevent a man from being indoctrinated. Once he becomes exhausted and suggestible, or the brain enters the “paradoxical” or “ultra-paradoxical” phases, insight can be disturbed; even the knowledge of what to expect may be of little help in warding off breakdown.

"And afterwards, he will rationalize the newly-implanted beliefs and offer his friends sincere and absurd explanations of why his attitude has changed so suddenly.”
    William Sargent, MD, Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing


....Take another look at that photo of garden-variety degradation in the name of “elite” Marine training, then look at this photo. One is wearing orange, the other is wearing camouflage, but both are undergoing an initiation, a hazing, a brainwashing.

While the purpose of the initiations are different—one is to accept one’s new status as an obedient, submissive “enemy combatant”, and one is to become an obedient, submissive recruit—the process of breaking down the self and purging one’s sense of decency, morality, and self-respect is the same. Just because the Golden Rule is ignored doesn't mean its law isn't operational: The urge to do to others as somebody has done to them, becomes engrained in both.

Whether prisoner or guard, enemy or soldier, when we abuse people we shouldn’t be surprised when they return the favor.

 <i>Dr. Teresa Whitehurst <[e-mail]> is a clinical psychologist and the author of Jesus on Parenting (2004). She teaches parenting workshops, offers Nonviolent Christianity seminars, and writes a column, Democracy, Faith and Values. http://www.jesusonthefamily.org</i>

[Moses]

 <br>  Friday, December 17, 2004   •   Twin Falls, Idaho
 WORLD/NATIONAL NEWS

Soldier's Wound Allegedly Was Arranged

Los Angeles Times
PHILADELPHIA -- A U.S. Army combat veteran on leave from a unit headed back to Iraq arranged for a friend to shoot him in the leg in an attempt to avoid returning to the war zone, Philadelphia police said Thursday.

Specialist Marquise Roberts, 23, first told police that he had been shot Tuesday afternoon as he walked past two men who were arguing on a north Philadelphia street. But police said their investigation found that Roberts actually was shot once in the leg by a friend as part of a scheme to avoid returning to Iraq.
Roberts, who served seven months in Iraq during the U.S. invasion in 2003, was due to report back to Fort Stewart, Ga., on Wednesday, police said. He is a supply specialist with the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), according to commanders at Fort Stewart. They said Roberts, who has been in the army since 2001, was on two-week holiday leave to his home in Philadelphia.
The division, which helped topple the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad in April 2003, has been ordered to begin heading back to Iraq next month. Roberts returned from Iraq in mid-summer.
Philadelphia Police Inspector William Colarulo said Roberts was shot by his wife's cousin, Roland Fuller, 28, in north Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon. Officials at a nearby hospital called police after Roberts sought medical treatment -- standard policy for gunshot wounds, Colarulo said.

Roberts told police that he heard a gunshot as he walked past a street dispute and then realized he had been shot in the leg. But Fuller told detectives that Roberts had been shot during an attempted robbery, Colarulo said.

Detectives who searched the scene where Roberts said he was shot found no bullet casings, blood or witnesses who recalled seeing or hearing gunshots.

"The investigation determined that he (Roberts) didn't want to go back to Iraq and staged the shooting to avoid having to return," Colarulo said.

Lt. James Clark, who directed the investigation, said Roberts "said he had done seven months there and he didn't want to go back. He wanted to stay with his family."

Police said Roberts was treated for the wound and released into police custody Wednesday. Roberts and Fuller were charged with conspiracy, recklessly endangering another person and filing a false police report. Fuller also was charged with aggravated assault and weapons offenses.

Roberts was shot with a handgun, according to police, who said the gun was not the soldier's military weapon.

Pentagon officials said they could recall no instance in which a soldier on leave from Iraq or Afghanistan was accused of deliberately harming himself or herself in order to avoid returning to duty.

Of the 136,000 soldiers and Department of Army civilians who took home leaves as of early November, they said, only one soldier has been classified as AWOL. Under the Rest and Recuperation Leave Program, soldiers get two weeks at home midway through their deployment.

