<p>I had no problem with recruiters talking with my son. He’s fully capable of thinking for himself. Some of the posts on this thread are unbelievable. We have an all VOLUNTEER military. If there are recruiters that are using unethical techniques, they should be dealt with accordingly, but 99.9% of them are honorable and doing their job the best they can. I’m proud to say that my son will be serving his country and attending the Air Force Academy, class of 2009!</p>
<p>I’m glad you posted this-</p>
<p>While I respect those who choose to serve their country, I don’t always support their recruitment efforts. The army calls me once every two weeks or so. Every time, I tell them I am not and never will be interested, and let them know it would be in everyone’s best interest to take me off their list. They still call back.</p>
<p>Its interesting that we can report telemarketers but can do nothing about the armed forces bugging us…</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with the military contacting adults who have graduated from high school and are 18.
I do have a problem with schools giving names , addresses and phone numbers of minors without parent permission.
If we want an informed military which I hope everyone can agree on, why would there be a problem with that?</p>
<p>i do no disparage those serving, on the contrary, they are doing an amazing job considering the planning that went into it.</p>
<p>I think people who serve do so with honor. Its the managment I have issues with.</p>
<p>Maybe many are re-enlisting, but they are not getting new recruits, that is why there is so much pressure on recruiters.</p>
<p>I had no problem with recruiters talking with my son. He’s fully capable of thinking for himself.</p>
<p>Most kids probably are.
But the ones targeted are not the ones who are heading off to college- but the ones who have few prospects. These kids are easier pickings, and are impressed by flashy video games ( which the Army spent $7 million on )and the opportunity to play GI Joe in real life.</p>
<p>“Other parts of the military are taking a similar approach. Last month, the secretary of the Army said that in addition to adding recruiters and fattening enlistment bonuses, the branch plans a national grass-roots effort featuring military and political leaders talking about “the value of serving the nation, the noble calling.” And to help reverse the sliding numbers, the Guard and Army Reserve are raising the maximum enlistment age from 34 to 39.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cdapress.com/articles/2004/10/04/news/news03.txt[/url]”>http://www.cdapress.com/articles/2004/10/04/news/news03.txt</a></p>
<p>“One reason enlistments has stayed steady is the Guard’s Stop Loss program, which can extend a soldier’s service term once a unit is placed on alert. But that has also kept re-enlistment numbers down.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7270391/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7270391/</a></p>
<p>"In February the Army missed its monthly recruiting goal by 27 percent. That was the first time it had fallen short for any month since May 2000, and it underscored the difficulty the Army faces in signing up young men and women during time of war. </p>
<p>The Army is forecasting that all three elements active, Guard and Reserve will fall short of their targets for March and April. That means they will have to make up the lost ground this summer traditionally the best recruiting season to meet their full-year goals."</p>
<p>My problem is not with informed decision, but with unscrupulous tactics used on less worldly or more desperate individuals. Unprepared students are prime targets for such recruiters - and I am by no means saying all recruiters are unscrupulous. Schools counsel on college application and selection. Perhaps time would be well spent advising the same teens on how to approach military enlistment - if they are interested. My son had three students in his class that signed for large education grants and signing bonuses. All took the appropriate tests and got the military branch’s promises in writing in the form of a contract before they committed to enlisting. One actually told the navy recruiter, it’s college or nuke school. If I’m not guaranteed nuke school, I’m sending in a housing deposit. My daughter’s boyfriend will also be reporting for medical training this fall. He, too, had everything in contract form before signing. That approach was actually suggested to him by a recruiter. We hear “buyer beware” tales all of the time here on CC concerning promises made to athletes and other recruited students by colleges and universities. Too bad the same stories aren’t being heard by military career prospects.</p>
<p>CGM, I’m not sure the purpose of your post above. It just highlights the fact that life in military sevice to the country is being unfairly characterized by the media and the liberal elites. However, for those who see beyond this hype, those who actually know the facts, these people are re-enlisting. If you saw re-enlistments drop precipitously, then you might be able to say that the leftist picture painted by the media is correct. But, given that this isn’t the case, we can only infer that the youth are being lied to - but not by the recruiters but by the media and possibly their parents.</p>
<p>Because some posters said that there was a lot of people re-enlisting, so I wanted to show some different information.</p>
<p>But recruitments are down, so they are using questionable tactics, why do you think they are standing down for a day to discuss it?</p>
<p>Interesting phrases- liberals elite, leftist, and the recruiters are lying…a Republican Senator is asking for a hearing to find out what is going on…a REPUBLICAN</p>
<p>If you cannot make an argument with out name calling and labeling, thats pretty sad.</p>
<p>Go to all the websites run by soldiers, former soldiers, their families</p>
<p>Recruitment is down 27 percent. FACT.</p>
<p>All I showed were facts, with no name calling…I will have a resonable discussion with Fundingfather if he refrains from labels and name calling. Until then, I choose to ignore his posts, after this one.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=99303[/url]”>http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=99303</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0309/dailyUpdate.html[/url]”>http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0309/dailyUpdate.html</a></p>
<p>Minorities used to account for a higher percentage of military recruits than they did in the general population. Now they account for about the same percentage as they do in the general population.</p>
<p>As well, they are quite a number of “catches” for re-enlisting and recruitment- ie - several years of guard sevice after wards can be required. </p>
<p>There is more pressure on the recruiters, and that translates to getting recruits.</p>
<p>CGM: this from your own source:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If things were really that bad and if the mission was so unrewarding as you have indicated, how do you explain the re-enlistment rate?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe I missed the facts in the following:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>well I imagine that you ahve a significant amount of “buy in”
Im not a shrink nor do I play one on Tv- but for example my sister belongs to a church that requires a great deal of time/energy/money to be a “good” member.
