"The Children's Crusade": Part 2, A Marine Recruiter and Axel

[understandinglife]

When Marine recruiters go way beyond the call

By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

For mom Marcia Cobb and her teenage son Axel, the white letters USMC on their caller ID soon spelled, "Don't answer the phone!"

Marine recruiters began a relentless barrage of calls to Axel as soon as the mellow, compliant Sedro-Woolley High School grad had cut his 17th birthday cake. And soon it was nearly impossible to get the seekers of a few good men off the line.

With early and late calls ringing in their ears, Marcia tried using call blocking. And that's when she learned her first hard lesson. You can't block calls from the government, her server said. So, after pleas to "Please stop calling" went unanswered, the family's "do not answer" order ensued.

But warnings and liquid crystal lettering can fade. So, two weeks ago when Marcia was cooking dinner Axel goofed and answered the call. And, faster than you can say "semper fi," an odyssey kicked into action that illustrates just how desperate some of the recruiters we've read about really are to fill severely sagging quotas.

More at the link:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/227497_paynter08.html

This is a continuation of a thread that includes details of how the "No Child Left Behind" Law is used to gather information on school children:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3797148#3801127

When your economy is inextricably linked to the benefits of perpetual war and the access to petroleum, you need lots of soldiers, and these folk are desperate and will fill those soldiers' boots with anyone other than their soft, righteous, spoiled prepie sons and daughters.

How many more children are going to become a point on this graph?


http://www.intelligencesquad.com/id118.html

Peace.


www.missionnotaccomplished.us - We support Apian's goal of 10,000,000 signatures on Congressman Conyers letter by June 21, 2005; make it happen! http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/6/214643/6438

[Theres-a]

1. Those recruiters are out of control.

"last gasp" "broken back" and "death throes" could apply to the all volunteer policy.

[brooklynite]

10. C'mon now...just a few "bad apples"

After all, the military's been "told" not to do this, right?

[MsUnderstood]

2. Could we add

"Better off with Saddam not in power" which is Bush's response to the Downing street memo yesterday.

I noticed that Bush, and the other neo-cons spouting this answer don't say SAFER with SADDAM not in power" because that can be easily refuted. Better, however, is a term that can be left undefined and mangled.

[Modem Butterfly]

3. Not to blame it on the victim, but WTF is wrong with that kid?

Is he challenged somehow? I know the recruiters are persistant, but for the love of Mike, you don't have to go to where they hang out just because they tell you so.

[gollygee]

4. We as adults know that

but a kid who just turned 17 and is being harassed to that extent wouldn't be very savvy.

[Modem Butterfly]

6. I disagree

I think most kids would tell one or the other party (either Mom or the Marines) to FOAD. I say that as a kid who got harassed to join the military. I graduated just prior to the last Gulf War and my rural Oregon high school was crawling with recruiters. We were all made to take the ASVAB and I scored very well, so I kept getting recruiter calls and visits well after my freshman year of college.

This should NOT have happened to this boy, but I still wonder if there's more to this story. But again, let me make this clear: what the Marines did to him was wrong and should not have happened.

[gollygee]

8. That's a personality thing

Your personality makes you more immune to pressure than him, maybe. I still think a lot of kids that age would have serious trouble resisting that pressure. And I don't think recruiters would bother with all the pressure if it was easy for kids (generally) to resist, and therefore if it didn't work a good percentage of the time.

[damntexdem]

17. It doesn't matter what the kid was like, or what 'his problem' was.

What's the matter is that the kid was being taken advantage of, harrassed, nearly shanghaied into 'joining' the Marines.

[AirAmFan]

20. Who made you take the ASVAB? Were school time and school

resources (classrooms, proctors) diverted to military use? Did parents have to consent to your taking the ASVAB? Did recruiters target specific marketing messages to you based on your "vocational aptitude" scores?

This sounds like an even bigger story than kidnapping as a recruitment tactic for one kid!

[Bigmack]

9. I got that impression myself....

... not slow, exactly, but really really pliant. Recruiter's dream.

[Mist]

18. That's my reaction--the recruiters were TOTALLY in the wrong but

the kid sounds a bit dim.

[Modem Butterfly]

19. Or maybe just more conflicted than his mother thinks

[gollygee]

5. Horrifying

that is truly disturbing. If Americans read about Al Quaeda doing that to young men, what would the reaction be?

[Hobarticus]

7. Holy f8cking balls! This is INSANE!

Who's her Congressmen?

[BiggJawn]

11. Marine recruiters are parasites.

"Jawn, thissis Sargent Culpuppy of YOUR YOO-Nited States MAH-reen Core! What's it gonna take to gitcha to sign up t'day? Dontcha wanna be a MAN, son? We MAKE MEN, boy! Girls LOVE men, 'specially in Yoo-Nee-Form!"

"Uh, Sarge, funny you should mention that....Y'see, Sarge, I'm not so sure I LIKE girls, knowhutta mean?"

The calls stopped.

[Bigmack]

12. I read this ....

and was gonna post it, too.

Recruiters must be under enormous pressure to fill the ranks.

If the army was down 25% from an already-lowered recruiting goal, the Marines must be hurting, too.

The chickenhawks keep saying there's not going to be a draft, but everything they do puts greater pressure on the forces we have now.

The US just might have to limit it's foreign adventures if it just doesn't have the bodies to carry them out.

My big fear is that the neocons will send tactical nukes if they don't have enough troops to do their dirty work.

"My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military."
Gen Smedley Butler USMC Two-time winner of the Medal of Honor

[ohio_liberal]

13. Wow

This story terrifies me. I filled out the paperwork to have my son's name withheld from military recruiters but I have no reason to believe that anyone in the school district will comply. Hell, the high school has let "Army guys" (my son's quote) come in during American History class to "talk to the students". I'm going to have to give my son some talks about recruiters. He's going to be a junior this year. These recruiters are fucking ruthless, always have been, but now they seem worse than ever.

[JohnyCanuck]

16. Make sure your son knows about this General

General Smedley "War is a Racket" Butler USMC.

War is a Racket

<snip>

Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

[JohnyCanuck]

14. Press gangs next?

Doesn't sound it would be much longer before they're using the old Royal Navy technique of bopping any prospective recruit over the head (preferably after he has been made good and drunk) with a club, loading him into a nearby "jolly" boat and rowing him out to the HMS BloodAndGuts waiting at anchor off shore until it had enough hands available to set sail for another far flung corner of the Empire.

By the way, do you know where glass bottomed beer steins originated? I heard it was because in the old days in England on signing up for the army a new recruit was given a shilling by the recruiting sergeant. Once he touched the "King's shilling" he was absolutely obligated to meet his commitment to the army. There was no backing out or changing your mind allowed.

Some army recruiters would go to taverns and inns and make friendly with the locals and sureptitiously spike their beer with a shilling. If they tilted their mug or cup to drain it and the shilling touched their lips then they had officialy "touched" the King's shilling and were now army recruits whether they wanted to be or not. Some tavern owners introduced mugs with glass bottoms as a means of attracting clients because their customers, before taking a swig, could check for any shillings that unbeknownst to them might have been dropped into their drinks.

[BiggJawn]

15. I wouldn't doubt it.

Don't Touch the Shilling, Kids....