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Headlines : Civil LibertiesLies Military Recruiters Tell
Campus antiwar groups that formed in the past three years have called most of the university and college protests. In addition, lesbian and gay organizations and individuals have joined in because of their opposition to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality. Of course, many of the latter group also opposes the war in Iraq. According to a federal appeals court ruling made in November 2004, the essentially anti-gay policies of the military do allow universities to deny its recruiter’s access to their students and property. On top of that ruling, another federal judge in Connecticut found that the government unconstitutionally applied the Solomon Amendment after Yale Law School faculty sued Donald Rumsfeld when he attempted to deny federal funds to Yale because it prevented military recruitment on its campus. Yale denied the recruiters access because of their discriminatory policies against gays and lesbians.
[Posted By ShiftShapers]Republished from Infoshop News
Recently, most students at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington received an email with the heading ARMY PAYS OFF STUDENT LOANS in their university email box. The general message of the mass mailing was that if a student was nearing graduation and wondering how they were going to pay off the massive debt today’s US college students incur, they should join the army. In essence, this email was a college student’s version of the poverty draft that entraps so many working class and poor young people into enlisting in the service. The sender was a military recruiter working out of the US Army recruitment office in the Burlington suburb of Williston. Given that the university has a very clear policy forbidding these types of solicitations on their email servers one wonders how the recruiting office was able to obtain the address list. The university administration has been reticent when asked this question by various faculty, students, and parents. It is fair to assume, however, that the email list was released to the recruiter under the compliance sections of the so-called Solomon Amendment. For those unfamiliar with this legislation, it essentially forbids Department of Defense (DOD) funding of schools unless…
Posted by ShiftShapers
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Many companies and government agencies recruit on college campuses; as a student at Boston University, I see this all the time. That students generally do not like military recruiters on campus gives them no right to chase them off. If someone doesn’t desire to join the military, then the choice is simple: they don’t. I am frustrated to see articles like this because, as an active duty enlisted man in the Navy who vehemently opposes the war in Iraq, I understand that while the Army is tasked to fight this war, they did not choose to do so. The criminal class that decided to send troops is responsible, just as the Army is responsible to go when told. Bringing the soldiers back is the bebst possible solution; denigrating those doing thier assigned duty in recruiting is pointless and cruel, as recruiting is a difficult job to begin with. Worse, it is a waste of energy that could be directed to actually exposing some of the slime this administration generates daily.
Harass the Brass
don’t forget that Bush is the commander-in-cheif of all US armed forces, so a ranking officer (Bush) DID make the decision to go to war with Iraq. yes of course i understand that the majority of those enlisted in the armed forces did not and would not have made such a choice. that’s the way it goes in a chain of command. you accept orders even when you don’t like them. too bad though. is there no sort of stipulation allowing officers to disobey orders from superiors if they deem the orders illegal or unethical, ect.?
There is just such a stipulation, and it was solidified at Nuremberg, even strengthened after My Lai. However, its scope is based on where in the chain of command you are: the average soldier could reasonably object to an order to kill an unarmed or defenseless man, but not an order to go to war. The top brass in the case of Iraq were obligated to go, and fight as best they could; to refuse on the grounds that it was an illegal order would have been a worse proposition than to go, for one very important reason. Bush is NOT a ranking officer. He is the Commander in Chief, a civilian. Military authority must ALWAYS be subordinate to the civil authority; for the Army to refuse to go because it was unethical would amount to a coup. 59 million plus voted for that asshole, the majority of the popular vote, EC issues aside. The rampant shift to the right of the country as a whole is the root of the problem.
The recruiters way back in high school told me I’d spend my days playing video games and watching porn. It was before 9/11 and I was told of the near zero chances of going to war. They said the military would pay for all my college, and let me go during my service in the military. He said after basic training I’d have drills everyday for a couple hours then have the rest of the day to myself.
Hundreds of youngsters in the National Guard’s ramped-up Recruit Sustainment Program are already legally committed to at least six years in the military.