Here is another side for those thinking of joining the Army should read. I do believe every young person shouldjoin
if they have all the facts but just hearing the side of the recruiter is not enough to make a life decision.
DECEPTIONS IN MILITARY RECRUITING: an ex-Insider Speaks Out
By Chris White
BACKGROUND
I was a Marine recruiter’s assistant for 75 days. During my active duty service, from 1994-98, I witnessed how recruiters manipulate the poor and young into fighting for the rich and powerful.
What I have learned, since my honorable discharge in 1998, has led me to forsake the ideology promoted by the Corps of “once a Marine, always a Marineâ€. Rather, because I now condemn my past Marine identity, I proudly call myself an “ex-Marine†who is against any offensive use of the U.S. military.
My doctoral research on U.S. foreign policy has convinced me that, when viewed through the lens of the deceptive process of military recruiting, our actions abroad are further exposed as corrupt and needlessly violent.
THE ROLE OF THE MILITARY RECRUITER
I am not against the men and women serving in the military. I am against the way in which they are used by politicians to promote the interests of their richest constituents.
Rarely has our military been used for national defense. I believe, that in its 228-year history, the War of 1812 and WWII were the only wars possibly fought to defend our country. On the other hand, mostly poor young men and women have fought hundreds of other engagements both here and abroad -- defending the interests of the rich and the politicians they owned,.
Military recruiters are the first line of offense in this machinery that defends the interests of the powerful at the expense of the less fortunate. Recruiters enter the civilian world touting slogans that make an otherwise dismal job seem appealing. Their training is oriented toward marketing and sales techniques.
For instance: on his first day at recruiting school, a friend of mine was told to come up with a gimmick for selling a pen. My question is, “If the motivations for war are just, then why do they have to use manipulative sales techniques to convince young, uneducated minds into carrying out the dirty work of war?â€
Indeed, why do they even have to sell the military to young people? Why do recruiters have to exist at all?â€
INCENTIVES TO DECEIVE
Recruiters have every incentive to be dishonest. Speaking for the Marine Corps only, recruiters have monthly quotas. Once filled, they can slack off for the rest of the month. However, the more people signed up, the better their chances for promotion. The incentive for dishonesty is high indeed.
RECRUITERS LIE:
ABOUT COLLEGE BENEFITS --
They fail to tell you that you must pay 1200 dollars in your first year of the military in order to get the G.I. Bill, which is quite a chunk of money when your salary is only 700/mo. You will be lucky if you get your monthly G.I. Bill check in your first three months of college, since the bureaucracy is so inept. You had better have enough money saved up before you arrive.
Another point recruiters leave out is that most students who are independent and over 25, civilians and veterans alike, are eligible for enormous amounts of financial aid anyway. That is, unless you already receive the G.I. Bill.
Wait a minute. Back up. So, if I earned the G.I. Bill for “serving†my country, then I may not be eligible for any financial aid?
Yep, ask any veteran over 25 working in college, and they will tell you that the financial aid office determines your eligibility for grants and fellowships (free money) according to your income, and then deletes your income from the amount of aid you are eligible for.
Therefore, if you were eligible for 9,000 dollars in grants, but received 9,000 from the G.I. Bill, well, you get no grants. You can get loans though. All the loans you desire.
This may seem like a petty argument, but remember, recruiters use the G.I. Bill to lure civilians into joining the military. So, if the G.I. Bill is not necessarily a benefit, then why should one join for the college money?
ABOUT DUTY STATION ASSIGNMENTS --
Recruiters tell potential reservists that they can go to college and serve one weekend a month, with very little chance of being called back to active duty. However, the current administration wants to call up to 300,000 reservists to the Gulf alone.
My neighbor’s daughter was considering joining the National Guard. Her recruiter told her that she would be stationed in Kansas, but luckily, I persuaded her not to join. Her friend was not so lucky. Shortly after joining the Guard, he was called to active duty and sent to Bosnia for two years.
Thousands of National Guard and other reservists have been called back to active duty since 9/11, and thousands more still will be called to go to Iraq.
ABOUT JOB PLACEMENTS --
Many of us were manipulated into joining the infantry (ground troops) after initially asking to be Military Police. However, this job is usually filled because there is so much demand for it. Many recruiters tell potential recruits that they will be Military Police, then persuade them to join the infantry at the last minute. Many of us were told that we did not qualify for various reasons, after which we were manipulated into joining the most dangerous job in the military.
ABOUT VETERANS BENEFITS --
I can use VA medical facilities if I want to wait five months for an appointment, but my wife cannot use them (at least in Kansas). We are both veterans, but I am 30 percent disabled, and she is not at all.
Of course, who would want to use the VA hospital in Kansas City anyway? According to an AP report in March 2002, the infestation of mice, maggots, and flies in the years leading up to 2001 created such a scandal as to pressure VA Secretary Anthony Principi to remove “the director and deputy director for the regional network, which includes Missouri, Kansas, and southern Illinois.â€
The janitorial staff did not touch the food storage areas or cafeteria for a year, and maggots had nested in two of the comatose patients’ noses!
