New book, "Army of None," exposes recruiting lies, scams, and tricks

Top Military Recruitment Lies
By Aimee Allison and David Solnit, Seven Stories Press
Posted on September 20, 2007, Printed on September 20, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/62945/

Editor's Note: The following is excerpted from Army of None:
Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War and Build a Better
World published by Seven Stories Press, August 2007. Reprinted here by
permission of publisher. Copyright © 2007 Aimee Allison and David
Solnit

Top military recruitment facts

1. Recruiters lie. According the New York Times, nearly one of five
United States Army recruiters was under investigation in 2004 for
offenses varying from "threats and coercion to false promises that
applicants would not be sent to Iraq." One veteran recruiter told a
reporter for the Albany Times Union, "I've been recruiting for years,
and I don't know one recruiter who wasn't dishonest about it. I did it
myself."

2. The military contract guarantees nothing. The Department of
Defense's own enlistment/re-enlistment document states, "Laws and
regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice
to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay allowances, benefits and
responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the
provisions of this enlistment/re-enlistment document" (DD Form4/1,
1998, Sec.9.5b).

3. Advertised signing bonuses are bogus. Bonuses are often thought of
as gifts, but they're not. They're like loans: If an enlistee leaves
the military before his or her agreed term of service, he or she will
be forced to repay the bonus. Besides, Army data shows that the top
bonus of $20,000 was given to only 6 percent of the 47,7272 enlistees
who signed up for active duty.

4. The military won't make you financially secure. Military members
are no strangers to financial strain: 48 percent report having
financial difficulty, approximately 33 percent of homeless men in the
United States are veterans, and nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless
on any given night.

5. Money for college ($71,424 in the bank?). If you expect the
military to pay for college, better read the fine print. Among
recruits who sign up for the Montgomery GI Bill, 65 percent receive no
money for college, and only 15 percent ever receive a college degree.
The maximum Montgomery GI Bill benefit is $37,224, and even this 37K
is hard to get: To join, you must first put in a nonrefundable $1,200
deposit that has to be paid to the military during the first year of
service. To receive the $37K, you must also be an active-duty member
who has completed at least a three-year service agreement and is
attending a four-year college full time. Benefits are significantly
lower if you are going to school part-time or attending a two-year
college. If you receive a less than honorable discharge (as one in
four do), leave the military early (as one in three do), or later
decide not to go to college, the military will keep your deposit and
give you nothing. Note: The $71,424 advertised by the Army and $86,000
by the Navy includes benefits from the Amy or Navy College Fund,
respectively. Fewer than 10 percent of all recruits earn money from
the Army College Fund, which is specifically designed to lure recruits
into hard-to-fill positions.

6. Job training. Vice President *** Cheney once said, "The military
is not a social welfare agency; it's not a jobs program." If you
enlist, the military does not have to place you in your chosen career
field or give you the specific training requested. Even if enlistees
do receive training, it is often to develop skills that will not
transfer to the civilian job market. (There aren't many jobs for M240
machine-gunners stateside.)

7. War, combat, and your contract. First off, if it's your first time
enlisting, you're signing up for eight years. On top of that, the
military can, without your consent, extend active-duty obligations
during times of conflict, "national emergency," or when directed by
the president. This means that even if an enlistee has two weeks left
on his/ her contract (yes, even Guard/Reserve) or has already served
in combat, she/he can still be sent to war. More than a dozen U.S.
soldiers have challenged "stop-loss" measures like these in court so
far, but people continue to be shipped off involuntarily. The military
has called thousands up from Inactive Ready Reserve -- soldiers who
have served, some for as long as a decade, and been discharged. The
numbers: twice as many troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan per
year as during the Vietnam War. One-third of the troops who have gone
to Iraq have gone more than once. The highest rate of first- time
deployments belongs to the Marine Corps Reserve: almost 90 percent
have fought.

