America has long had a fascination with Heroes: cowboys wearing a ten gallon hat and riding a white stallion, a firefighter rescuing someone from a building engulfed in flames, the Sheriff putting dangerous criminals behind bars, the athlete, the underdog overcoming impossible odds, and of course the special kind of person that volunteers to serve our great Country.

Becoming a Soldier is a choice that involves sacrifices. The sacrifice of knowing you may be required to leave your family, loved ones, and the comforts of home on a moments notice. The sacrifice of knowing that the time spent away from your loved one’s can never be reclaimed. The sacrifice of knowing that there is always the possibility that you may not make it back. The choice to become a soldier is never an easy one.

Welcoming our Soldiers home

Soldiers do not enlist because they want to go out and kill, they do so for a myriad of reasons, some do so for a paycheck, some for assistance with college tuition, some because they lack of other viable choices. Every Soldier has their own individual reasons for enlisting, but for most at the root of their decision to enlist, stems a deep and abiding love for their country, and our freedoms. For these Soldiers patriotism isn’t an abstract concept, it is an essential part of their being.

When Soldier swears their oath, they mean every word of it:

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

They also recognize that their duty to their oath does not end, just because they have left the service of their nation.

Clarksville Online’s Tim Cash was one of those soldiers….

Tim Cash

Due to circumstances beyond our control neither my family or myself could provide the opportunity for me to attend college right out of high school. The Army offered me a chance to serve, and in exchange they would provide me with the assistance to allow me to attend college. Which I did eventually did, and I am a mere twelve credits from earning my bachelor’s degree.

A sense of duty to our Nation, and my Family turned what was to be a three year tour, into a twenty year career. This was not something I had planned on, but my path in life became clear to my during my fledgling years of service. I, like many who served before me, and who still today, did not make the career choice based upon money.

For most soldiers it is the knowledge that we were (and are) protecting our Families and way of life here in the United States, that drives us to make that difficult choice. We would gladly lay down our lives fighting in a far away land, rather than allowing our enemies bring their fights to our shores. Many of our soldiers have ended up paying that ultimate price, and should be revered by all Americans for the sacrifice they and their families made for us.

Soldiers are not political, they march off to war because they believe that they are doing so in service of a just cause. Our Soldiers service gives us the ability to sleep in peace at night; to wake up in the morning; and to allow us enjoy the freedoms promised under our Constitution, without fear of retribution.

As we honor our Veterans today, please take a moment to say a prayer for all those who have served, are serving, or will soon serve their nation on this hallowed day!

Photo Gallery

Images from the 2009 Veterans Day Parade, that was held in Clarksville, TN

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On Tuesday, January 13th at six in the morning I boarded a Delta Airlines jet in Nashville bound for Savannah, Georgia.  Accompanying me on the plane were two employers of a local rock station in Nashville that caters to young adults, high school teachers from rural and mid sized school districts in Tennessee, and two recruiters for the U.S. Marines.  Our destination was Parris Island, South Carolina, which is the primary training ground for new recruits to the United States Marine Corps.

The Marines, which are a small branch of the US armed forces, receive about six percent of the Department of Defense annual budget and have two training facilities for newly enlistees.  I had been invited along a USMC Educator’s Workshop, which is essentially a marketing strategy designed to encouraged high school teachers to develop friendlier relations with Marine recruiters, and to encourage journalists write positive stories about the USMC.

I am a peace activist, and my training and education is in the business of ending war and promoting peace.  I am also a politician who has run for office twice as a candidate for U.S. Senate representing the Green Party of Tennessee.  If I had been elected to office, one of my first actions as Senator would have been to sponsor legislation to immediately withdraw all U.S. armed forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, to drastically reduce the scope of U.S. military spending and close our military bases overseas, so I didn’t fit easily into any category that the USMC had constructed for the three day program.  Still, as a former candidate and in the interest of good will and cooperation, I attended, because I believe that it is important to hear all sides in any conversation — and the USMC clearly has one side and they want to make sure that you understand exactly what that side is.