This is not necessarily the fault of the VA because the federal government decides how much money will be allotted to our disabled veterans.
Ron Kovic exposed the horrible conditions of the VA hospitals during the Vietnam era in his book, Born on the Fourth of July. As a wounded Vietnam veteran, Kovic was outraged at the outdated equipment, under-qualified and uncaring staffs, and the unsanitary conditions that disabled veterans were forced to endure.
Not much has changed since the 1970s, and hope for future change was diminished when the Bush administration slashed the VA’s healthcare budget by 275 million dollars in 2002.
Of course, recruiters never mention this in their speeches about the benefits of the military, which is why more veterans need to speak to high school students and parents about the realities of military life.
ONCE THEY ARE IN BOOT CAMP, IT IS TOO LATE TO CRY “FOULâ€!
One poolee (person waiting to go to boot camp who has already enlisted) wrote me that my first essay had helped him to decide to leave the Marines. During my recruiting days, I had learned that any poolee can get out before boot camp. When this man’s recruiter refused to allow him to leave, I counseled him on his rights and, after several more e-mails, the poolee told me that he finally received his discharge.
The recruiter responded with a physical threat by saying, “If I was in front of you right now I’d knock you out.†Great example of the quality of leadership instilled by military service.
CULTURE OF VIOLENCE
My own recruiter in 1994 was a Marine sniper who had served in El Salvador and Somalia. He actually admitted to me, with excitement, that he had killed non-combatants in Somalia with a .50 caliber sniper rifle, a weapon only to be used on vehicles, and that he had taken pictures of his victims afterward.
His story was semi-confirmed for me seven years later, when I read Scott Peterson’s Me against my Brother. Peterson wrote, “the snipers killed more than 14 Somalis, some of them children who were found later to have a toy pistol, or nothing.â€[ii] UN spokesperson George Bennet later told Peterson, “They were shooting at anything by the time they left.â€[iii]
Unfortunately, I am guilty of following an unlawful order from that same recruiter, but of a much lesser magnitude. While assisting him for two weeks just after I graduated from boot camp, part of my job was to make poolees lose weight before they shipped out.
One poolee was still twelve pounds overweight the day before boot camp. My recruiter ordered me to force the poolee to eat an entire box of Ex-lax, after which I was to make him do calisthenics until he lost the twelve pounds. He was admitted to boot camp the next day, but I am still ashamed of what I made him do.
ACCESS TO YOUTH
Recruiters now have even more access to the young minds of America. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 require every high school receiving federal education funds to hand over the names, addresses, and phone numbers of every junior and senior to local recruiters upon request.[iv]
That means that even 15 years olds, with no idea whatsoever about the real world, let alone the military, are now vulnerable to the manipulation and deception of recruiters in their own homes.
If a school refuses to hand the information over, the Department of Defense steps in and pressures the school, after which federal funding may be withdrawn.
According to Secretary of Education Rod Paige and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Acts give students more access to college, but we need to ask;
“Why doesn’t the government offer any alternative to the military for unskilled high school graduates that wish to go to college but are presently unqualified?â€
BEHIND TODAY’S PUSH FOR RECRUITS
The Bush administration’s justification for waging war on Iraq is riddled with hypocrisy. From the absence of proof, to double standards, to the erasure of history in public discussions -- to all of the other deceitful practices that support the military industrial complex -- it is clear that the peace movement is up against a simultaneously powerful and tenuous force.
The force is powerful because the administration has the monetary resource and physical strength as well as the media to maintain power over the masses.
Yet, the grip of the warmongers is tenuous as long as there are those who will speak out to expose the hypocrisies and lies that legitimize their rule in the first place.
LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE
Our Commander in Chief, George W. Bush, joined the military, then took advantage of being a Bush to avoid service and failed to return to his duty station for a year and a half. Of course, he did not have to serve the prison sentences that others who left for that long would have, and did.
The President seems to have much in common with many of those Americans who support our impending war on Iraq: While over fifty percent support an invasion, approximately 1 percent serve in the military. Therefore, only 1 percent of us is willing to fight a battle that over 50 percent of us favor, which makes it that much easier for the American public and the three branches of government to favor a war.
As long as the fate of the majority of Americans is distinct from those that serve in the military, I guess anything, including deceptive measures in recruiting, goes.
Chris White is an ex-Marine infantryman with experience as a recruiter-assistant. He is currently working on his doctorate in history at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He served from 1994-98, in Diego Garcia, Camp Pendleton, CA, Okinawa, Japan, and Doha, Qatar. He is also a member of Veterans for Peace.
E-mail: [email protected]
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Libby Quaid, “VA Officials Reassigned Amid Scandal,†Associated Press 28 Mar 2002.
[ii] Scott Peterson, Me against my Brother: at War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda (New York: Routledge, 2001) 149.
[iii] Quoted in Peterson, 149.
[iv] Secretary Paige and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “Joint Letter from Secretary Paige and Secretary Rumsfeld,†09 Oct. 2002.