More than 5,000 soldiers have been charged with desertion from bases in the United States and overseas since the invasion of Iraq in early 2003, according to Pentagon statistics. But the number of desertions the fiscal year ending in September was half the number for the fiscal year ending the month of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- before troops were sent to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The military defines desertion as more than 30 consecutive days absent without leave.

Two soldiers have received publicity for resisting their return to duty in Iraq while on home leave.

Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, 28, a National Guardsman from Florida, refused to return to Iraq after completing home leave in October 2003. He asked to be declared a conscientious objector.
Earlier this month, Specialist David Qualls filed a lawsuit challenging the Army's authority to extend his service and threatened not to return to Iraq while on home leave in Arkansas. A federal judge denied Qualls' request to remain in the United States until his case was heard, and his lawyer said he would return to Iraq.

More than 800 former soldiers have failed to comply with orders to get back in uniform and report for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Army reported in October. Those ex-soldiers, called back to duty under the military's Individual Ready Reserve program, were not charged with desertion. Most had requested delays or exemptions for school, medical emergencies, or family hardships.

In Roberts' case, his return to duty is delayed indefinitely. He was in custody Thursday night under $50,000 bail while awaiting a court hearing, police said.

Military officials said Roberts also could face punishment under the military justice system. They said the military normally waits until civilian courts have ruled before deciding whether to charge soldiers in military court.

[Moses]

"When you look at the war, and you look at the reasons that took us to war, and you don't find that any of the things that we were told that we're going to war for turned out to be true, when you don't find there are weapons of mass destruction, and when you don't find that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and you see that you're not helping the people and the people don't want you there, to me, there's no military contract and no military duty that's going to justify being a part of that war." –Camilo Mejia

[Moses]

PR soldier who refused Iraq duty is declared a deserter

Saturday, December 18th, 2004.
SAN JUAN (AP) – The U.S. Navy decided that Pablo Paredes, the soldier of a Puerto Rican mother and an Ecuadorean father who refused to participate in the war in Iraq, is a deserter. It will seek his arrest, however he is expected to turn himself in to authorities on Friday.

Lt. Jonathan Groveman, spokesman for the Southeastern Region of the Navy in San Diego, Calif., said Paredes, 23, was declared a deserter because he had announced his intentions to not fight in Iraq.

“He is considered a deserter because he made statements declaring his intention to not serve (in Iraq). We have notified the pertinent authorities to proceed with his arrest,” Groveman said in a telephone interview with a Puerto Rican newspaper.

Paredes had orders to sail to the Persian Gulf Dec. 6 from the naval base in San Diego, but he refused to do so and held a protest on the pier in which he announced his opposition to the war in Iraq, calling it “criminal and immoral.”
  <br>

[Moses]

Military's Test at High Schools Brings a Salvo of Concerns


A few days before her holiday break, South River High School junior Emily Hawse took a three-hour standardized test offered by military officials that suggests possible careers for students while helping to identify promising recruits.

Hawse, 16, of Davidsonville said she did not realize until the day of the exam that it had a military link. She said students were told not to go to the Edgewater school that morning if they didn't want to take the test, called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.

"We couldn't go to class if we wanted to," said Hawse, who is undecided about her future but said it doesn't include the military.

At a time of heightened awareness of military recruitment, the aptitude test offered free by the Defense Department is drawing criticism.

Although Baltimore area school districts have made the test available for years, some Anne Arundel County students and their parents complained recently when the test was scheduled during class time at some schools, and it was unclear to some students that they could opt out.

The tests have also raised concerns in other places. In a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb, a high school junior refused to take the exam. And critics of the program say they field inquiries from all over the country. They say military recruiters use the test to identify students with skills that would be useful in the armed forces.

"You're getting hot leads as opposed to cold leads," said Oskar Castro, an associate with the Youth and Militarism Program of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group.

Area school and military officials defend the test as a valuable career-planning tool.

"This is actually a community service that the Department of Defense provides to help every generation of youth find where they fit in the world about them," said Chris Arendt, deputy director of accession policy at the Pentagon.

In the Baltimore area, nearly 1,400 Anne Arundel students took the test last school year, along with about 1,000 from Baltimore County, nearly 500 from Baltimore, 181 from Carroll County and 573 from Howard County. In Howard, three schools with ROTC programs offer the test, school district officials said.