We flew into Atlanta early that morning with a two-hour layover.  I milled around the airport looking for a Starbucks and the smoking lounge.  I found a great restaurant serving eggs and grits. I ate while working on my laptop, smoking and drinking coffee.  My head was still wrapped up with the most current manifestation of the war on the Palestinian people. I was editing a video I had shot two nights before at the Islamic Center of Nashville in which Yassir Arafat had given a fairly direct presentation on the history of Palestine and the impact of Zionism as a political ideology on that community.  It was a forceful presentation that was unapologetically one-sided, documenting the history of abuse of the Palestinian people, the war of 1967, the demolition of houses and entire villages, the rounding up of civilians, the loss of citizenship, identity, imprisonment and the tedium of life under constant occupation. I looked at the clock and realized it was time to get on the transfer to Savannah.  The war in Gaza and twelve hundred dead Palestinians continued to occupy my thoughts as I glanced out the window of the airplane and caught a good view of Stone Mountain, Georgia — a granite monolith protruding from the relatively flat plains of Atlanta where a monumental Confederate memorial was originally planned to function as the Mount Rushmore of the South.

In the halls and terminals of the Atlanta airport there had been Marines and soldiers of various types in uniforms walking about everywhere, a clear reminder of current activity within the U.S. armed forces.  My initial reaction to men in camouflage and hiking boots walking around an airport is caution and intimidation, especially when confronted by literally hundreds of them, including some on the plane. We landed after a short thirty minute flight from Atlanta to a gray, overcast day with rain speckling the windows.  The first thing I noticed about Savannah was that it was green.  There were still leaves on some of the trees and Spanish moss.  I noticed a few palm trees and was wondering if they were real or the plastic kind you find at used car lots in New Mexico.  Arriving at the airport, unsure of what came next, I approached our Marine guide and asked him what was next.  He told us they had lunch available;  we were waiting for another plane to arrive and then we would all get on the bus to the hotel.

This was my first experience with military time, which I came to know well over the course of the next three days.  Military time does not operate on the same scale as civilian time.  Military time happens all at once, it is ordered and punctual, yet also seems to be chaotic and undeterminable.  Military time, as with military culture, appears to be somewhat pedantic and mindless, but this can be said of any large organization.  Being approached by the Marines was definitely a surprise, and I wondered what their motivation was for inviting me to tour their facility.  Surely they must have reviewed my campaign website or read some of the articles that I have published, but being a good journalist and good citizen I felt that it was my responsibility to attend this event and see what they have to say.

A Marine aboard an LAV-25 light armored vehicle holds onto the L7A2 machine gun mounted on the vehicle's turret while on patrol in the city. Marines are in Zakhu as part of Operation Provide Comfort, multinational effort to aid Kurdish refugees in southern Turkey and northern Iraq. Public domain photo.

It was my intention as an observer to try to be objective, in spite of my training as a peace activist.  I would say that the Marines really believe in what they say.  In the three days of touring their facilities I received endless lectures on how the Marines build character and turn boys into men.  They discussed the value of taking someone who might be a troublemaker or not have a sense of direction in life and present them with a sense of direction through their training.  I found their training methods to be highly questionable and their sense of character building to be tantamount to brainwashing and indoctrination.

The entire environment on the military base is girded by a constant sense of control, authoritarianism and violence.  Let me be as frank as I can here: the purpose of the Marines is to train men to become highly skilled killers.  There is no doubt about this.  Everything in their training is about working in a group with the purpose of killing when needed.  Stripped of ideology, this is the function of the military.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Video (above) from Across the Universe, which revisits the Vietnam era issue of the military draft)

Whether this is good or bad, I think it is important to evaluate this experience objectively without ideology and without filters.  In my touring of the military base I constantly asked questions, and one of the primary questions I asked was whether the Marines who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan were accomplishing their objectives.  I asked them what their objectives were and did they believe that they had the support of the American people and their elected representatives.  How did they feel about the morality of their actions and did they believe that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan supported their objectives? Most of my questions were concerned with morality, ethics and intention.

What I received as a response over and over again was that my  questions were not appropriate.

I was often told that my question was above the pay grade of the officer I was talking to or that this was a decision for the people in Washington DC to make.

All I saw of Savannah was the airport.  I browsed the brochures of the travel center looking at the places I could go — Hilton Head, historic downtown Savannah, golf clubs, beachfront condos, fishing excursions and art galleries.  The last time I was in Savannah I was out marching in the streets with protesters surrounded by police protesting the meeting of the G8 at Sea Island, Georgia.  The landscape looked the same, especially the distinctive Spanish moss that hangs down from the trees everywhere and gives the area a look of antebellum charm even in the airport terminal.  While we were waiting for the other plane to arrive I sat down with a couple of teachers from a public school system in Mississippi.  They were happy to get a week off with pay and were very proud of the work that the Marines are doing at their schools.