Counterrecruitment for a better world

Ready to create a truly grassroots, people powered movement? Anti-war
activism is changing. The familiar sights and sounds of large protests
are giving way to quieter, but far more resonating, one-on-one work in
classrooms, career centers, and communities. Whenever you hear people
decry the lack of large-scale protest in the United States, even as
the latest polls show more than 60 percent of people are opposed to
the current war in Iraq, remember that the model for effectively
challenging war is taking a different shape.

People from all walks of life are finding inspiration and success in
working locally to educate students and mobilize against military
recruitment where it happens. We can see counterrecruitment asserting
itself as a viable movement as independently organized actions in
Seattle, Austin and Los Angeles contribute to a national context in
which public schools around the country limit military recruiter
access, a huge success by any measure. Schools and communities are now
considering deeper questions about the increasing militarization of
our culture and recognizing the need for schools to teach and weave
peace into the minds and aspirations of our children. We believe that
100,000 marching one day every six months is not as effective as 1,000
people talking to students every day.

In January 2006 the National Security Advisory Group, which includes
former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright, issued a report entitled "The U.S. Military:
Under Strain and at Risk." The report predicted a major recruiting
crisis, pointing out that fewer than needed recruits, as well as first-
time enlistees, could result in a "hollowing" and imbalance in the
Army.

The fact is, at the end of 2005, the active Army fell 6,627 recruits
short of its annual goal of 80,000. In addition, the Army Reserve fell
16 percent behind its recruiting target for the year, and the National
Guard 20 percent short of its annual goal. Today approximately 9,000
soldiers are not permitted to leave the service because of "stop-loss"
orders, which retain soldiers on active duty involuntarily after their
period of enlistment is complete. Another 2,000 soldiers have been
involuntarily recalled after leaving active Army service.

Despite this compulsory service, the Army Reserve has trouble
achieving its target numbers. After the 2005 recruiting disaster, the
military pulled out all stops in an effort to "make quota" in 2006.
Army brass replaced the Army Recruiting Command's top officer in
October 2005 with Stanford-educated Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick. "A lot
of concerns, I think, that the parents and applicants have are about
Iraq and Afghanistan," Bostick told the Tampa Tribune in October 2006.
They also replaced Leo Burnett, their lead public relations agency,
who created the "Army of One" campaign, with McCann-Erickson, who
after a $200 million contract and year of research came up with "Army
Strong" as the new recruiting slogan.

In their comprehensive new strategy, the military added 1,200 new
recruiters and spent millions on a public relations blitz that
included TV ads, video games, websites, cell phone text messages,
helicopter simulators in the back of 18-wheelers, internet chat rooms,
sports and public event sponsorships, and even ads on the ticket
envelopes for Greyhound Bus lines ("This ticket will take you to where
you are going, but the National Guard will take you to where you want
to be").

The Army also increased its relationship with NASCAR, the National Hot
Rod Association and the Professional Bull Riders Association. The plan
calls for recruiters to visit schools and malls a few days before an
event, offering free tickets and the chance to meet famous drivers or
bull riders.

In addition, the military dramatically lowered its educational and
test standards and other qualifications. The U.S. Army recruited more
than 2,600 soldiers under new, lower-aptitude test standards in 2006.
They allowed neck and hand tattoos, increased the allowable age to 42,
increased the enlistment bonus up to $40,000 and offered $1,000 to
soldiers who persuaded friends to sign up. They have granted an
unprecedented number of "moral character" waivers; around 17 percent
of the first-time recruits, or about 13,600, were accepted under
waivers for various medical, moral or criminal problems, including
misdemeanor arrests and drunk driving. But even that was not enough to
"meet quota."

So, they also lied. From 2004 to 2005 the Govern ment Accounting
Office found 6,600 allegations of recruiter crimes. Incidents included
concealing medical information that would disqualify a recruit; making
false promises and helping recruits get around test requirements. In
2006 the pressure was even greater, and seen in an ABC television
investigation from Nov. 2, 2006, that sent undercover students into
ten recruiters'offices in New York and New Jersey.

The program reported that more than half of the recruiters were
"stretching the truth or even worse, lying." They found "nearly half
of the recruiters who talked to our under-cover students compared
everyday risks here at home to being in Iraq." A Patchogue recruiter
was caught saying. "You have a 10 times greater chance of dying out
here on the roads than you do dying in Iraq."