Baltimore administers the test to seniors on a voluntary basis, generally at career and technology schools, and at schools with ROTC programs. Baltimore County makes it available to students who request it.

Anne Arundel County school officials say the test is not mandatory but acknowledge that the message might not have been clear to all students, given the many standardized tests they must take.

"This is one of the first times where kids get to choose whether they take a test," said Jonathan Brice, spokesman for the Anne Arundel schools. Next year, officials said, they will emphasize that the test is voluntary.

The test, which has been given to recruits since 1968, measures verbal and math skills, and knowledge in areas such as automotive maintenance and repair, electronics and mechanics. It was expanded to schools at the urging of the federal Labor and Education departments, Defense Department officials say.

Military recruitment of high school students has come under scrutiny recently with the war in Iraq continuing. Such efforts were criticized in the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11.

In addition, the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires schools that receive federal funding to provide military recruiters with students' names, addresses and phone numbers unless parents have opted out. Schools also must allow recruiters to have the same access to campuses that colleges have.

The military's vocational aptitude test is not part of the No Child Left Behind requirement, and the test's "career explorations" Web site says students who agree to take the test aren't making any obligations.

Nationwide, 722,450 students took the test during the past school year, according to the Defense Department. That includes more than 8,700 Maryland students from 175 schools.

The assessment has evolved several times since it was developed from tests used by branches of the military, said Arendt, a Navy captain. He said he remembers taking an early version of the test while he was in high school in the 1970s.

"It gave me, as a student, a good idea about what I could and could not look forward to in careers," he said.

Students or parents who are concerned about how information about them is used have options, he said. One is to indicate on the test that they do not want their results released to military recruiters.

"They get the results, and it's transparent to us," Arendt said.

Some students and their families aren't aware of that option, Castro said. For more than 18 years, the committee has answered questions about the test from families who encounter it in their schools.

As for casting the test as a career-planning tool, he said, "We think it's a disingenuous use of the test."

Area school officials say the tests can suggest opportunities in military and civilian jobs.

"It's a career-interest inventory," said Rhonda C. Gill, Anne Arundel's director of pupil services. "It's not done in any way, shape or form to focus kids on going into the military."

In Carroll County, all seven high schools have made the test available to students since the late 1970s, said Barbara Guthrie, the school system's guidance supervisor. Typically, a handful of students sign up for it at each school, she said, but at Winters Mill High School, 70 students took the test this year.

"It's helpful to students and parents as well, but you use it in combination with lots of other assessments in schools to help students figure out future plans and what their abilities are," Guthrie said.

Although some Anne Arundel schools administer the test more formally than schools in other counties, officials noted that students aren't required to take it. Of 250 South River juniors, 70 chose not to take the test on one of the two days it was offered last month.

While ninth-, 10th- and 11th-graders were taking the PSAT countywide in October, a little more than half of the seniors at Broadneck High School took the military test, said guidance counselor Joe Kozik, as did seniors at North County and other high schools. At Broadneck, several parents called to get more information about the test.

"I think the Iraq war has certainly raised concerns on multiple levels," said Broadneck Principal Cindy Hudson.

The test serves a purpose for military recruiters. Kozik noted that recruiters are especially interested in the test results of five Broadneck students this year.

Because of the reporting requirements of No Child Left Behind, Kozik said, "whether you take this test or not ... we by law have to provide your name to the federal government."

At South River High School, some juniors left their classes to take the test two weeks ago. Others remained in class or went to school later rather than take it.

Emily Hawse said knowing the test's military connection earlier would not have kept her from taking it. "I was thinking that this might help me for college," she said.

Her mother, Monica M. Hawse, agreed that the test would be useful but added, "I think everybody - kids, parents, teachers - should know it's affiliated with the military."

Megan Lloyd, 16, a junior from Edgewater, said she learned about the test when a military recruiter spoke to her class. She was interested in anything that could help her decide what path to pursue and was not concerned about the military connection.

"The man who came into our social studies class made me feel comfortable about it," she said after classes one day.