The Educator’s Workshop is really more of a public relations effort than an effort at education.  During the course of the week-long event, journalists and teachers travel along with Marine officers on base and off base to learn what life is like for a new recruit to the Marines.  We sit with new recruits who are in the midst of their thirteen weeks of training.  Those of us who choose to can learn how to fire a military rifle, inspect an F-18 fighter jet, and go through the “yellowfeet” indoctrination process. This includes becoming part of a formation, learning how to march and follow the orders of a drill instructor.

Although I did not choose to actively participate in this element of the process, everyone was assigned a drill instructor.  We were broken up geographically into Tennessee and Alabama/Mississippi.  Over the course of the week everyone from Tennessee traveled around on the same bus with the same drill instructor who gave us lectures about his pride in the USMC and how it has changed his life and made him a better person.  We were given the ‘inside scoop’ on particular aspects of language, speech, dress code, social interaction and hierarchy within USMC culture.

Tennessee has about 100 Marine recruiters scattered across the state.  The function of these recruiters is to go to the high schools and foster relationships with students and encourage them to join the Marines by promising them money for college, world travel, service to their country and character building.  In Tennessee approximately 850 students are recruited into the Marines this way every year.  Since only about ten percent of all these students sign up voluntarily, then it is the job of the Marine recruiters to get the other ninety percent through various forms of persuasion.

The USMC has an active force of just over two hundred thousand.  This force is broken up into many functions, but the heart and soul of the Marine force is its Infantry, which accounts for about forty thousand of the total service members.  These are the people who fire the guns and are on the front lines of any action.  For the most part the Infantry is composed of recruits, although every officer in the Marines is in the Infantry, but their function is more to administer and coordinate the actions of the general forces.

At Parris Island about twenty-thousand recruits are turned out every year.  Once a young person has signed a contract with the Marines, they are committed to four years of general service and then four years of reserve duty during which time they may be called back up to service or not.  Every week the Marines graduate a new class of recruits, as Parris Island is a continuous training facility.  After thirteen weeks of training the new recruits are considered graduates and ready for the next step in their training.  Currently about seventy five percent of all new recruits will be shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan within six months of graduation.

Our last plane of high school teachers arrived at the airport, and we got on a white diesel school bus and headed to our hotel.  On the way I chatted with a female Major who reminded me of a character on the television series ’MASH.’  In fact, most of what I saw on Parris Island the next three days reminded me of that television series.  It was all there — the tedium of military culture, the unending monotony and illogic of that environment.  On base there is a strong emphasis on attention to detail, appearance and function without any obvious purpose.  I was also reminded of the way in which the military strips people of individual identity but also of the interesting ways in which identity still manages to surface beyond the carefully constructed facade of group identity.  I chatted with the Major about politics.  I asked her about voting on the base during the recent elections and if people had put up Obama or McCain yard signs.  Obviously ignorant to anything about life on a military base, I was told that political signs were not permitted on the base.  In fact, no form of political speech or free speech really exists on Parris Island.

Military life does not appear to resemble civilian life in many aspects, but perhaps most of all in the area of individual freedoms.  What the military offers in exchange is group identity.  Everything in the military, and especially in the Marines is about group identity.  A Marine’s primary objective isn’t patriotism, humanitarian concerns or political ideology.  That might be true on some level for officers, but for your average Marine, their primary motivation is to protect the other people in their unit; this is what they fight for and how they have been conditioned by Parris Island.

In Stanley Kubrick's acclaimed film, Full Metal Jacket, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is played by R. Lee Ermey.

New recruits spend every waking hour of their training period marching together, firing guns, running obstacle courses, engaging in combat exercises and obeying whatever order is presented to them as a unit.  They are yelled at, humiliated, stripped of their identity, demoralized, intimidated and taught to unquestioningly obey orders.  The function of this violence and intimidation and loss of individual identity is to suppress any kind of individual instinct for self-reflection and moral judgment in a situation of crisis or conflict.

In order to train a soldier to kill unquestioningly there must be a suppression of the natural instinct to react with caution and compassion toward another human being.  The most important aspect of training an individual to kill is not technological but rather psychological and the Marines specialize in exactly this form of psychological conditioning.

As a journalist this is my perspective, but I would not be fair if I did not offer the perspective that is presented by the Marines.  The primary message presented at the Educator’s Workshop was that the Marines build character.  The Marines believe that what they are offering young recruits is character building and citizenship.   The Marines present themselves as model citizens who volunteer at the boy scouts and work as tutors in their community.  They are proud of their fellow Marines who have run for public office and are elected to high positions and are key players in all aspects of society.  Marines like to use the language of civic function and patriotism in their public relations efforts, and I have no doubt that most of them believe this message.

