America’s Child Soldiers: JROTC and the Militarizing of America

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:


America’s Child Soldiers
JROTC and the Militarizing of America

By Ann Jones


Congress surely meant to do the right thing when, in the fall of 2008, it passed the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA). The law was designed to protect kids worldwide from being forced to fight the wars of Big Men. From then on, any country that coerced children into becoming soldiers was supposed to lose all U.S. military aid.

It turned out, however, that Congress -- in its rare moment of concern for the next generation -- had it all wrong. In its greater wisdom, the White House found countries like Chad and Yemen so vital to the national interest of the United States that it preferred to overlook what happened to the children in their midst.

As required by CSPA, this year the State Department once again listed 10 countries that use child soldiers: Burma (Myanmar), the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Seven of them were scheduled to receive millions of dollars in U.S. military aid as well as what’s called “U.S. Foreign Military Financing.” That’s a shell game aimed at supporting the Pentagon and American weapons makers by handing millions of taxpayer dollars over to such dodgy “allies,” who must then turn around and buy “services” from the Pentagon or “materiel” from the usual merchants of death. You know the crowd: Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Northrop Grumman, and so on.

........(snip)........

It should be no secret that the United States has the biggest, most efficiently organized, most effective system for recruiting child soldiers in the world. With uncharacteristic modesty, however, the Pentagon doesn’t call it that. Its term is “youth development program.”

Pushed by multiple high-powered, highly paid public relations and advertising firms under contract to the Department of Defense, the program is a many splendored thing. Its major public face is the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps or JROTC. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175784/tomgram%3A_ann_jones%2C_suffer_the_children/

[Nuclear Unicorn]

1. So, how many soldiers under the age 17 are currently serving in the US military?

[klook]

5. "Ah well, that's where my theory falls to the ground."

[riqster]

10. Thanks for the memory! nt

[Lurks Often]

2. JROTC has been around since 1916

so this is suddenly a major issue now?

[riqster]

3. What an absolutely enormous bit of false equivalence.

I was in JROTC during the Vietnam War era (not old enough to go ), and I took it for the same reasons most kids sign up for classes: it was an easy A, a lot of my friends were in it, and a possible college scholarship was available.

I was never asked to/ demanded to/ ordered to/ conscripted into a fighting force. I was never dragged away from my screaming parents. I was never brainwashed or brutalized.

Most of the time, from ages 14-16, it was a pretty boring class.

[Recursion]

4. OFFS

[exboyfil]

6. I was in JROTC in High School

I had some of my best experiences with them. Some of my best acquaintances came out of the program. They were not programmed killers, and they remain responsible citizens in our society. I learned more from Major Gibson, the head of the unit, than almost any other High School teacher. I did not elect to go into the military, but I was far from damaged from the experience. How we use our military is the question, not the individuals that keep us safe.

You can go onto High School campuses that the teachers will say that the best behaved students are those in the ROTC program. Our program had individuals who spanned the economic spectrum and were even more integrated than our sports teams. My High School was 40% African American, and I had hardly any African Americans in my classes except in ROTC. I would not even have interacted with African Americans without ROTC. We discussed relevant social topics like Vietnam far more than even in my History or Government classes.

[Godhumor]

7. The equivocating of 3rd world real problems with perceived american ills

Continues unabated. This article shows an incredible ignorance of what cistern soldiers actually go through in daily life. Shameful.

[pipoman]

8. Are we really equating jrrotc

To places which put children in wars? Really? Jrrotc gives kids who are searching a path in life a very small taste of what actual military life is about so they can make a more informed decision about their post high school path. The military is a decision many high schoolers consider...especially with the extreme cost of secondary education and the promise of a free ride through college for serving. That is one of the primary reasons my son decided to graduate midterm his senior year and join the marine corps (he was never in jrrotc). Now 5 years later is enrolled and doing quite well in college paid in full by the veterans administration. He would likely flunked out of college had he went to college right out of high school.

Demonizing countries which have few resourses valuable to the UN and are under attack from oppressors who wish to kill them off or enslave them, for using every person with the ability to fight the oppressors off is easy if ruthless warlords aren't knocking at your door.

Again, equating the former to the latter is simply silliness.

[seveneyes]

9. Spot the differences

There is quite some distance between teaching things like UCMJ, protecting innocents etc and handing a kid an AK47 or a suicide vest.

[xchrom]

11. du rec.