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CounterPunch
January
6, 2003
Deceptions in
Military Recruiting:
an Ex-Insider
Speaks Out
by CHRIS WHITE
The points in this essay concerning the dark side
of military recruiting largely inform my decision to work incessantly
to dissuade young men and women from enlisting. My primary audience
is every U.S. citizens because it is necessary that as many people
as possible understand the manipulation used by the military
to lure young Americans. It is important to question the notion
that the all-volunteer military is truly made up of volunteers.
If one is lied to about a profession by the people who convinced
them to join that profession, then is the person who was lied
to a volunteer in the clearest sense of the word? My research
has led me to forsake the ideology of "once a Marine, always
a Marine", that imposes on us to refer to ourselves as "former
Marines" and never "ex-Marines". I condemn my
past Marine identity, and therefore, I proudly call myself an
"ex-Marine" who is against any offensive use of the
U.S. military.
I am not against the men and women serving
in the military per se; I am against the way in which they are
used by the government to promote the interests of its richest
constituents. My doctoral research on U.S. foreign policy also
convinces me that when viewed through the lens of the deceptive
process of military recruiting, our actions abroad are further
exposed as corruptly violent. Furthermore, I have learned that
rarely has our military been used for national defense in its
228-year history. We can remember the War of 1812 and WWII as
possibly the only national defense wars, but mostly poor young
men and women, for the cause of defending the interests of the
rich and the politicians, have fought hundreds of other engagements
both here and abroad. Every service member contributes their
share, which is why I work hard to dissuade anyone from joining
the military.
The Bush administration's justification
for waging war on Iraq is permeated by a fleet of hypocritical
holes. From the absence of proof, to the 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 those who favor peace are up against a simultaneously
powerful and tenuous force. The force is powerful because it
has monetary 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.
Military recruiters are the first line
of offense in this machinery that serves the interests
of the power elite at the expense of the less fortunate. Recruiters
are creep into the civilian world touting slogans to make an
otherwise dismal job seem appealing. Their training is largely
oriented toward marketing and sales techniques: on the first
day at recruiting school, a recruiter friend of mine was told
to come up with a gimmick for selling a pen. What business does
the military have teaching recruiters to sell anything? Are
the lives of America's youth just another commodity for the government
to exploit? If the war is justified, then why do recruiters
have to exist at all? Why do they even have to sell the military
to young people? Why do they have to use manipulative sales
techniques to convince young, uneducated minds to carry out the
dirty work of war? As an assistant recruiter, I witnessed first
hand how recruiters manipulate the poor and young into fighting
for the rich.
First, recruiters have every incentive
to be dishonest. Speaking for the Marine Corps only, recruiters
have monthly quotas and, once filled, they can slack off for
the rest of the month. However, the more people they sign up,
the better their chances for promotion. Therefore, the incentive
for dishonesty is high indeed. Recruiters lie about college
benefits, duty station assignments, veterans' benefits, and countless
other aspects of the military in order to convince their clients
to sign. Once you are in boot camp, it is too late to change
anything.
How do they 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 anyway, as the bureaucracy is so
inept that you had better hope to 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 one's eligibility for grants and fellowships
(free money) according to one's income, and then deletes one's
income from the amount of aid one is eligible for. Therefore,
if one were eligible for 9,000 dollars in grants, but received
9,000 from the G.I. Bill, well, one gets no grants. One can
get loans though. All the loans one desires. 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?
How do recruiters lie 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. I can further illustrate this with the story of
my neighbor's daughter who had considered joining the National
Guard. As an incentive to get her to sign, 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 will still be called to go to Iraq.
How do recruiters deceive us 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 as 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." 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. Therefore, not much has changed since 1970s,
and any hope of future change is diminished by dubya's slashing
of the VA's healthcare budget by 275 million dollars in 2002,
and further cuts all around to the VA. Of course, recruiters
never mention this in their deceit-filled 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.
Although the lies are bad enough, interactions
with recruiters can be hazardous to one's health. 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. The recruiter lied to the poolee by saying that
it was too late, that he had already enlisted and therefore he
was obligated for the next four years. During my recruiting
days, I learned that any poolee can get out before boot camp,
and after several more e-mails, the poolee told me that he had
finally received his discharge after pushing the matter a little
more. His recruiter responded to him 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.
My recruiter in 1994 was a Marine sniper
who had served in El Salvador and Somalia among other places.
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, once 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." UN spokesperson
George Bennet later told Peterson, "They were shooting at
anything by the time they left," and this statement only
further confirms my recruiter's story.
Unfortunately, I too 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, so naturally my recruiter
ordered me to force the poolee to eat an entire box of Ex-lax,
after which I had to make him do calisthenics until he lost the
twelve pounds. Needless to say, he was admitted to boot camp
the next day, but I am still ashamed that I made him do that.
The business of recruiting is dark indeed.
Recruiters now have even more access
to the young minds of America, with the No Child Left Behind
Act of 2001 and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 2002. These Acts 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.
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 it is that the government does not offer any alternative
to the military for unskilled high school graduates that wish
to go to college but are unqualified for college.
Our commander in chief himself took the
opportunity to join the military, then took a Bush prerogative
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 did. Nevertheless, it makes perfect
sense. After all, the president is not any different from half
of Americans, who support our impending war on Iraq. While over
fifty percent support an invasion, approximately 1 percent serves
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 much more palatable to start a war. As long as the majority
faces no direct military consequences, I guess anything, including
deceptive measures in recruiting, goes. Thus, the cycle of historical
amnesia is allowed to continue, and future U.S. military action
will surely bring about more 9/11s.
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: juliopac@swbell.net
Notes
1. Libby Quaid, "VA Officials Reassigned
Amid Scandal," Associated Press 28 Mar 2002.
2. Scott Peterson, Me against my Brother:
at War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda (New York: Routledge,
2001) 149.
3. Quoted in Peterson, 149.
4. Secretary Paige and Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, "Joint Letter from Secretary Paige and
Secretary Rumsfeld," 09 Oct. 2002.
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