Human beings tend to believe information that corresponds with their worldview, and they construct language that reinforces that perspective.  As a journalist, I am trained to look below the surface and examine the issues that are not questioned.  I think that for me the real question is about the role of the military: how do we use it and what do we get in exchange.  Therefore, most of the questions I asked the Marines had to do with specific actions, such as the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

National Geographic map

At Parris Island this is called the ‘war on terror.’  When I used the word occupation my language was always corrected, and when I asked the Marines about the ethics and morality of current service deployments, I was told that Marines simply follow orders.  I tried to explain to them that I understand the U.S. Congress and the President authorized the use of military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I understand that they are only following orders and they are not the ones who decided to go to war.  The reason I asked those questions is because I was curious.  I wonder if a specially trained force of mostly young men who spend every waking hour thinking about, preparing for and training for war will not have an instinctive, cathartic, romantic response to the possibility of war, let alone to its realization?

While at Parris Island I heard many stories of glory in Vietnam, of fallen heroes and great battles.  The romantic language of war and battle which is the standard fare of military culture was presented as ‘warrior culture.’  New recruits were ’forged’ in the ‘crucible’ and transformed into men, warriors, citizens and servants of their country.  This is presented as the mythology of Marine culture.  It is one of the many aspects of patriotism that exists both examined and unexamined in civilian life.  My questions elicited a fairly common response that the Marines are defending my freedom.  I was told that I would not even have the ability to walk around on a military base asking questions unless they were wiling to die for my freedom.  It is this very set of assumptions that interests me, because it is my impression that the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not increased my personal freedom or secured it.  In fact my own bias is that the military actions in these countries has generally lessened my security.

What I wanted to know, while I was on base, was whether an individual Marine who had served three tours of duty in Iraq ever wondered if they were in violation of international law.  I wondered if anyone who had been in the battle of Fallujah imagined how they would feel if someone invaded their country, if perhaps they might not just fight back.  I wondered if they ever thought about their use of the word ‘enemy’ and the word ‘insurgent.’  I wondered if the Marine I had just spoken to had perhaps operated one of the prisons where more than forty thousand Iraqi men had been detained, questioned and tortured.  I wondered about if they had any idea what they were doing in Iraq, or if they ever wondered about it. I wondered if they felt in any sense responsible for creating the conditions for a bloody civil war in which more than eight hundred thousand people have died.  I tried to ask as many people as I could whether or not they think their terms of service helped or hurt the people of Iraq, whether they think life in Iraq will be better in the near future.

Educators watch "Tower" training. Public domain photo.

My questions, which were never clearly answered by the Marines I talked to, were basically about one idea — whether those who are often times the face of the United States to the rest of the world, have any opinion about what they are doing.  This is essentially the contradiction I was there to explore.  It is my own curiosity that leads me to another question: what if the members of our armed forces had a choice on where to serve and how to serve?  What would this do to the foreign policy objectives of our culture?  I wonder about this.  It would seem to be a complete breakdown of the authoritarian aspect of military culture to even consider a question like this.

The Marines present themselves as heroes and the mythology of heroism is ingrained into political, economic and social culture in the United States.  Heroism in Marine culture means unquestioning obedience to the President and to the people of the United States as represented through their elected leaders and the choices they make.  This is the reinforcing social mechanism that pushes collective action on a national level. On the smaller basis of Marine units clearly the mechanism is group psychology and group bonding.  The Marines fight for each other more than anything else.

So my question to the Marines is about the issue of collective action and individuality.  If it is in the interest of the Marines to serve the collective interests of the United States of America, then what if a Marine was given a choice about how to serve their country, rather than trained to resist asking individual questions.  The nature of patriarchal culture and group identity seems to necessitate the repression of the individual moral choice, but it is my contention that this is exactly where the critical element of decision and individual freedom must be investigated.  The freedom to train men to kill and then actually to put them to work killing is a decision our society seems to accept as a function of nationalism, but how that function is played out, I think, is largely unexamined.

I wonder how it would be if men were allowed to decide where to serve and how to serve. I wonder if the moral authority and function of war would dramatically change under those circumstances.  My own personal belief is that if men and the few women who serve were allowed and even encouraged to not just be soldiers but also to be moral agents and then given that freedom then we would see a dramatic transformation of the function of military culture.  This was really my course of investigation and questioning once I arrived at Parris Island and toured.  It had not been my course of inquiry before I arrived.  I had tried to come with an open mind, but the overtly militaristic and authoritarian nature of life on a Marine base moved me in that direction of thinking, especially after asking a few questions and being told they weren’t relevant.

