More support for the troops Posted by: McQ
on Monday, November 21, 2005
Seattle, Washington ... love to visit, but based on this story I'd hate to live there:
When military recruiters march into any Seattle high school, they could find themselves in a war of words. Under new district guidelines, schools must allow anti-military groups to "counter-recruit" right next to them
"There might be good reasons to die for things, but there's no good reason to kill for anything," said Amy Hagopian, the mother of a senior at Garfield High School and the co-chairwoman of the PTSA, which passed a resolution seeking to ban the military from all Seattle schools.
Before the school board could act on the request, she berated an Army recruiter who showed up at Garfield High, told the soldier he was not welcome and waved pictures of Iraq war casualties in his face.
That incident followed a confrontation at a Seattle community college, where war protesters chased a recruiter off campus.
"It's something we have to deal with out here as recruiters because there's a lot of teachers and people in Seattle that just don't like the military being in the schools," said Sgt. James Ramsey, an Army recruiter in the area.
"There might be good reasons to die for things, but there's no good reason to kill for anything."
You know, I don't believe I've ever seen a more ignorant statement in my life, and I've heard quite a few over my lifetime. That's just downright rhetorical nonsense.
You ought to go to the story and watch the video of this woman saying this. The smugness of her ignorance is equally incredible. And being a mother, she's just told her child she'd never do the what might be necessary to save her child's life since there's "no good reason (her child's life)" to do so.
Anyway, just as wacky is the Seattle ruling that military recruiters must put up with peace recruiters when they visit schools.
Seattle ... where old hippies go to die. Would it be terrible to hope the process would hurry itself along a little bit? Maybe a bad batch of mushrooms or something?
UPDATE: And here we have a story by a teacher that would have you conclude that only losers join the military as a last resort. Aptly named "We Don't Need Another Soldier".
In the second, "loser" article, it’s rather interesting, that despite how many times the writer mentioned "other options," just what those options are never came up. Granted, I can come up with a couple of options this soldier might have had, but why didn’t the writer? With a C average and a record of troublemaking, I don’t think it very likely that he’d get into college.
Right you are about that statement. It is stunning in its stupidity; a candidate for one of the most ignorant sentences ever uttered. I am amazed that that woman remembers to breathe. Referring to a previous thread, she is certainly not a good argument for evolution. Those genes are definitely not conducive to survival.
My soon-to-be brother-in-law left for the Marines in October. He graduates from basic right before Christmas. He had a C-ish average for the most part, and though he wasn’t the type to get into fights, he was rather mischievious. He had known for quite some time that he wanted to go into the Marines, but was he duped? I seriously doubt it. I met his staff sergeant on at least two occasions, and I could tell that he was genuinely interested in the soon-to-be soldier’s life. I remember talking to recruiters in high school, and they never made any bones about what it was going to be like.
These sorts of articles really burn me up. Our founding fathers won their independance (and ours) by bloodshed. Men not only died, but killed too (heaven forbid) so that we can have a democracy, and all our rights, which a lot of us take for granted. I don’t often throw the U-word about, but such nonsense (both on the peacenik mom’s part, and the teacher’s) are bordering on unpatriotic.
Seattle ... where old hippies go to die. Would it be terrible to hope the process would hurry itself along a little bit? Maybe a bad batch of mushrooms or something?
ahhhhhhh yes, the drug legalizer-libertarians, ever so quick to pull out the old overused drug cliches. You say ’hippy’ as if it was a bad thing? They may be losers but they kicked your asses over ’nam, hah! "If we disagree, I hope you die." Got to love that compassionate conservatism, yas sar!
(Yawn) So where is the beef here? Is it just too unAmerikun to allow two sides of a pitch to be absorbed?
Yeah, that’s it, screw democracy. That is why the founding fathers used conscripted folk for the revolution.
What’s that? You thought those rich old white founding daddys actually FOUGHT? WITH GUNS?
Guffaw....you sillyies. And you think GWB is a ’veteran’ too, huh?
Seattle ... where old hippies go to die. Would it be terrible to hope the process would hurry itself along a little bit? Maybe a bad batch of mushrooms or something?
ahhhhhhh yes, the drug legalizer-libertarians, ever so quick to pull out the old overused drug cliches. You say ’hippy’ as if it was a bad thing? They may be losers but they kicked your asses over ’nam, hah! "If we disagree, I hope you die." Got to love that compassionate conservatism, yas sar!
(Yawn) So where is the beef here? Is it just too unAmerikun to allow two sides of a pitch to be absorbed?
Yeah, that’s it, screw democracy. That is why the founding fathers used conscripted folk for the revolution.
What’s that? You thought those rich old white founding daddys actually FOUGHT? WITH GUNS?
Guffaw....you sillyies. And you think GWB is a ’veteran’ too, huh?
I joined the Army when I was 20 after I had ’exhausted’ the college option. (I’m back in college now.) I think now I should have joined immediately after HS, but that’s just hindsight.
If someone wants to join right after HS, that’s fine. If someone wants to wait a year or two or more, that’s fine, too. In my case, I can’t blame the recruiter for anything even if I wanted to because when I entered the recruiter’s office, my mind was made up. I just asked him what I needed to do. Maybe that’s the difference between joining the Army at 18 and 20, and in a volunteer military, I don’t believe a waiting period is such a bad thing. In fact, when I did a column-right into my recruiter’s office at age 20, the words that convinced me to do so were from a hometown recruiter I had spoken to at age 18.
I think a complicating factor in both the recruiter’s job and the recruit’s decision-making is that, with the possible exception of growing up in a military environment, there’s no way the average civilian can know beforehand what it means to be a soldier. A recruiter can explain it and a recruit can do all the research he wants, but he’s not going to really know what it means. For me, it wasn’t until my 2.5-3 year mark in the Army that I felt like I was fully a soldier, instead of doing a really good imitation of a soldier. There’s also the fact that the service and duty components of being a soldier means hardship and personal sacrifice, which is a valuable moral good in its own right, but it doesn’t fit well with a sales pitch based on ’rational’ self-interest. And war - how the heck can a recruiter explain war? As a non-combat vet with only FTX experience, I can’t imagine what it would really be like to go to war.
In short, to expect a recruit to make a fully informed choice beforehand, in the sense of knowing 100% what it will mean to become a soldier, I think that’s an unfair expectation. Joining the Army is a risk, a gamble, a leap of faith. Even in the peacetime Army I knew, quite a few people found out later than they would have liked that they were unsuited to be soldiers. Others, like myself, did not expect to be good soldiers or to embrace the military way of life, but were surprised.
I have two suggestions for this recruiter, counter-recruiter conflict:
Recruiter strategy. A more honest approach by recruiters could be to explain the possible outcomes of the soldierization *transformation*, what the recruit can or may become as a soldier and what he can or may gain from the experience, and not just try to sell the Army within pre-military civilian terms.
Network with area veterans, especially young veterans who are closer to the recruit’s generation. Recruiters could arrange for potential recruits to speak with vets who can tell it like it is and paint as honest, complete and fair a picture as possible from 1st hand experience. The good and the bad. In NYC, for example, a good resource of young vets is the U.S. Military Veterans of Columbia University, a student group mostly made up of former enlisted in their mid-20s who attend Columbia.
As for this asshole of a teacher, Karl Meiner, I dislike counter-recruiters. They’re worse than anything they accuse of recruiters. But, if their infuriating existence spurs an evolution in recruitment that better serves the recruit, that would be a positive outcome. In a volunteer military, it’s a good thing to have recruits who feel informed, prepared and confident in their decision.
