By Ernie McCray
I love my life, especially my moments with kids. Recently I had the pleasure, along with a teenage Latina friend of mine, of talking to an assembly of young people, most of them Latino, in Chula Vista, about something they’re confronted with regularly: whether to join or not join the military.
We were doing so because we hate to see our children being sucked into the war machine by Uncle Sam who loves to play with their innocence.
Our government never rests when it comes to building up our armed forces, even creating a rule years ago attached to “No Child Left Behind” that threatened to deny federal funding to an entire state if any school refuses to release student contact information to the military or let military recruiters in their doors.
This friend of mine and other incredibly bright high school students like her and a few adults set out, a while back, to do what little we could about the situation and helped create some changes in San Diego City Schools wherein the military was prominent in students’ lives.
Through our focused efforts, counselors, although every now and then I hear words to the contrary, can’t say to students (as many had been doing with mostly Latino and African American students), “No, I can’t get you that U.S. History course you want during the third period” and then proceed to place them, against their will, in JROTC. Now students and their parents have to be fully informed about the JROTC program and they have to sign a form indicating that it is okay for the student to take part in such class work.
Confronting the district with their own Zero-Tolerance Policy against firearms of any kind we brought weapons training to an end on school campuses.
Military recruiters now, from our sustained efforts, can’t spend as much time on our campuses collecting personal information and jiving students about the armed forces being a great way for them to “make a difference” in the world.
Much of our work is centered on countering the distorted and glamourized pictures of the military and war that the Department of Defense tries to paint in the minds of our youth.
We are very concerned that many low-income students and students of color, students who aren’t offered a lot of other opportunities, are being diverted away by our government from considering higher education. They are found in disproportionate numbers in the armed forces.
We don’t say to a student “Don’t join,” but we do say “Joining the military is not something to take lightly and casually. It’s serious business.” So many kids join and are shocked to find themselves in a war zone, thinking of the whole thing as a kind of a game – games they’ve played on the range of electronic devices available to them in today’s world, games that don’t show the horrors of war as they really are.
We give them some “truths” to consider like they don’t have to join the military to learn valuable skills or find adventure or pay for college or serve others.
The students my friend and I addressed the other day were very interested in what we had to say. It was quite evident that critical thinking skills are high on the list of what their school wants to leave them with as they navigate their lives.
But it’s hard work. The military influence on our kids is deeply entrenched. They’re sought out not only in their schools, but in slick television commercials aired during timeouts in ball games and during popular shows that kids watch. I find myself sometimes bobbing my head and moving my shoulders to some tune on my TV, and then discovering I’m getting down with “The few and the proud” and the like, and I look at my cat with a sheepish grin filled with guilt. It’s easy to get taken in.
Sadly, though, we Americans don’t seem to value the truth. Someone like Michael Moore will delve into school shootings and the problems in our health systems and globalization and greedy corporations and the horrors of the “War on Terror” – and we treat him like he’s a character in a scary movie.
At the same time a president and his men lead us into a war based on lies and we just shrug our collective shoulders with barely a sigh.
I’ve found in my peace work that our children can handle the truth. They value it. But they’re human, and, on the whole, will be influenced, like us grown-ups, by those who have the most power to get their attention.
The big truth, however, is: children are the hope for any chance of a better world being created down the line. But they need us to show them the way. My life is dedicated to doing just that.
Ernie McCray
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Ernie, even before I read the last paragraph, I was thinking Ernie always tells the truth. Then you closed with your special sentence. You are till touching children’s lives.
I meant still touching
Ernie, I so love and respect what you have written. My youngest son, Jonathan, a beautiful African American raised in a biracial family, joined the Marines last month. It was his driving passion, perhaps only reason to graduate high school (Grossmont) and get away from home. The recruiter got him on campus his senior year and there was no looking back. He told me a few months ago that he didn’t really want to hear any more of my “liberal, feminist world views,” wherein I told him that mother’s milk had already sealed the deal. Now he is four weeks at MCRD and believes he did not make a good decision for himself, and I am heartbroken. I didn’t know recruiters were allowed back on campuses. Thank you for what you continue to do. Count me in.
Why doesn’t the Peace Corps have an equal presence on campus? There are alternatives to gung ho militarism for those wishing to “make a difference.” Thanks, Ernie, for whatever you can do to counteract the militarization of young minds.