Educating teachers, coaches, counselors on Marine Corps careers

Most of the people on our workshop training session were teachers.  There were a total of ninety-five people traveling with the Marines during our three-day session.  This included eighty-eight teachers and seven journalists.  The journalists were from Chattanooga, Morristown, Nashville, and Meridian Mississippi.  I was told that most of the press had turned down the offer to attend the workshop or not responded. I was also told that the Marines were interested in inviting people who had diverse opinions or information about the Marines, especially journalists, with the intention of educating them about life on a Marine base.

I personally did not have any particular opinion about the Marines, one way or another.  To me they are, and still remain, lumped into the general category of military, but over time I did actually remember some generally negative reports about the Marines in the press in recent history.  I remembered the situation in Okinawa, Japan which has led to the closing of that military base, in part due to the repeated rapes of Japanese women at the hands of Marines off base which has infuriated that community and turned it against a US military presence there.

The days passed rather uneventfully at the Educator’s Workshop.  Every morning we got up at five and had breakfast at the hotel, then the teachers lined up outside in their formations. A Drill Sergeant ordered them to march or do particular activities such as turn left or turn right and then they got on the bus.  I personally had no interest in these activities and did not participate in most of it.  I had been under the impression that I was there to observe, but for the Marines their workshop is really intended as a kind of “imagine if you were a recruit” experience.

The main function of the workshop is to impress upon the teachers what life is like for a Marine so that when recruiters come back to their high schools to recruit more students, they will have a first hand experience and will be more likely to speak positively about the Marines and think about them when giving advice to high school students.  That is the purpose of the workshop, but to me it felt like a timeshare presentation that went on for three days, where we are constantly being sold the product of the Marines.

Apparently trying to impress us, one day the drill instructor told us that the Marines are like sheepdogs.  He said that the people who are not in the military are the sheep and the enemies of the people are the wolves and the Marines are the sheepdogs that protect the sheep.  In another instance we were brought into an airplane hanger and shown the holy grail of the Marines, the airplanes

Entering onto the airbase seems to be the equivalent of going to the Western Wall or entering the Dome on the Rock.  Everyone on the bus was beaming with patriotism and clean cut Marines were everywhere to greet us and show us their machinery.  We were brought into a lecture room and presented with service members who proudly told us how much money each one of them was receiving for re-enlisting.

I honestly don’t know why the Marines invited me.  They didn’t like most of my questions. When I was on the airbase part of Parris Island I asked the Marines if they believed their airplanes were being used responsibly and ethically in Iraq and Afghanistan and did they ever think about what it felt like to be on the other end of one of their machines.  I asked them about the ethics of using weapons against people who don’t have a similar technology to defend themselves.

Visit, view, but don’t ask the hard questions…

Apparently I didn’t understand the function of this experience when I agreed to go.  I was imagining that they actually wanted me to ask questions and think about what I was seeing, but in reality this was simply a public relations effort on the part of the Marines to get high school teachers, guidance counselors, principals and administrators to let Marine recruiters onto their campus.

If they are already on the campus, then this is simply their way of rewarding the teachers, by giving them a taxpayer funded trip with all expenses paid.  As for the other journalists on the delegation, they didn’t ask many questions of substance, at least not at the question and answer sessions I attended.  Apparently they got it also. 

“The point of  workshop is to get participants to think more like the Marines do, which means don’t ask questions, follow orders, get along, do as the group does, and keep your personal feelings to yourself on any subject, but always be professional and put on a good face. “

U.S. Military: A $700 Billion dollar business
I have seen America’s public image go down the tubes, but really times couldn’t be better for the military.  They are currently receiving over $700 billion dollars a year in taxpayer funding.  In a time of hard economic choices one of the questions I asked was did they feel like it was necessary to spend so much money on the military when students around the country are facing tuition increases of as much as two hundred percent and public school mandates go without funding.  I asked this in front of both the military and educators gathered at a question and answer session and was told once again that my question was not relevant.

The Marines have a complex relationship with the public.  On television they are portrayed as America’s finest fighting force.  In the Middle East they are seen as an occupying foreign power.  In the U.S. South they are seen as a way out of poverty and racism.  Family members who have a loved one in the Marines are proud beyond approach, but I have also spoken with women who have told me that the Marines have the worst reputation among the service members for domestic violence and alcohol abuse, during and after their terms of service.

This report is not intended as an indictment of Marine culture.  The Marines are clearly what they are, and as long as we continue to give them money they will continue to be what they will be.  What interests me as a journalist is not so much their own attitude toward themselves or toward their terms of service, but rather the construction of that identity.

