I dont agree with this guy on much but he has some very valid (and bitter) points about military service. I suppose this aint the place to post this, move it if you want
Wrong link!
Its the column called “A Grand Adventure”
I believe you’re referencing Column 290 - Wanna Enlist?
I didn’t notice anything about a grand adventure. Care to post the correct link? Or else we can let this sink into the abyss, if you choose.
The link is to the front page, with the “current” article always on top (all articles have the same address). You have to look down a few articles to #290: Wanna Enlist?
Sure the guy has a point. “Kid, you’re being suckered.” But for what job is that not true?
McDonald’s? Kid you’re being suckered. It is a nowhere job. How many minimal wage slaves rise to the level of manager? Five percent? How many become owners? Maybe one in a million. They just want you to sell their high-fat …
The writer is an old and bitter man. (Cherry juice? We have not used that in more than twenty years!)
For the vast majority of soldiers, the military is a great adventure. It is a ticket out of their one-stoplight towns. A chance to learn a language, to learn a trade, to see the world, to learn about oneself. Hell, to get away from your family.
So he has a problem with combat. So do I. It was not nearly as much fun as I had hoped. (Scary? sure, but also tense, very tense. Not nearly enough sleep, which nobody seems to ever mention.) Yep, combat is no fun.
Is this a revelation? Does anyone really think otherwise? It is a nasty unpleasant job and we send our youngest people to do it. Just like any other nasty job.
Does military service provide a net benefit to society. Of course. (Did you see the Freemasons coordinating relief after the hurricanes? The Jesuits?) Do some people pay a very high price for providing that service, you bet. Do we hide that fact? Sure, except for all the war memorials, parades and history books.
All in all, the guy is simply (to say it again) bitter. Which is not to say he has a kernel of truth.
I’ve now gone there for the third time, and the only thing I see is something about “Diving Into The Third World” and some book adverts, and that’s scrolling all the way to the bottom. Maybe a browser difference? The homepage is no help either. Probably nothing lost if all he’s doing is bitching about military recruiters. Same ol’ same ol’.
The “Grand Adventure” theme interested me because I clearly remember getting on a plane at night, a few days after my 17th birthday, and thinking to myself that I was off on a “great adventure”.
My four years in the military weren’t bad at all. Some tough times that were mercifully short, and other than that, met some cool guys, met some cool girls, got my GED while in the service and came out with financial assistance through four years of college.
Knowing what I know now, I’d enlist again, in a heartbeat. At age 17, it was great for me.
The selection of various articles are over on the far left side, underneath his picture.
My parents both served 20 years in the Navy. They both have told me that they’d re-enlist again if they could.
I read several of these. He’s an unusual kinda cat. He thinks that war itself is a pointless waste of lives and money and that military service is a sucker’s game, but that military training is a positive boon for our weak, whiny, androgynous society. Whadya think?
“A war is a politician’s toy, but your wheelchair is forever”
I think that’s the most powerful thing I’ve read in a long time.
My beloved Bluesman is starting terminal leave in December after 20 years of service. It’s the best choice for us, but it breaks his heart to leave. I enlisted when he did, then got out and went to school, and I couldn’t run back to the recruiters fast enough to get my commission when I earned my nursing degree. I’ve personally known a combat amputee that wanted nothing more than to be declared fit for continued enlistment.
Is military service a good idea for everyone? No, of course not. It very much depends on what kind of person you are and what you want in life. As Paul in Saudi says, though, it’s no more a suckers game than most other entry level jobs.
I can only say that his military experience wasn’t my military experience, nor the military experience of my husband, father, brother, nephews or son. For us, and for many, many of our fellows, the military experience was a positive one. Not only that, it was a voluntary experience. Nobody has to experience who doesn’t want to. In 45 years of up-close-and-personal experience with members of all branchs of the armed forces I have never met one single person who joined because he or she had no other choices. This is barring people who were drafted, of course – I have met a few of those. But most of the people I served with and have known since then entered the service voluntarily. I’ve spoken to many people who think lots of people join the military because they have no other choice, but I’ve never met even one actual military member who felt that way.
After seeing up-close how recruitment works in this country, I have to agree with him.
At my high school in the ghetto, our career day consisted of one thing- tanks in the quad, helicopters in the football field, a toy shooting range by B-wing and a marine slowly doing pull ups in the middle of campus between classes. The message way very, very clear:
Hey kid! Feel disempowered? Black? Mexican? Living in the ghetto? Well, here is your chance to play with neat, powerful toys all day long! Here is your chance to big and buff like Mr. Pullups here! People will respect you! You will have power. You will no longer be just another kid that America failed to educate, failed to provide opportunities to, and generally forgot.
They handed out fliers detailing the recreational opportunities on bases. The suggested that on-base shopping alone was a good reason to enlist. Free ping-pong! Free swimming pools! Movie night every Thursday! They made it sound like summer camp.
I understand the military needs to recruit. And I understand it has a place in our country. But joining the military- a situation that you just can’t take back for years and may put your life on the line- is an adult decision. And to do that, they need to make sure the people making these decisions are making adult decisions. They need to cut out the “your real-life chance to be GI Joe” and the “Your joining a job training and college education program” bullshit. They need to stop appealing to people’s inner ten year old. And they need to stop taking advantage of desperation.They don’t recruit like this at nicer schools. Yes, there is money for college. But it is much more restricted and hard to get for that. Half those kids that say they joined for college money arn’t ever going to see the inside of a classroom or one cent of that money.