Its a pretty controlled environment and you are only communicating with others who are in the same boat for the most part.
The more of yourself you put into something- the more you have invested to see it succeed, and the harder it is to stop and stand back and evaluate if you are getting out of it, what you wanted.
If you have risked your life for something- I imagine it would be difficult if not impossible to say it wasn’t worth it, particulary if those around you share your experience. You validate each other.
I certainly am not saying that this explains reenlistment. My brother recently retired from the Air force and he obviously got something out of it, although he permitted them to keep him several states away from his children while they were growing up. He was never in combat, and he is enjoying a generous pension while he works as an engineer.
I also know a young man who was a recruiter for the Marines, however he found it to be a difficult job, and volunteered to go to Iraq. Soon after he was injured and he is now stateside, but he also feels that we need to finish what we started…</p>
<p>EK4, it almost sounds like what you are describing is some form of self-brain washing. I’m not saying that that is impossible, but one would think that when the soldiers are out of the combat situation and back in the States (no deployment lasts forever) that they would have a chance to, as you say, “stop and stand back and evaluate”. The re-enlistment data doesn’t seem to support this theory. From what I have seen (anecdotally), it is common for soldiers who have been injured and are recuperating back in the States can’t wait to get back.</p>
<p>A different twist - around here a number of colleges are protesting campus military recruitment because the military overtly discriminates against gays - and the schools have an anti-discrimination policy which they honor as to any organization which wants an official on-campus role.</p>
<p>It certainly is possible that we have escaped the radar screen of the recruiters because our kids are in private schools, but I have had kids in such schools that accept federal money, and a significant number of the graduates there (all boy’ school) did end in military type programs. All associated with colleges. But my neighbors with kids in public schools here do not seem to view this as a problem either, nor have a heard a peep out of those kids I tutor, and most of them are from public school.</p>
<p>I feel that any unscrupulous recruiter, including those from the military needs to be reported in writing through the proper channels. This is inappropriate behaviour for anyone, certainly not what we want our armed forces to be engaging in. And the schools should be notified and a procedure should be put into place if this is a problem. That said, the law is that the armed forces are permitted to recruit in the schools. So they have the right. There are strings attached to tax money, and that is one of them. I do not believe that the bad recruiters are the norm. I also believe that in some areas, it becomes a face off between school/parents vs the recruiters because the community does not want to abide by the provisions of the law and the rights of the recruiter and it becomes a ****ing match. THat does not solve the problem of the bad recruiters, and vindicates them to some degree when aspersions are cast when things are just going the way they were supposed to be under the terms of the law. I have no problem with the OP wanting to change the rules, and advising parents to keep the kids off the lists, but to give the recruiters a nasty time when they are just doing their jobs is not the way to go. Yes, there are the bad recruiters but there are some uncooperative members of the community who acting shamelessly too.</p>
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</p>
<p>Gays can enlist in the military, you just cannot engage in any homosexual activity or tell anyone that you are gay. If you can’t or won’t adhere to these rules then don’t enlist, plain and simple. The arguement that gays are discriminated against in the military is the same as saying that al qaeda is discriminated against in the military.</p>
<p>
I’m not sure where you are going with this line of reasoning. </p>
<p>However, I have seen some people who I have a lot of respect for as military men,like Colin Powell, who are wary of opening up the military to gays that are open about their sexuality. I think some of this comes from an effort to protect an openly gay soldier from his fellow soldiers. As much as we would like to think that all of our soldiers are tolerant of other lifestyles, I think we would be kidding ourselves to believe that that is universally the case. I have heard one anecdote about how a gay in the miltary was treated that I can only hope is a wild exageration.</p>
<p>To the point about the soldiers in the hospitals who are so gung ho to return: many of these soldiers are dedicated to their units and to their country. </p>
<p>But there are many who are in the stages of grief. I was listening to an interview with a psychiatrist - sorry, can’t remember who or where - and he was saying that particularly with amputees (and many in the hospitals are), they go through the grief stages in the exact same way that people do who have suffered the loss of a family member. So in many cases, the intense desire to return to their units is a case of pure and simple denial. They are not ready to deal with the fact that they are disabled and can no longer be the physical person they were.</p>
<p>And, as the Imus show said, in more cases, the expressed desire to go back has something to do with the fact that the soldier is surrounded during the interview by a reporter, a camera, and several high-ranking officials!</p>
<p>Look, fundingfather - I know you love our country, just as we do. And I know that you support the Iraq war. But you just can’t continue to deny that the recruitment numbers are down. That’s a fact. You are free to draw your own conclusions, as are others. But facts are facts, please.</p>