As a former political candidate, clearly I am not a friend of the Marines.  I will certainly support the right of veterans to receive the benefits they are entitled to, but beyond that my goals as a political candidate have clearly been in scaling down military funding, closing US bases overseas and reducing the scope of the American military.  I do not think we can afford to continue spending so much money on our military culture and I do not think the world can afford our continued expenditures.  We have military bases or personnel in over one hundred and twenty nations and the debt we have accumulated as a result of military spending eclipses our GDP and accounts for a significant portion of the national deficit.

We are not in good standing around the world and are clearly seen as one of the major contributors to global instability and insecurity, and it is these very service personnel who we are sending into harms way in countries we shouldn’t be in who are seen as the living, breathing expression of US foreign policy.

Marine culture is wrapped up in mythology, but the reality of life on a military base is mostly boredom and tedium punctuated with exceptional moments of violent expression.  The point of boot camp is to wear people out, run them down and break their spirits.   This is how ordinary human beings are turned into trained killers.  The point of all of this training above all else is to be a skilled killer.  Whether it is killing by dropping bombs or shooting machine guns or rocket launchers or killing with your bare hands, the point of the military is to train someone to kill when ordered to do so and at the same time to avoid being killed.  This is the entire point of the training. As an outsider, the military to me looks like another cult.  There is a clearly defined hierarchy and the individual is instructed and trained to give up all of their freedoms, but most especially their independent judgment in exchange for the group mind.

From their perspective I don’t think that the military generally sees it that way, and I don’t think the Marines I spoke to saw their life that way.  They would say that they are doing a job, they are serving their country, they are protecting our freedom and they are making America strong.  They view their training camp as character building and feel a special brotherhood having served as Marines.  They take pride in maintaining the appearance of professionalism, military courtesy and respect for authority, pride in citizenship and service to country.

They are weak on the issue of integrating women into their culture and terrible in terms of integrating gays and lesbians service into their culture.  Every time I asked a question about gay and lesbian issues I always received some variation of the same answer.  No one engaged in homophobic dialogue but they did avoid any real consideration of the issue in almost every way.  To their credit, the military is good on issues of race, even better than the southern Alabama educators I traveled with, who were hopelessly divided on issues of race and seemingly unable to see the problems that racially segregated school districts creates in terms of quality education.

The military was also good on issues of class.  Clearly most people who join the military continue to see the Marines as a good choice for moving out of a working class or lower class background into a middle class and more highly educated level of society.  There is no doubt that the military offers this and uses it as a strong selling point when talking to potential new recruits.

“… my questions constantly refuted or gone unanswered…”

After three days of traveling around on buses going from one place to another, having my questions constantly refuted or gone unanswered, waking up at five every day and experiencing the incredibly boring monotony of life on a military base I was ready to go home.  The Marines did not like me and the teachers did not like me either.  When I arrived I was generally curious and open minded about the experience, but I think I lost interest after about the second day.  I was tired of having a Marine shadow me everywhere I went to keep me occupied.  I understand that they were actually trying to have someone around to answer my questions, but it was also clear that I was cutting into some of their public relations activities and I hadn’t understood what the purpose was of this workshop and what my role was as a journalist.

I was expecting to be able to freely travel around a military base and observe aspects of Marine culture and ask lots of questions.  Instead I was presented with a group of high school teachers who were given quasi-military outfits and taught how to fire guns.

My impression is that the Marines are a cult and their function is to train men to kill.  I do agree with them that it is the responsibility of the elected representatives to determine how the military is utilized, but I think it is really a two-way street.  As the military culture has grown in terms of funding and institutional support, at a certain point I think it becomes a policy objective in its own right within the halls of power in Washington D.C., regardless of foreign policy objectives.

Ultimately it is our responsibility to decide how to use the resources we have.  If we decide that the best option for poor people in the rural South is to send them into the military because we have not adequately funded our school systems, then this will continue to be the result.  If we don’t examine where our tax dollars go and the relationships that defense contractors have with our elected representatives, then we will always continue to experience the same process.  Our military is always ready to go to war, they are ready to fight and if need be to die for each other.  I just wonder if we are ready for that responsibility, ever.

Editor’s Note: If you were interested in this article you will likely be interested in a previous article published on Clarksville Online. ASVAB: Backdoor military recruitment in the guise of “career testing”

Although it masquerades as a “career exploration test,” I was appalled when I first read the tidbits on the grading sheet, test materials and booklet on a test called the ASVAB, a test most high school juniors (11th grade) take.