It also reported that "some recruiters told our students if they
enlisted, there was little chance they'd go to war. One recruiter told
a student his chances of going to war were "slim to none."

After all this, the military claims to have met its 2005-2006 goals of
recruiting 80,000 people to fill its ranks. It has provided no
independent verification of its alleged statistics, but it has
launched a major public relations effort to counter the bleak news
from the year before.

The Armed Forces Journal reported in March 2006 that recruiters "face
an increasingly reluctant pool of potential recruits, opposition from
anti-war protesters and perennial bureaucratic inefficiency in the
recruitment system." Scrambling in all of these ways to meet their
numbers, the Army, more than ever before, needs fresh blood --
recruits straight out of high school.

Is counterrecruitment just a way to end the war in Iraq and
Afghanistan?

Counterrecruitment is not simply a tactic to end the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It is a broad-based, strategic approach to challenging
the roots of unending war and militarization. The full potential of a
progressive peace and justice movement will only be realized when
there is an observable link between efforts to stop war and efforts to
address inequality in class, race, ethnicity, immigration status and
other socioeconomic factors that determine who ends up being
sacrificed in our government's wars.

As recent statistics demonstrate, there are limits to how far Bush and
the neocons can go with their plan for global hegemony when the
resources for it are running dangerously low. Fortunately, the peace
movement is in a position to further diminish those resources. If we
apply ourselves to countering military recruitment, it is in our power
to both limit the government's capacity to wage new wars and build a
stronger base to challenge the nation's spending priorities. Simply
put, counterrecruitment is a strategic and effective way to challenge
the pro-war, anti-education priorities of our government.

War and empire

As U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler put it in 1933, "There
are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our
homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is
simply a racket."

Racket is one term, empire is another to describe why the U.S.
government spends $441 billion a year on a military of over two and a
half million soldiers (2,685,713 with reserves), and why it has more
than 700 military bases spread across 130 countries with another 6,000
bases in the United States and its "territories."

Understanding what military recruits are used for in the world,
understanding war, and creating viable alternatives to both are
essential if we want to break out of the deadlock of militarism. Since
the collapse of the "other superpower," the Soviet Union, "empire" has
become a common term among both critics and advocates referring to the
unparalleled U.S. system of economic, political, cultural, and
military domination of the world. The New York Times Magazine ran a
2003 cover story titled "The American Empire (Get Used to It.)"
describing the United States as a reluctant but benevolent global
empire. While Bush claimed in his 2004 State of the Union speech, "We
have no ambitions of empire," months later Karl Rove snapped at a New
York Times reporter: "'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create
our own reality."

Some see the start of American empire in the wake of Second World War
or after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Others trace it
back to the invasion and conquest of numerous indigenous nations in
North America from the 17th century onward, the development of a slave
economy with tentacles reaching into Africa, and the 1848 seizure of
Mexico's northern half, which is now the Southwest. Another wave of
aggression abroad began in the 20th century.

Smedley Butler describes the U.S. military's role in this emerging
empire: "I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to
major general. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a
high-class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the
Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

The modern-day version of "war as a racket" and gangsterism for
capitalism can be seen in the occupation of Iraq. Critics call the
U.S. war in Iraq a failure, but behind the scenes, it has established
several permanent U.S. military bases, allowed corporations like
Halliburton to make billions from unfulfilled contracts to reconstruct
war-destroyed schools, hospitals, power systems and infrastructure,
and is in the final process of turning control of Iraq's vast oil
resources over to war profiteers such as Chevron.

The U.S. occupation's "Provisional Authority" under Paul Bremer also
laid the legal groundwork for much of the Iraqi economy to be
privatized and then taken over by U.S.-based corporations. Thus
Butler's racket and its toll abroad. What does it cost us at home?

The price of two and a half million soldiers, aircraft carriers and
military bases across the planet, and a massive array of weapons of
mass destruction is high. It saps resources for healthcare, education
and housing. It also requires keeping the domestic population in check
through propaganda and the corrosion of civil liberties and human
rights. Stifling domestic dissent, criminalizing immigrants, and
torturing and illegally imprisoning citizens of other nations have all
been stepped up under the guise of the so-called War on Terror.