THANK YOU Ernie!!! I whole-heartedly agree with every word in this revealing compassionate article. Ms. Taylors heartbreaking story above is one I have come to hear/witness once too often. It is so easy to suck in an adult with the glamorized military advertisements-catchy beat and lyrics, expertly dressed, strong, vibrant and dynamic samples of our young military representing people of color ,etc. ; hence our most vulnerable to this kind of ‘weaponry’ makes our kids easy targets. It is so dishonest, so unfair; especially considering a high -school graduate is bound for the front lines making those fantastic ‘promises’ almost impossible and definitely high risk. Consider this: undocumented youth recruited to fight for our country with false promises of gaining legal status once their term is completed and then making them ‘wait in the ‘non-existent line’ to get permanent residency. So many lies; so many excuses. Thank you again for your intelligent, patient perseverance and advocacy.
While I don don’t disagree with the premise of this article, we do need to keep in mind there are those who WANT to join and actually DO know what they are getting into. Also there ARE those who join and make the successful transition to civilian life after they separate. Not all come back suffering from depression and PTSD. Also keep in that even during wartime, especially here in San Diego where the majority of military personnel are Navy do not ever see actual combat. I served 20 years, retired and am proud of what I did. I now work for the DoD helping sick and injured service members navigate through the often confusing and bureaucratic military disability evaluation system.
I’ve met many of those students who know what they’re getting into. I respect their decision to make choices for themselves in life. I’m more concerned with those who don’t quite know what they want to do and just casually join the military. And I appreciate that you you are an advocate for many of the service people who come home damaged as a result of their service. A quick point: so many of the kids I’ve met who know what the military is about and want to join often look at people like me, with my message, with scorn as though they think something is wrong with anyone who doesn’t think like them. They’ve already bought into the idea, early in life, that people in the peace movement are unpatriotic and don’t love their country – when that’s not true at all with people I’m involved with in my activism.
Yeah there’s always people like that. I’ve dealt with many of them myself and just take them with a grain of salt (though I kind of had to0). Some come from families with a long line of family member’s and relatives who served and just don’t have it in them to accept different points of view, especially if they lost people.
I hear you.
Another thing that should surprise no one who has lived in San Diego for any significant period of time, most service members are not right wing gung ho war monger wannabes. I spent a good 8 years of my career volunteering off duty time with the Surfrider Foundation at the encouragement of my division officer who was active with the local chapter of the Sierra Club and Habitat for Humanity. Yes there are liberals in uniform.
Those free-thinking people of conscience who serve are certainly to
be respected, and even admired, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves; those
within the recruiting divisions of the various services are aiming their
appeal mostly at young men who’ve raised themselves on computerised
war games and the many young people who, for various reasons having
to do with the service economy, can’t see many employment options
open to them.
I do believe the majority of new recruits today don’t join the armed
forces because they want to save the world. They simply don’t have any
other options.
Immediately after 9/11 there was a surge of people who were pretty gung ho about signing up and specifically for branches like the Army and Marines were the experience of actual boots on the ground combat were very likely, at least compared to The Navy (where most never see any action even during wartime) and Air force. Obviously times have changed since then so you might very well be right. Still I come across people who seem pretty sincere in wanting to serve for it’s own sake.
As to the recruiting divisions, I can tell you it’s no picnic. I never did a recruiting tour but know many who have and you’d be surprised at how so few actually like it. At least during times of undermanned periods they are under intense pressure to make quota. They no more like hanging out at high school campuses than most people here like having them there. At least that’s the feedback from people I know. They couldn’t wait to finish their recruiting tour and get back to a more operational type of duty.
Some people do know ahead of time a little about what to expect in the military, and of course some feel positive about the experience. The problem is that there are too many who discover too late that it was a mistake for them, and unlike other jobs or school, you can’t just quit and walk away. This is why it’s important to focus on what is NOT being told about it to young people and to give them alternatives (see http://www.projectyano.org). We already have 3-4 billion dollars spent a year on promoting enlistment, supplemented by support from schools and school personnel who rationalize that “it’s just another career option.” But it’s not just another job, and military members can wind up in combat zones regardless of which branch they join and even if they have a “noncombat” specialty. And it’s also important to acknowledge that even those who do not wind up in a combat zone are still part of the force that carries out our wars of aggression. There is no dancing around that fact.
Exactly. You can’t soft pedal the fact that as a part of the military establishment, you are essentially involved in an immoral, unethical profession and activity regardless or not of whether you’re a “liberal.” That’s just my opinion, of course. But so many in the military think they are morally neutral because they’re just doing their job. They never stop to analyze exactly what that job is and the larger enterprise that that job is a part of. And there are many, of course, who view their job in a morally positive fashion as I guess most of Hitler’s military did. Do we blame German soldiers in WW II for taking part in an immoral enterprise or were they just doing their jobs?
