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| Fifth Column |
| 'Counter-Recruiters' Shadowing The Military |
| 2005-03-08 |
| The Marines didn't have to recruit Greg McCullough. He signed a promise to enlist last year, while he was still in high school. But now McCullough has had second thoughts, and he's talking to a different kind of recruiter. Jim Murphy is a "counter-recruiter," one of a small but growing number of opponents of the Iraq war who say they want to compete with military recruiters for the hearts and minds of young people. "I don't tell kids not to join the military," says Murphy, 59, a member of Veterans for Peace. "I tell them: 'Have a plan for your future. Because if you don't, the military has a plan for you.' " Since the advent of the all-volunteer military three decades ago, the armed services have used an array of tools, from recruiting in schools to TV advertising, to successfully sell careers in the military. But with ground troops in Iraq still under fire, the Army and Marines are struggling to get enough enlistments. The armed services need many recruits each year — the Army and Army Reserve alone need more than 100,000 — and less than 10% come knocking on the door. The rest must be recruited. Anti-war activists such as Murphy charge that to fill their quotas, some military recruiters make promises they can't guarantee, such as money for college or training in a particular specialty, and give misleading descriptions of military life. Murphy says high school graduates don't need to join the military to learn a skill, pay for college, see the world or learn discipline. Building a network Counter-recruiters formed a national network at meetings in Philadelphia in the summers of 2003 and 2004. They range from Vietnam War veterans, such as Murphy, to high school students trained to talk to their peers about enlistment. The American Friends Service Committee, one of several peace groups opposed to what it calls "militarization of youth," has prepared a brochure titled Do You Know Enough to Enlist? In a tip of the hat to the opposition, it's deliberately designed to look like a military recruiting brochure. Using a 1986 federal appeals court decision that supported the rights of draft registration opponents to equal access to students, the Los Angeles Unified School District teachers union has helped get counter-recruiting into some schools regularly visited by military recruiters in the nation's second largest public district. The counter-recruiters make public address announcements, distribute literature, show documentaries and give classroom presentations. |
| Posted by:longtime lurker |
| #6 What? No Giant Puppets[tm]? Where's the World Famous Giant Puppets[tm]? Just how interesting the 'Left'[tm] talks about the right to choose, but what they really mean is to choose what they, the Left[tm] wants. Sort of like the normal one-party system state method of operation. |
| Posted by: Thrainter Cliling3962 2005-03-08 5:27:52 PM |
| #5 Raging Grannies dress up in flamboyant old-lady attire (big hats, long, flowered dresses) seems counterproductive to me. This is just another example of the left presenting themselves as aging out-of-touch dingbats to the younger generation. Which, of course, they are. Why they want to call attention to that fact is beyond me - but I guess you have to work with what you've got, and "raging grannies" are the only old fools still stuck in that 2Oth century mindset. The hot chicks are more interested in the soldiers these days. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-03-08 4:48:24 PM |
| #4 Here's a favorite joke of mine from active duty days: Q: How can you tell if your recruiter is lying to you? A: His lips are moving. BTW anyone truly worth having in the ranks would kick the crap out of this POS if he tried interfering with the recruiting process. |
| Posted by: Dreadnought 2005-03-08 3:22:54 PM |
| #3 Note how this article paints the recruiters as 'tricking' the poor stupid recrutiee into signing up. They simply can't imagine someone with a sense of duty and honor wanting to signup to be in the military. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2005-03-08 2:56:25 PM |
| #2 That's all very well to produce a neatly slanted newspaper article, but out here in the 'burbs many kids are looking at military service as a post-9/11 duty. Trailing Daughter and several of her friends certainly are, and some of the older siblings have already made the move. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-03-08 2:45:32 PM |
| #1 In the San Francisco area, members of a group called the Raging Grannies dress up in flamboyant old-lady attire (big hats, long, flowered dresses) and visit high schools. Not to be mistaken for the Flaming Trannies who pretty much do the same thing. |
| Posted by: BH 2005-03-08 2:05:16 PM |