In his book The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed,
Ivan Eland writes, "Intervention overseas is not needed for security
against other nation-states and only leads to blowback from the one
threat that is difficult to deter -- terrorism.

In short, the U.S. empire lessens American prosperity, power, security
and moral standing. It also erodes the founding principles of the
American Constitution." As we write this book (late 2006) nearly 3,000
U.S. soldiers and over 200 soldiers from other occupying countries
have been killed in Iraq, at least 20,895 U.S. troops have been
wounded, and a new Johns Hopkins report puts the number of violent
Iraqi civilian deaths since the 2003 invasion at more than 600,000.

War's side effects are bleak for the environment and human society;
its direct and intended effect is mass death. Down the current road of
imperial dominance and warfare at will, the use of weapons of mass
destruction is nearly inevitable, with apocalyptic consequences.

But there are alternatives to the expense of maintaining a military
and the atrocity that is war. One that has been developed over the
last 50 years is called social defense. Brian Martin, Australian
scholar and author of Social Defense: Social Change, describes social
defense as unarmed "community resistance to aggression as an
alternative to military defense. It is based on widespread protest,
persuasion, noncooperation and intervention in order to oppose
military aggression or political repression. There have been numerous
nonviolent actions, to be sure, some of them quite spectacular, such
as the Czechoslovak resistance to the 1968 Soviet invasion, the
toppling of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in 1986, the
Palestinian Intifada from 1987 to 1993 and the collapse of communist
regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989."

Imagine if even a fraction of the resources put into military defense
were available for the general population to organize social defense.

Replacing global empire with domestic democracy and well-being
requires redefining democracy -- pursuing ways to shift decision
making and power from corporations and government to "we the people."
It's not enough just to oppose something.

We need to envision, educate about, and then actually organize
alternatives to the system of empire and war, to corporations, and to
the lack of democratic participation in decisions that shape our lives
and communities. What begin as pragmatic actions, like keeping youth
from joining the military, are most effective when they have as their
end the transformation of the root causes of war, undemocratic
governance, and injustice. Every immediate action, when understood and
explained as part of a bigger picture, can be another step toward this
longer-term goal of getting to the roots of our problems and building
a better world.

Today's movement

Arlene Inouye, who began her activism during Vietnam, continues her
work today in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where she
founded the Coalition Against Militarism in our Schools (CAMS). Her
support of a bright, young student named Sal illustrates how
counterrecruitment works simultaneously to resist war and build
alternatives.

Arlene says, "Sal is a bright JROTC student who lacked support for
success in school and beyond. His father was deported to Mexico about
two years ago, and he was told by the military recruiter that if Sal
enlisted, his father could come back to the United States. His father
begged him to enlist after high school. Sal later learned that the
military was lying and that he couldn't help his father come home."

During the spring of 2006 there were student walkouts and marches
supporting immigrant rights throughout Los Angeles. Arlene explains,
"The activism around immigrant rights helped Sal to see the hypocrisy
of fighting in a military that is being sent to the border and has
been reported to shoot down undocumented people who try to cross.

"During a rally, Sal took off his JROTC uniform in front of the press,
encouraging other students to resist war and drop out of JROTC.
Unfortunately, most won't because of concerns about their grades. This
student who is articulate and smart is failing school and lacks the
support he needs. I have mobilized help for him at the school and call
him regularly. He just got back from a peace camp given by our partner
organization, and that was a powerful experience for him."

Creating a supportive community to enable Sal's dissent, and help him
forge an alternative path, is at the heart of counterrecruitment. As
demonstrated by Sal's example, the best movement is as much about
envisioning and building a new world as it is about resisting the
injustices of this one.

For more information on Army of None, visit the website.

Army veteran Aimee Allison has led school and community
counterrecruitment activities over the last decade. David Solnit is
the editor of Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build
a Better World. For more information on Army of None, visit the
website.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/62945/

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