Why is it OK for recruiters to lie? Everyone knows recruiters lie. Everyone knows that if they promise you anything, you need to get it on paper or you won’t get it. And they will promise you anything. They’ll tell you your about to get a job heading the women’s bikini surf-rescue division and that in a year they’ll let you out with a million dollars to pay for college.
They have lied to my friends. They told them they’d be sitting in a trailer somewhere, and that they were reserves that probably wouldn’t get called up at all, even if there was a war. It wasn’t until the Iraq war that they learned that the entire division is reserves, they are some of the first to be called up, and they work behind enemy lines and are in a great deal of danger.
They signed my friend up while he was crying. He signed that paper with tears in his eyes, saying “I don’t want to do this but I don’t know how to get out.” They spent a month recruiting him. They took him to bars and hotels and restaurants, and made him feel disoriented and alone and like these recruiters were some kind of fairy-godfathers that now constituted his only world. They deprived him of sleep, keeping him up late and waking him up early for more “tests” and “appointments.” They wouldn’t let him contact his friends or his family. He was alone, sleep deprived, in a strange city with the knowledge that these recruiters spent hundreds of dollars buying him his favorite foods and putting him up in luxery hotels and giving him doctor’s visits and dentist visits and thing he hadn’t had in years. He felt confused and beholden to these people and he felt like signing up was his only way out. And they let him sign it. Crying.
Thats not okay. Recruit if you must. But be honest and adult about it.
So why is he leaving? I’m not leaving until they throw my butt out or I turn 60.
Joining the military was far and away the best decision I ever made in my life. I didn’t particularly want to do it. I didn’t particularly enjoy it. I left after a single enlistment & don’t want to go back. Not enough pay for too much crap.
But I’m glad I did it & I’d do it again.
Up to that point I had been a completely irresponsible idiot & squandered every opportunity I’d had. Fortunately, I was somehow dimly aware of this & walked into the recruiting station on my own - I don’t recall a recruiter ever once contacting me.
Even then, dumb and irresponsible as I was, I knew I didn’t want to be a cook or an SP, and I knew better than to sign up without a job written on my contract. A recruiter for the military is like any other salesman. Don’t believe a word he says that’s not written down, and caveat emptor.
even sven, I don’t disagree with much of what you posted, but you seem to be severely misinformed when it comes to this:
There’s nothing hard about getting GI Bill and Army College Fund money. If they navigated a few years of the military, they can figure out how to get their college money. If they decide not to go to college, you can hardly blame that on the military. The money is there for them.
It’s not a lie that there are a lot of advantages to military service. I see nothing wrong with appealing to someone’s desire to be a real-life GI Joe. It may not appeal to desk-riding indoor pointy-headed ivory-tower types, but it is very enticing to a lot of people and with good reason.
I’m much prouder of the time I spent in the Army than I am of the time I spent in college. I don’t mind much that people don’t realize I have a degree; what I want them to know is that I am a veteran.
Mr. SCL left the army after his third tour. We moved to Columbus from Hawaii, where he worked at Tripler Army Medical Center. (He’s a nurse) When he got to Ft. Benning, he was assigned to the 2nd M.A.S.H., which was in the process of being decommissioned. For 4 years he drove a truck, while Martin Army Hospital at Fort Benning was desperate for nurses. Nursing skills are like any other - if you don’t use them, you lose them. So he didn’t reenlist. I am so glad.
One of my cousins is a recruiter and he’ll redily admit many of the kuckleheads who enlist are getting suckered, though he insists he himself isn’t as big a bullshitter as his bosses want him to be. I’m fairly confident he’s telling the truth, because he’s just constitutionally incapable of bullshitting anybody. In fact, part of the reason he chose recruiting to finish out his duty is he thought he could help some kids avoid making some of the dumbass mistakes he made when he got suckered into a lot of things. He’s under a LOT of pressure these days to change his style, so I hear.
Anyhow, yeah, military recruitment is selling something, just like any other big business, and the pitch is typically highly agressive and subtly deceptive. The biggest deception is “the military” cares about you. Quite simply a load of bollocks, which becomes no more distressingly true in wartime. You’re a piece of meat to the higher-ups, plain and simple. They use you, so the key is for you to be clever and use them. You play the system well, you’ll do very well. You’ll get a decent living, pick up some highly marketable skills, see the world, get lots of chicks who like guys in uniform. But you really, really need to be smart, and disciplined. Save up every penny you can while you’re serving, because if misfortune falls upon you early in your career, you’ll get tossed like a used spunk-rag. My cousin has hundreds, maybe thousands of stories to tell about half-retarded enlistees who, when their not stuck on a ship going stir-crazy, go on rampage every leave, spending every last cent on beer, whores, strippers, cars, whatever quick thrills they can.
Their careers sometimes end this way: They get some beery airhead knocked up in Honolulu or wherever way-the-fuck away from home, then develop some injury, illness, or “bad habit” that forces them leave early. Now they’re out with practically nothing but debts and responsibilities they can’t handle, because they know jack shit about taking care of themselves once they’re yanked off of Uncle Sam’s teat. For the duration of their short adult lives, they took orders or partied, and can’t reason their way out of a paper bag on their own.
These days, it’s that or keep fighting in Iraq.
So, yeah, think long and hard, because you ARE getting played. Know how to play back, or don’t bother.
ok, i DIDN’T enlist in the military… for very good reasons to do with my ancestry and religion and where i would almost certainly have ended up doing a tour of duty… i’m an anglo-irish catholic by the way… but i do have a lot of family ties with the british military… mostly naval… but i think this guy has the right idea…