Shek

Another article from the revisionist Bob Herbert. I remember seeing excerpts from this handbook several months ago in a different article and I know that it was published long before the current recruiting woes (it's not like the all volunteer force was invented in the past few monhts). However, you'd never get that impression from this article or know that it's recycled material (is he treading down the Jayson Blair path?). Next, either he's never served or has decided to forget his experience because Drill Sergeants tend to be overdramatic in their "premenitions" about recruits getting killed in order to gain the attention of the audience. Anyway, I'm getting tired of reading articles by defeatists like this.


New York Times
June 16, 2005

Uncle Sam Really Wants You

By Bob Herbert

With the situation in Iraq deteriorating and the willingness of Americans to serve in the armed forces declining, a little-known Army publication called the "School Recruiting Program Handbook" is becoming increasingly important, and controversial.

The handbook is the recruiter's bible, the essential guide for those who have to go into the nation's high schools and round up warm bodies to fill the embarrassingly skimpy ranks of the Army's basic training units.

The handbook declares forthrightly, "The goal is school ownership that can only lead to a greater number of Army enlistments."

What I was not able to find in the handbook was anything remotely like the startlingly frank comments of a sergeant at Fort Benning, Ga., who was quoted in the May 30 issue of The Army Times. He was addressing troops in the seventh week of basic training, and the paper reported the scene as follows:

" 'Does anybody know what posthumous means?' Staff Sgt. Andre Allen asked the 150 infantrymen-in-training, members of F Company, 1st Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment.

"A few hands went up, but he answered his own question.

" 'It means after death. Some of you are going to get medals that way,' he said matter-of-factly, underscoring the possibility that some of them would be sent to combat and not return."

That's the honest message recruits get once they're in. The approach recommended by the recruiting handbook is somewhat different. It's much softer. Recruiters trying to sign up high school students are urged to schmooze, schmooze, schmooze.

"The football team usually starts practicing in August," the handbook says. "Contact the coach and volunteer to assist in leading calisthenics or calling cadence during team runs."

"Homecoming normally happens in October," the handbook says. "Coordinate with the homecoming committee to get involved with the parade."

Recruiters are urged to deliver doughnuts and coffee to the faculty once a month, and to eat lunch in the school cafeteria several times a month. And the book recommends that they assiduously cultivate the students that other students admire: "Some influential students such as the student president or the captain of the football team may not enlist; however, they can and will provide you with referrals who will enlist."

It's not known how aware parents are that recruiters are inside public high schools aggressively trying to lure their children into wartime service. But not all schools get the same attention. Those that get the royal recruitment treatment tend to be the ones with students whose families are less affluent than most.

Schools with kids from wealthier families (and a high percentage of collegebound students) are not viewed as good prospects by military recruiters. It's as if those schools had posted signs at the entrances saying, "Don't bother." The kids in those schools are not the kids who fight America's wars.

Now, with the death toll in Iraq continuing to mount, it's getting harder to sign up even the less affluent kids. So the recruitment effort in the target schools has intensified. Recruiters, already driven in some cases to the brink of nervous exhaustion, are following the handbook guidelines more rigorously than ever.

"If you wait until they're seniors, it's probably too late," the book says. It also says, "Don't forget the administrative staff. ... Have something to give them (pen, calendar, cup, donuts, etc.) and always remember secretary's week, with a card or flowers."

The sense of desperation is palpable: "Get involved with local Boy Scout troops. Scoutmasters are typically happy to get any assistance you can offer. Many scouts are [high school] students and potential enlistees or student influencers."

One of the many problems here is that adolescents should not be hounded by military recruiters under any circumstances, and they shouldn't be pursued at all without the full knowledge and consent of parents or guardians.

Let the Army be honest and upfront in its recruitment. War is not child's play, and warriors shouldn't be assembled through the use of seductive sales pitches to youngsters too immature to make an informed decision on matters that might well result in their having to kill others, or being killed themselves.

Anon

"War is not child's play, and warriors shouldn't be assembled through the use of seductive sales pitches to youngsters too immature to make an informed decision on matters that might well result in their having to kill others, or being killed themselves."

As if he knows a f'ing thing about warriors, or what makes them tick.

Bluesman

He's full of crap. It has NEVER been the case that the less-affluent schools were the better prospects. Inner city kids tend to have higher criminal and/or chemical issues or they don't have a high school diploma, and a recruiter is usually wasting his time trying to get them in. I know a Baltimore recruiter that said he had to 'poach' recruits from outside his designated area, because he simply could not get any qualified applicants.

In recent years, the Army has finally done some analysis on where the bulk of their recruits come from. The results surprised everybody. Bored white kids from the 'burbs and farms and affluent, intact families were present in MUCH bigger nuimbers than anybody thought. Even the Army bought into the meme that it would only be the career choice of poor kids that were too dumb to get a job at the Post Office.

Although minorities are over-represented in the military, it is NOT true that poor kids are. They were never a good bet. But the shortfall today seems to be more a matter of really excellent prospects for the potential recruits. With scholastic acheivement continuing to improve year after year and the perception that nobody can succeed without a college degree these days, more kids are opting for the path to higher education. This is made much easier than in days past with any number of financing options that no longer rely on the military's college money incentives.

Couple that with the white-hot job market, and there are just too many other attractive options for today's young person.

It seems that we are victims of our own success. The military has made this country so secure and promoted its interests so well, that with our prosperity has come a very difficult environment in which to recruit enough young people to keep it going.

Unless we offer even greater incentives than we already do. But that has a whole different problem set: the 'mercenary' outlook in the person that answers the call for the money, instead of what SHOULD be his motivation.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

Shek

Blue,
To caveat your statement on minorities, accessions of minorities into the Army (I don't know about the military as a whole) are just barely at or below their representation in the US population, and I wouldn't qualify minorities as necessarily being titled "overrepresented." Additionally, on the economic demographics, 40.5% of soldiers killed in Iraq have been from the suburbs and another 1/3 are from rural areas, so there is no undue burden being held by any demographic IMO. Below are the links where I got some of my facts. I think that Colin Powell got it best when he was the JCS and was asked about minorities being overrepresented in the Army. He basic response was that he saw only one color in the Army - green.

http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/demographics.asp
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2005Mar8.html
http://www.strategypage.com//fyeo/ho...et=HTATRIT.HTM

Anon

"To caveat your statement on minorities, accessions of minorities into the Army (I don't know about the military as a whole) are just barely at or below their representation in the US population, and I wouldn't qualify minorities as necessarily being titled "overrepresented.""

Agreed.

When i was in probably 80+% of all the troops in my Bn were white guys.

troung

Some of the studies I have seen (could be outdated) had things hitting rather equal for ethnic breakdown in terms of numbers. And since the Army became intergated the deaths breakdown rather close to the percent of society.

Bluesman

I'm talking about across the military, and when I say 'overrepresented', I don't mean by any gross sense.

And I know Sniper's experience is still the Way It Is. Combat Arms and Intel in particular are not exactly Affirmative Action testbeds.

Essentially, the volunteer force did exactly the opposite of what we were warned about, and what the ignorant still claim: "A rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

This guy Herbert is STILL behind the times.