Victimized by Military Recruiters
January 30, 2007
A man victimized by military recruiters writes in response to my recent LRC article, “Beware of Child Predators”:
I worked hard in High School to get good grades and all I wanted to do was go to college like my more economically fortunate academic peers. My noble goal was to be the first person in my family to graduate from university.
Then an Air Force recruiter came to my door.
I didn’t want anything to do with this snake oil salesman, so he appealed to my working class parents and convinced them that, to use his words exactly, “the tooth fairy had taken my brain,” and that the military was the best way for me to get a college education.
I asked my parents, who ironically were Quakers, why I had to had to be part of killing people in order to earn a degree. They scoffed and told me that they were promised I would be given a job in support. After all, it was the Air Force, not the army. My own mother actually signed the form before I did (for I was only 16 when I went into delayed enlistment) and they then gave me a choice to either sign the paper or to move out of the house when I was 18. To this day, I am convinced that the recruiter told them to do this.
Under enormous duress I signed the paper.
As an intelligence specialist, I worked the night shift and went to a local college during the day. And, despite the promise to serve in a “support” role, I found myself assigned to locate and assign targets for allied air strikes during the Gulf War. Afterwards, the military system that was supposed to be all for soldiers, sailors, and marines getting an education permitted me to earn all but 3 credits towards my B.A. while on active duty, and then would not grant me an extension to finish my final course before trying to ship me to Korea. I wrote my Senator (who was at the time Bob Kerrey from Nebraska) to ask him to intervene and I was awarded an early discharge for the convenience of the government.
After discharge, I received what was supposed to be the enormous sum of $10,000 dollars for my education. It payed for about two semesters of courses and books at graduate school. I had to go get loans and work full time to pay the rest. That was my paltry thank you for killing Iraqis–people who had done nothing to me or my country–in the so-called Gulf War to “liberate” Kuwait, a nation that to this day is still ruled by tyrants.
Despite being a victim of what I consider to be working class slavery, I have since been able to catch up with my peers and I have just completed my Ph.D. It is lamentable that my degree is tainted with the blood of others who did me no harm.
“Molestation” by recruiters also leaves scars. Let’s hope your article might save a few people from falling victim to the same system.
(posted with the permission of DK)
There is hope