I believe that individuals who join the military can be moral and ethical. The problem is that a sales job has been done on them and the rest of the population, and in the face of that it’s harder to see the truth that Ernie writes about. It’s especially relevant that recruiting focuses on young people who still have a limited life experiences and, therefore, are more vulnerable to sales techniques of all kinds. There is a reason why the military now spends significant time visiting and partnering with elementary and middle schools: the younger the minds, the easier it is to groom them to be militarized later. But please, don’t forget that talking about this means very little if people don’t act to change what is going on in our schools. You can join Ernie and the rest of us to make that happen: http://www.projectyano.org.
Project YANO is exactly what San Diego and the nation needs to counteract the raging militarism that dominates the country. If young people see an alternative for jobs and serving their country in a way that helps people and promotes peace as opposed to serving their nation by pointing the barrel of a gun, many will choose peaceful service rather than militaristic service.
Hitler huh?
The question is were members of the German military merely doing their jobs and doing their patriotic duty to their country or do they bear moral responsibility for the enterprise they were a part of?
Also as I’m quite sure you know, the actual Army solders/airmen and Navy sailors were not members of the Nazi Party/SS. As to whether or not they should be viewed as immoral is a bit tough. I’m sure back then many people were drafted into the military and others were simply products of how they were brought up. That being said, Hitler even though he was an autocratic dictator WAS democratically elected by a populace that fully understood what he was about and what he wanted to accomplish so you could say the average everyday German Joe was a despicable person. Still, NOTHING the U.S. has done since WW II compares to what Nazi Germany did to it’s very own citizens. Nothing. There is no comparison to the morality of U.S. service members to members of the Nazi/SS. Comparing our service members to Germany’s actual military members during WW II is a bit more complicated.
I don’t think John was comparing our military members to the Nazis, he was merely making the point that people in those situations should be held accountable no matter what. Now, it might not be an equal comparison, but let’s also not forget that our war in SE Asia took the lives of 2-3 million people (depends on whose numbers you believe). Let me repeat: 2-3 million! U.S. military personnel directly shared the blame for that, along with the Vietnamese military, which we propped up and funded for over a decade. Then there was our Army’s brutal treatment of the native population here during the 1800s. And just show that that mentality was not merely a thing of the past, here’s a chilling sentence we found in an Army JROTC textbook that was still being used to teach in our schools in 2002: “Fortunately for the Army, the government policy of pushing the Indians farther west then wiping them out was carried out successfully” (Leadership Education and Training 3, page 185). The context was a chapter all about how “the Army helped to win the American West.”
Not to mention the immoral Iraq war fomented and lied into by George W Bush which destabilized the whole middle east and caused misery to countless thousands of military, civilian and displaced persons the consequences of which we are still dealing with today. I also fault Obama for his encouragement of young people throughout the middle east, in particular Egypt, Libya and Syria, which destabilized those countries and has led to the upsurge of ISIS. The misery which this has inflicted on so many people has led directly to the resentment and hatred towards the US and the West in general.
There are no easy answers to this question. You can’t call the Fire Dept. when there is a “credible” threat by some outside force. Until everyone on the globe lays down their arms and dismantles their nuclear arsenals, someone has to defend our citizens and our treasures. I think kids need to understand the “why?” of our military, then have to wait until they are at least 21 to decide whether or not to join. There is good and bad on both sides of the issue.
The 2-3 million killed in our war in Southeast Asia were not a credible threat to us. Neither were the hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq (not to mention the 4 million refugees created there by our invasion). With only a few possible exceptions (some might mention the Civil War and WWII), virtually all the conflicts this country has waged since its founding have been for the purpose of imposing its political and economic will on people (Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is full of examples). “Preventative war” is universally recognized as illegal, and even the U.S. government’s own definition of a justifiable “preemptive attack” requires “incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack is imminent.” Can anyone think of cases in the last 75 years when such evidence existed before we attacked other countries? I think that the understanding our kids need to be given is that if they join the military they are most likely NOT going to be used for defense. And if that bothers them, they need to consider alternatives before singing an agreement they can’t back out of.
Amen to that!
“… someone has to defend our citizens and our treasures…..”
Shirley hit the nail on the head…. I personally would not want to live in a country of disarmed citizens and a ‘neutered’ military…. however, this last fifty years of endless wars with no definitive outcome other than great loss of life and resources leaves me quite dismayed as I wind down my life affairs. We certainly have left our world in worse shape for our kids to manage than we found it….
Ernie has a good point… Let’s at least be honest when recruiting young people who do not have the life experience to be able to tell fact from fiction… especially when it comes to compensation and benefits….. Most military families are living below the poverty level… a fine kettle of fish when you consider the sacrifice they are expected to make for us….
Signed..
Been there, Done that