ASVAB, you ask? What’s that? ASVAB stands for Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery; I had to visit three websites to find the acronym actually spelled out. Yep. My grandson, 17, has been tested by the U.S. Government and the only reasons for that are the probability of intense recruitment efforts or the possibility of forced military service — i.e.: a draft. It’s a logical conclusion, given the issues facing recruiters in a country increasingly disenchanted and disgusted with the policies behind the Iraq War (and the physical, emotional and financial cost of that war), policies that have tens of thousands of U.S. troops deployed in the Middle East, policies that have stretched our troops to the breaking point.

I sat at the kitchen table, thinking that most parents may be under the impression that this is just another in a long line of standardized tests offered as our children move from kindergarten to grade 12. Not so. Except for the local school, nobody in the Departments of Education at the County, State or Federal level see these tests. Instead, the results are fed directly to the military. Further research linked me to a nationwide network of peace and social justice organizations targeting this issue.

To quote directly from the test score sheet sent to parents in the Clarksville-Montgomery County school system:

“Personal identity information (Name, social security number, street address, and telephone number) and test scores will not be released to any agency outside of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Armed Forces, the Coast Guard, and (your) school. Your school or local school system can determine any further release of information. The DoD will use your scores for recruiting and research purposes for up to two years. After that the information will be used by the DoD for research purposes.”

“The Military Entrance Score (also called the AFQT), which stands for Armed Forces Qualification Test) is the score used to determine your qualifications for entry into any branch of the United States Armed Forces or the Coast Guard. The Military Entrance Score predicts in a general way how well you might do how well you might do in training and on the job in military occupations. Your score reflects your standing compared to American men and women 18 to 23 years of age.”

The United States Department of Defense developed ASVAB with input from a panel of career development experts and “designed to encourage students to increase their level of self-knowledge and to understand how that information could be linked to civilian and military occupational characteristics.” The ASVAB Program recently was re-designed (app. 2002) to “be helpful” to virtually all students, whether they are planning on immediate employment after high school in civilian or military occupations, or further education at a university, community college, or vocational institution. The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is a multiple choice test, administered by the United States Military Entrance Processing Command, used to determine qualification for enlistment in the United States Armed Forces.

High School Version

The “High School Version” is officially called “Form 18/19.” It’s a paper-based ASVAB commonly given to juniors and seniors in high school through a cooperative program between the Department of Defense and the Department of Education. The test is offered at more than 13,000 high schools and post secondary schools in the United States. The primary purpose of this test is not for enlistment in the military (although the test scores can be used for military enlistment (Ed: Then why is it that only the DoD gets the results?). The primary purpose of this test is to help school counselors and students discover where a student’s basic aptitude lies. Approximately 900,000 students take Form 18/19 ASVAB each year.

The test is often optionally administered to American high school students when they are in the 11th grade, though anyone eligible to and interested in enlisting can take it. The ASVAB was first instituted in 1976, and it underwent a revision in 2002. In 2005, the test’s percentile ranking scoring system was re-normalized, to ensure that a score of 50% really did represent doing better than exactly 50% of test-takers.

The test grades highlight six areas or interest: Realistic, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional, and Investigative. Each of these areas is linked to specific career choices. The catalogue shows pictures of happy people swiming, making music, repairing bicycles, becoming firefighters, filmmaking, and exploring the world in science and travel. Interspersed are also things like flight mechanic, pilot, aircraft launch and recovery, artillery and missile crews, armored assault vehicle crews, and … you get the idea.

“The reason to have a military is to be prepared to fight and win wars…it’s not a jobs program.” ~~ Vice President Dick Cheney

ASVAB gives the military easy access to nearly a million high school students nationwide, presenting the test as “voluntary” despite the fact that tens of thousands of high school students are forced to take it. High schools in at least 34 states across the country require all juniors to take ASVAB, a military entrance exam given to fresh recruits to determine their aptitude for various military occupations. The test is given to high school students because school administrators are convinced it assists children in identifying a wide range of appropriate career paths. The ASVAB is also used to recruit students into the military.

ASVAB ‘Career Exploration Program’, as the military prefers to call it, provides the the DoD with access to high school children through an obscure privacy loophole. The testing program circumvents the opt-out provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act. The ASVAB contains no requirement of an opt-out notification. Unless a high school takes measures to protect student privacy, the data from the test is forwarded to recruiters and to the military’s Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies (JAMRS) Program, a massive database that has compiled 4.5 million records of 16-18 year-olds.

