By now you know that there has been immense, nationwide outrage at the city of Berkeley, California, for passing a resolution telling U.S. Marines that their recruitment officers were "not welcome," and that if they choose to stay, they do so as "uninvited and unwelcome intruders."
The blogosphere is steaming with insults spewed out by Berkeley hating, liberal-hating, pro-war fanatics who call Berkeleyans twits, psychos, lefist punks, etc. But it's not just your typical hardcore dittohead or Bill O'Reilly-loving liberal-hater who are attacking our city. Even the relatively liberal San Francisco Chronicle wagged its finger at us, calling "remarkable" the city's statement that "The United States has a history of launching illegal, immoral and unprovoked wars of aggression," and that "military recruiters are sales people known to lie to and seduce minors."
Come on, folks. The U.S. does have a long history of launching such wars (e.g., Phillipines, Vietnam, Iraq), and there is no shortage of clergy, and moral philosophers, lawyers who agree. Perhaps the council's language was a bit strong, but given the fact that the Iraq war drags on, and that the government is doing nothing to end a war that the majority of citizens no longer support, you can hardly blame these good men and women for getting a bit blunt.
What should they do, sit around and mope, or take a dramatic stand against an immoral, insane, and expensive war? We know from the Vietnam experience, that it takes a controversial move to shake things up. We should have done something drastic 5 years ago when this war was first being sold by liars in the public places. Shame on us for not doing something sooner to enrage the warmongers. Where have we been, where is the memory of what it takes to resist war? Nasty remarks to the Marines are mild-mannered gestures compared to the actions taken to stop the Vietnam War, from burning draft cards to destroying draft records, to shutting down universities. The real question is, why we didn't raise a lot more hell a lot sooner.
As to the statement about military recruiters, there is abundant evidence that the recruiters perform exactly like sales people, plenty of charges that they lie to teenagers to convince them to join the Marines. The most chilling account of sleezy recruiting tactics is in former Marine Anthony Swofford's book "Jarhead," where, among other unscrupulous marketing ploys, he reveals how recruiters baited him with stories about how Marines had free rein with prostitutes. There are less sleezy examples, of course, like deception about education, length of duty, and so forth.
(For an example, click here:)
http://www.counterpunch.org/white01062003.html
But was "seduce" too strong word? I'm not sure.
The vast majority of recruiters certainly don't resort to dirty tactics like those described by some victims. But it can be argued that even the most well-intentioned, scrupulous, and honest military recruiters, by the very nature of their work, are forced into child abuse.
As we all know, teenagers are easily swayed, immature, and reckless. Isn't this is the basic assumption behind adults' endless worries about the evil influence of goth music, gangsta rap, gangs, porn, violent video games, drugs, internet sexual predators, etc.? Isn't this why we give teenagers all kinds of special legal protections, impose curfews, and don't allow them to buy alcohol? Isn't this why we require them to take driver's education and sex education in the hope that we can protect them from being easily swayed, immature, and reckless? Isn't this why spend piles of money to protect them from not just from unprotected sex, but to finance abstinence programs to protect them from sex itself?
On top of all these protections, teenagers are protected by child labor laws and child protective services. We take teen protection so seriously that a U.S. representative, Mark Foley, resigned from the U.S. Congress after it was revealed that he sent "sexually explicit" e-mails to teenage congressional intern. In some ways, our teenagers are the most protected in the entire world. If there's one topic on which there is agreement, from the hard right to the extreme left, it's about the need to protect our kids from abuse of any kind.
Except, of course, when it comes to recruiting them to go to war and face the ultimate danger--being blown to smithereens. Very little protection there, whether from conservatives or radicals. Not much national hand-wringing either, except in supposedly kooky leftist outposts like Berkeley. Like everywhere else, Marine recruiters are under pressure to sign the kids up here, and they undoubtedly work as hard at their job as anybody who markets any of the other teen hazards we fear.
Not much political hoopla about family values, either, even though no parent in his or her right mind would subject their kids to the kind of dangers encountered in war. Nor would they tolerate anybody trying to drag their kid into such dangers. That's the bottom line, that's why people protect kids and move out of dangerous neighborhoods when they can.
Let's get one thing straight: Berkeley is very much a family values town, and that's why we want the military to lay off our kids. Are we as much a family-values bunch of people as any group of right-wing Republican. You damn straight we are, and that means you don't mess with our kids. That's the non-negotiable trade-off, and that's what Berkeley's stance is all about."