"It's not like they're going to hound you about it," said fellow Edgewater resident Charlie Fischer, 16, who is considering the armed forces and college.

"Or at least, we hope not," Lloyd said.

Sun staff writers Athima Chansanchai and Laura Loh contributed to this article.


— Liz F. Kay
Baltimore Sun
2005-01-03
www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/annearundel/bal-te.ar.test03jan03,1,2356103.story?coll=bal-local-headlines

[Moses]

Leave No Sales Pitch Behind[/color][/size]


The fine print in President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act is slowly dawning on the parents of high school students across the country as the war in Iraq drags on: military recruiters can blitz youngsters with uninvited phone calls to their homes and on-campus pitches replete with video war games. This is all possible under a little noted part of the law that requires schools to provide the names, addresses (campus addresses, too) and phone numbers of students or risk losing federal aid. The law provides an option to block the hard-sell recruitment - but only if parents demand in writing that the school deny this information to the military.

Hard-pressed recruiters have stepped up the sales pitch to meet wartime manpower shortages. One sergeant filmed by the NewsHour on PBS recently sounded like a salesman from David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross as he exhorted a campus group: "I mean, where else can you get paid to jump out of airplanes, shoot cool guns, blow stuff up and travel, seeing all kinds of different countries?"

The Pentagon insists that it enjoys the same entree to high school students as college and corporate recruiters. But clearly, No Child Left Behind has given the military a thumb on the scale with the threat of lost money. Some students on the cusp of adulthood describe the recruiters as merely offering another option in life; others complain of outright pestering.

Recruiters have learned to focus on the most promising markets - typically lower-middle-class schools. No one can complain of unfairness in a draft-free society where many have found fine careers in the military, with recruitment part of the process. But it is objectionable when the government tucks a decided advantage for its wartime armies' salesmanship into a law invoked in the name of children.

— Editorial
New York Times
2005-01-04
www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/opinion/04tue3.html

[Moses]

[Moses]

Recruiter: Parents, volunteer your kids or draft will be your fault

www.registerguard.com/news/2005/06/03/a1.nat.recruit.0603.html


By Damien Cave
The New York Times

Rachel Rogers, a single mother of four in upstate New York, did not worry about the presence of National Guard recruiters at her son's high school until she learned that they taught students how to throw hand grenades, using baseballs as stand-ins. For the past month, she has been insisting that administrators limit recruiters' access to children.

Orlando Terrazas, a former truck driver in Southern California, said he was struck when his son told him that recruiters were promising students jobs as musicians. Terrazas has been trying since September to hang posters at his son's public school to counter the military's message.

Amy Hagopian, co-chairwoman of the Parent-Teacher-Student Association at Garfield High School in Seattle, has been resisting a four-year-old federal law that has required public schools to give military recruiters the same access to students as colleges, or lose federal funding. She also recently took a day off from work to stand beside recruiters at Garfield High and display pictures of injured U.S. soldiers from Iraq.

"We want to show the military that they are not welcome by the PTSA in this building," she said. "We hope other PTSAs will follow."

Two years into the war in Iraq, parents have become one of the military's stiffest opponents as the Army and Marines struggle to meet their goals for new recruits. Parents around the country said they were terrified that their children would be killed - or kill - in a war that many see as unnecessary and without end.

Around the dinner table, many parents said, they are discouraging their children from serving.

At schools, incensed at the access that recruiters have to underage children who are easily dazzled by incentive packages and flashy equipment, parents are insisting that recruiters be kept away.

A Department of Defense survey last November, the latest, shows that only 25 percent of parents would recommend military service to their children, down from 42 percent in August 2003.

"Parents are the biggest hurdle we face," said one recruiter in Ohio.

Legally, there is little a parent can do to prevent a child 18 or older from enlisting. But in interviews, recruiters said it is extremely difficult to sign up a young man or woman of any age over the strong objections of a parent.

The Pentagon - which is struggling to staff the military entirely with volunteers during a sustained conflict, an effort rarely tried in American history - is especially vexed by a generation of parents who have few qualms about inserting themselves into the lives of their children. [HUH? Isn't that what parents are for? What happened to family values?! What is this? Mao's "Cultural Revolution"?]

