A Pauper Class of Hirelings

A story in today's Boston Globe highlights some of the problems with our volunteer military system that I discussed at length yesterday. Not surprisingly, Army recruiters are more aggressive in working-class and poor areas than in wealthy suburbs. What is surprising is the lengths to which these recruiters go after their prey:

POMFRET, Md. -- Military recruiting saturates life at McDonough High, a working-class public school where recruiters chaperon dances, students in a junior ROTC class learn drills from a retired sergeant major in uniform, and every prospect gets called at least six times by the Army alone.

Recruiters distribute key chains, mugs, and military brochures at McDonough's cafeteria. They are trained to target students at schools like McDonough across the country, using techniques such as identifying a popular student -- whom they call a "center of influence" -- and conspicuously talking to that student in front of others.

The Globe inquiry found that recruiters target certain schools and students for heavy recruitment, and then won't give up easily: Officers call the chosen students repeatedly, tracking their responses in a computer program the Army calls "the Blueprint." Eligible students are hit with a blitz of mailings and home visits. Recruiters go hunting wherever teens from a targeted area hang out, following them to sporting events, shopping malls, and convenience stores.

Officers are trained to analyze students and make a pitch according to what will strike a motivational chord -- job training, college scholarships, adventure, signing bonuses, or service to country. A high-school recruiting manual describes the Army as "a product which can be sold."

This should be familiar to those who have seen the recruiters hanging out at the mall in Fahrenheit 9/11. But is anyone else profoundly disturbed by this? We cherry=pick our most needy, our most at-risk children, pump them up by calling them "brave volunteers" and send them off to do our imperial bidding.

Kids may see the deification of the military in the dominant culture, but they aren't stupid. They know that a trip to Afghanistan or Iraq isn't exactly safe. So they need a lot of incentive to risk getting their head blown off. But the Army reads "incentive" as "pressure":

"This closing method works best with younger men," the manual reads. "You must be careful how you use this one. You must be on friendly terms with your prospect, or this may backfire. It works like this: When you find difficulty in closing, particularly when your prospect's interest seems to be waning, challenge his ego by suggesting that basic training may be too difficult for him and he might not be able to pass it. Then, if he accepts your challenge, you will be a giant step closer to getting him to enlist."

And then this graf knocked me over:

In schools where educators are skeptical of the military, recruiters are shut out beyond the minimum required by President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act: two visits a year per service, as well as a list with every student's name, address, and phone number.

That's MANDATED in the No Child Left Behind act? The Army gets everybody's name and phone number, and an open-door policy into the school twice a year? Now that I think of it, I remember getting a call from an Army recruiter in 1990 (right before the Gulf War). It never occurred to me to think about where they got my number. At least not then.

We are closer to Thomas Jefferson's "pauper class of hirelings" than ever before. The underlying questions about this policy must be addressed. Are desperate teenagers necessarily the best soldiers? Is this the best way to protect the country? Would mandatory national service make war a little more distasteful to otherwise armchair generals? The national discussion about this is long overdue.