“The No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to give students’ contact information to military recruiters — or that individual students and parents can opt out of this requirement. Some schools are informing students and parents and providing opt-out forms, sometimes as a result of community pressure, but many aren’t.” ~~ Community Media Workshop

Although military regulations do allow schools to preclude test information from reaching recruiting services, school administrators are often unaware of the option and few elect to protect student privacy. According to data released by the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command (USMEPCOM) in November, 2007, only 5.7% of the 573,504 students who were given the ASVAB in fiscal year 2007 were tested on condition that their data not be released for recruitment purposes. Without parental consent, children who sit for the four-hour ASVAB sign a “Privacy Statement” that gives permission to the military to use social security numbers, sensitive demographic information, and test results for recruiting purposes. This practice runs counter to state laws that protect the privacy rights of minors, according to a brief by the National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles Chapter.

Students can “opt out” of the handing over of their contact info to military recruiters by their school.

“The military asks school administrations to give them the phone number and addresses of all junior and senior students.  The law says that if a student has a letter or form signed by his/her parent which states that the school does NOT have permission to give out their child’s contact info to recruiters, then the school must respect the parent’s decision and not give up the info. ‘Opt out’ policies vary from school to school, district to district,   If there is  a form, it is often in the stack of papers students get in the first few days of school and it is highly overlooked.  In fact, some schools do not even know their own policy, so you have to push them to find out, and if they do not have one in place then you can help create that policy.  In the meantime, however, they must accept your requests in whatever form you give them.” ~~ National Organization Opposing Militarization of Youth

What is amazing is that this test, administered so comprehensively to our American students, has generated an ASVAB for Dummies on the market. What is even more amazing is that someone somewhere thinks you can study for a test designed to measure your personal interests!

I do not  resent the fact that our children are taking aptitude tests; I do resent the fact that that these tests have nothing to do with the Department of Education and everything to do with the Department of Defense.

When my granddaughters received military recruiting information, my daughter and I tore it up, unopened. We will do the same for my grandson, who is “helper” of a kinder, gentler mentality. This “career exploration” test is nothing less than a try-out for military service administered to a captive audience of millions of students hovering within a year or so of “draft-able” age — 18.

Under current law, young men aged 18-25 must register with — place their names on a list maintained by — the Selective Service System (SSS). Citizens must register within 30 days of their 18th birthday. Non-citizens must also register, unless they’re in the country on a student visa or visitor’s visa. (Check the SSS web site for more detailed information on registration requirements.)

Refusing to register is against the law. The penalty is a fine up to $250,000 and up to 5 years in jail. However, a large number of people have not registered and, since the mid 1980s, no one has been prosecuted. But non-registrants can be denied government jobs and financial aid for college. Immigrants can be barred from becoming citizens. In addition, many states impose restrictions on non-registrants, such as denying them a driver’s license. ~~ Resource Center for Non-Violence

I grew up in an era of draft when the staging ground of war was Vietnam and Cambodia. The only way a draft would be remotely palateable at this time in history is if it contained an option for peaceful non-military community service for both young men and young women. The 21st century mandate for war has never impressed me; this backdoor evaluation of potential draftees appalls me. The Vietnam/draft era is revisited in the recent film, Across the Universe, a Beatles retrospective in which “dime a dozen” draftees are rubber stamped into the war zone, charged with bringing liberty to the far side of the world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here is a list developed by the RCNV (Resource Center for Non-Violence) of what to work for at your high school in terms of “opting out:”

• Prominently display the opt-out information on the student Emergency Card.
• Ensure that the right to opt out from giving information to the military is not linked to other releases of information (so that the district cannot combine the release of contact information to recruiters with other agencies and thereby force students to give up receiving contacts from institutions like colleges).
• Students should have the right to opt themselves out, and either students or parents should be able opt-out at any time of the year.Provide contact information on the opt-out form for alternative viewpoints (such as the Resource Center for Nonviolence, the American Friends Service Committee, and the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, so that students can get a more balanced picture of what it means to join the military).
• Development of a packet of resources on rights to privacy from military recruiters and information about the practices of military recruiters and alternatives to military service.Charge the military recruiters (and all other institutional recruiters) for access to student contact information.
• Have all recruiters sign an affidavit declaring compliance with local, state, and national discrimination laws.
• Public notification of military recruiter visits to schools.
• Written correspondence to congress people and to the state School Boards Association to suggest making opt-in legal.
• Organize an Opt Out Week. For example, Click here to check out this blog

For more information, visit these websites:

NNOMY (National Network Opposing Militarization of Youth)

RCNV (Resource Center for Non-Violence)

National Priorities Project

National Lawyers Guild