Truth in Recruiting. America Online hilites today an AP story about a disabled Vietnam vet who has become the focus of a controversy over his display of a sign in a storefront in Duluth, Minnesota that tallies U.S. military deaths, casualties, and the number of days the Iraq war has been going on.
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I have been to Duluth, briefly. In fact, one of my favorite names of all time was on a store near the waterfront in Duluth: "The Last Place on Earth". I would be delited if Duluth led the Nation into giving our young people the complete picture they need to make an informed decision as to whether to enlist in the military — or not.

[Scott Cameron's] sign ... rests feet from the local Army recruiting office, and Cameron's refusal to take it down despite Army requests has drawn national attention. The fuss is giving the Vietnam veteran a chance to air a view he wishes he'd expressed long ago.

"The way veterans have been treated in this country is shameful".

Is a "request" from the military that someone take down a small sign inside a building on private property even constitutional? Doesn't the military have the power to cow some people into obeying an unlawful order camouflaged as a "request"?
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The military pretends that it is upset only at the emotional impact of the sign on recruiters, not the sign's possible effects upon recruiting itself.

His tribute has irritated the military recruiters next door, who dislike the daily reminder of friends lost. Staff Sgt. Gary Capan, the post's commander, requested that the sign come down for his colleagues' benefit.

"They're saying, 'Why should we have to look at that? We lost people over there,"' said Staff Sgt. Gary Capan, the post's commander. "It's not just a number to them."

Ah, but that's the point, isn't it? It's not just a number when it could be people you know — or yourself. But in reality, how likely is it that any of those recruiters has 'lost a friend' in Iraq? The U.S. death toll in Iraq is a tiny, insignificant pittance out of the Nation's 1.4 million and more standing army (not counting reservists but only Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines) and additional hundreds of thousands of reservists. I suspect that never in human history has one country invaded and taken over another that actually resisted, with so trivial a death toll for the invader. But trivial in numbers does not equate with inconsequential for families or society.
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Still, military men are supposed to be inured to the death of their peers, since death is an expected risk of military service. We can't have our fiting men collapsing in sobs at the death of the guy next to them, now can we? Isn't that one of the implied reasons for opposing inclusion of gay men in the military, that they'd form excessive attachments to their peers and be rendered useless in combat by grief?
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If military recruiters are upset by the death of people they or someone else recruited, maybe they shouldn't be recruiting anybody.
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The claim, however, is that:

the sign hasn't hurt recruiting: "We had three people sign up just today," [the recruiting post's sergeant in charge] said earlier this week.

How many might have signed up had the sign not been nearby? Three, we are to believe. I don't.

"You're a young kid and you see those stark numbers, you might realize there's a cost you didn't consider," said Gary Tonkin, a Vietnam veteran.

The military's recruiting efforts so completely gloss over the dangers of being killed or permanently maimed in the service as to constitute fraud. I have never engaged in conversation with a recruiter, so must rely on others to report the cautions they do or do not utter, but at least TV commercials and print advertisements focus exclusively on the benefits of military service, the educational payments after completion of service, the training within the service, and bolstering immature kids' sense of manhood.
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One notorious ad now running on television shows a young black kid telling his (presumably single) mother, "I found somebody to pay for college. ... And besides, it's time for me to be the man."
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Another shows a white kid playing pool with his father. The father resists the idea of his son enlisting in the military, and the kid argues that he will get valuable training that will better prepare him for life. The father asks, 'Is it good training?' The kid answers "It's the Army."
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That doesn't answer the question, does it?
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I have seen reports that recruits are told they will get excellent training in a field of their choosing but once they are captured and held in restraint, many are told that the program they wanted isn't available right now, but as soon as a spot opens, they will get the training they expected. 'In the meantime', they will be trained in this other, altogether different area they had no interest in and which may not be transferable into the private economy after they leave the military.
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So a kid enlists in the military with the expectation of being taught how to operate a computer and is instead shunted into computer repair or wiring workstations or putting up satellite antennas — or cooking or dispensing supplies in the quartermaster's unit or washing jeeps and changing tires. And that is the great training and experience they get from the military.
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In 1968 Congress passed the "Truth in Lending" act, also known as Regulation Z. It's time for a "Truth in Recruiting" act. We could call it Regulation A for "army" or Regulation M for "military".
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Kids really need to know what they're letting themselves in for. Promises made during recruitment, as for instance regarding the specific areas of training a recruit will receive and what jobs in the private economy that training will really be useful in, must be fulfilled. The dangers of death and dismemberment must be made very plain to every potential recruit, and the possibility that they will not be given lifelong medical care or financial support for debilitating lifelong injuries should also be made plain.
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Kids tend to feel themselves immortal and indestructible. Only other people get killed or maimed in war. They will come thru it whole, physically and emotionally, and with training and job experience, and money for college, to boot. Optimism is an admirable quality, but it shouldn't lead naive, trusting young people to take unnecessary risks with their life, body, or economic future.
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Enlisting in the military is a very dangerous act, and everyone should be on stark notice of that fact before they sign anything.
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The AOL story included a reader poll. As of around 3pm Eastern Standard Time, the poll results were thus:

What should Scott Cameron do with his sign tallying U.S. Iraq deaths, casualties?
Leave it up 77%
Take it down 23%

Is it an effective way to spotlight the treatment of veterans?
Yes 66%
No 34%

Total Votes: 88,932

Americans are patriotic, not stupid. The realization is growing that the war in Iraq, and other wars that the Republicans keep getting us into, do not advance our national security but actually put us more at risk. Recruiting is way down, and depriving the military of this human capital may be just the restraint the Nation needs to rein in the neocons' ambitions of world domination without representation.
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Reagan argued that by cutting government receipts, he would force government to stop spending. That didn't work then and isn't working now. Reagan tripled the national debt in eight years, and Bush is adding to it in higher absolute numbers than ever before. But a corollary of the smaller-government-thru-smaller-income rule might actually work: fewer and fewer recruits, a smaller and less-aggressive military.
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Then again, a smaller military of higher quality made up of more highly motivated recruits might be more effective in using the technology that has put us on top of the world militarily.
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A case can be made either way, for or against militarism and about what makes for the greatest military effectiveness.
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No case, however, can be made for lying to our young people about the risk of dying in the army or being so seriously injured that they will be gravely disabled for the entire remainder of life — and that future (Republican) Administrations will want to save money (for the rich) by cutting benefits to disabled veterans.
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Fidel Castro was once asked why he hadn't told the Cuban people from the outset that he was a Communist. He answered bluntly, "If I had told them where I was leading them, they wouldn't have gone." We're supposed to be better than that.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,177.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:40 PM