Some of that opportunity was provoked by the very law that was supposed to make it easier for recruiters to reach students more directly: No Child Left Behind, which was passed by Congress in 2001, requires schools to turn over students' home phone numbers and addresses unless parents opt out. It is often the spark, however, that ignites parental resistance.

Recruiters, in interviews during the past six months, said that opposition can be fierce. Three years ago, perhaps one or two of 10 parents would hang up immediately on a cold call to a potential recruit's home, a recruiter in New York said.

"Now," he said, "in the past year or two, people hang up all the time. It happens constantly."

Several recruiters said they had even been threatened with violence.

"I had one father say if he saw me on his doorstep I better have some protection on me," a recruiter in Ohio said. "We see a lot of hostility." [The man is trying to protect his family! A supposedly Republican value!]

Military officials are clearly concerned. In an interview last month, Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, commander of U.S. Army recruiting, said parental resistance could put the all-volunteer force in jeopardy.

When parents and other influential adults dissuade young people from enlisting, he said, it invites the question of "what our national staying power might be for what certainly appears to be a long fight." [Stop the war(s)!!!!]

In response, the Army has rolled out a campaign aimed at parents, with television ads and a Web site that includes videos of parents talking about why they supported their children's decision to enlist. [In Spanish, I bet] Rochelle said that it's still too early to tell if it is making a difference.

But Col. David Slotwinksi, a former chief of staff for Army recruiting, said that the Army faces an uphill battle because many baby-boomer parents are inclined to view military service negatively, especially during a controversial war. [These people are full of merde! The lower middle class are the ones who have been targeted, true blue Americans, and they object to their children being lured by what are essentially child predators, they are not "baby boomers"! And these are the geniuses who are supposed to have the "enemy" figured out-- they just paint the world with their preconceived political notions]

"They don't realize that they have a role in helping make the all-volunteer force successful," said Slotwinksi, who retired in 2004. [NAZI!] "If you don't, you're faced with the alternative, and the alternative is what they were opposed to the most, mandatory service."

Many of the mothers and fathers who are most adamant about recruitment do indeed have a history of opposition to the Vietnam War. [And many don't!!!!]

Amy Hagopian, 49, a professor of public health at the University of Washington, and her husband, Stephen Ludwig, 57, a carpenter, said they and most of the parents who contest recruiting at Garfield High School in Seattle have a history of anti-war sentiment and see their efforts as an extension of their pacifism.

But, he added, parents also are reacting to what they see as the military's increased intrusion into the lives of their children.

"The recruiters are in your face, in the library, in the lunchroom," he said. "They're contacting the most vulnerable students and recruiting them to go to war."

The access is legally protected. As recently as 2000, one former recruiter in California said, it was necessary to dig through the trash at high schools and colleges to find students' names and phone numbers.

But No Child Left Behind mandates that school districts can receive federal funds only if they grant military recruiters "the same access to secondary school students" as is provided to colleges and employers. [Well why do they get more than that access then?]

In Whittier, Calif., a city of 85,000, 10 miles southeast of East Los Angeles, about a dozen families last September accused the district of failing to properly advise parents that they had the right to deny recruiters access to their children's personal information.

Orlando Terrazas, 51, the father of a Whittier High School junior, said the notification was buried among other documents in a preregistration packet sent out last summer.

"It didn't say that the military has access to students' information," he said. "It just said to write a letter if you didn't want your kid listed in a public directory."

A few years ago, after Sept. 11, the issue might not have gotten Terrazas' attention.

But after the war in Iraq yielded no weapons of mass destruction, and as the death toll has mounted, he cannot reconcile the pride he feels at seeing Marines deliver aid after the tsunami in Asia with his concern over the effort in Baghdad, he said.

"Because of the situation we're in now, I would not want my son to serve," he said. "It's the policy that I'm against, not the military."

After Terrazas and several other parents expressed their concern about the school's role in recruitment, the district drafted a new Rules for Recruitment policy.

On May 23, it introduced a proposed opt-out form and policy for the district's 14,000 students.