The allegation that a bunch of gangbangers that included four U.S. Marines were planning a rumble at an Irmo High School football game — not knowing that there was no game scheduled — is sufficiently bizarre to spawn bad jokes:
Asked why they thought they would find a game if they invaded Irmo, the Marines said, "President Bush promised us it was based on solid intel."
Hey, I told you it was a bad joke. Chalk it up to my trying too hard to throw a bone to you anti-war types out there.
Here’s another excuse: Though I gave it a shot, there’s just nothing funny about this situation. It’s appalling to think that a corporal and two lance corporals could have made it through boot camp and advanced training, be assigned to a unit, get promoted and still have enough loyalty left to something as worthless as the Crips to soil the honor of the Corps in such a manner.
Allegedly. For the moment, they are innocent. I hope they turn out actually to be so in the end. I know that not everybody who goes through Parris Island is a choir boy, but boots usually learn enough pride and discipline not to be thrown into the brig for something this stupid.
Did they just want to fight that badly? Were they disappointed at being wing wipers instead of serving in a rifle company? I just hope it was the cops who got the bad intel on this one.
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You really need to temper your infatuation with the G.I. Joe fantasy of the American military. It’s not WWII, Brad.
With recruitment becoming more and more difficult, the standards have been lowered significantly in the past decade. And the
“techniques” the recruiters use to meet their quotas are remarkably similar to the ones used down at the used car lot. Bait and switch. Falsifying records. Ignoring criminal records.
My son’s first call from a Marine recruiter last fall during his senior year was all I needed to hear to know they’re hurting for new recruits. The guy was badgering my son with all sorts of questions and wouldn’t let him hang up with a polite “I’m not interested.” I had to take the phone away and do it for him after several minutes.
So there’s some bad apples who are rotten to the Corps. It happens… and if you think there’s a bunch of Private Ryans out there, you’re in for a real disappointment.
And, then there’s this…
Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts
A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed “large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists” to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.
“We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad,” the group quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on its Web site, http://www.splcenter.org. “That’s a problem.”
A Defense Department spokeswoman said officials there could not comment on the report because they had not yet seen it.
The center called on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to appoint a task force to study the problem, declare a new zero tolerance policy and strictly enforce it.
The report said that neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, whose founder, William Pierce, wrote “The Turner Diaries,” the novel that was the inspiration and blueprint for Timothy J. McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war.
The groups are being abetted, the report said, by pressure on recruiters, particularly for the Army, to meet quotas that are more difficult to reach because of the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq.
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Brad, I’m sure that there’s an intern out there that can help you keep up with current events and how your obsession with invading other countries is destroying this one.
And let me say that I would support a draft if EVERYONE had to commit to at least one year between the ages of 18 and 24.
But you know that the rich kids would suddenly develop an epidemic of bad backs, trick knees, or an overwhelming desire to guard the Alabama airspace.
Doug, stop with the class warfare stuff. NFL player Tillman was filthy rich from several years of an NFL career and volunteered. Rich lawyers have volunteered, doctors volunteer, look at Gov. Sanford as an example. So yes there are criminal minds in the military, like the yoyos who did the Abu Graib stuff, but there are criminal teachers too. I like the 1 year of mandatory service for ALL.
Dave, where exactly is our governor now? Is it Baghdad? Or possibly Fallujah? Give me a break. The brunt of this war is being fought by working class Americans with more than a few recent immigrants. If the mandatory service includes the Bush twins then I’m for it also.
From what I’ve read, elite combat units such as the Rangers and Recon Marines have more than their share of the bourgoisie.
I’m reading a book right now by a writer from Rolling Stone who was imbedded with Recon Marines in March 2003. The platoon commander was a Dartmouth grad who, I discovered at the bookstore the other day, has now written his own account.
Beyond that, the Corps has a legendary record of imbuing even bad apples with the esprit.
It’s just astounding to think any who had worked his way up to corporal in that system would waste ANY time planning something so petty with a bunch of 13-18-year-olds. It’s pathetic, if true.
Hmmm. So let’s see. . .
On the one hand, we have:
Brad Warthen’s expectations.
On the other, we have:
What really happened.
And they don’t match.
What a big surprise.
Well, well, well… what have we here? Another fine discussion between a bunch of pros and cons about the morality and professional ethics of the military from a bunch of people who have never been anywhere and never done nothin’ in regards to the subject.
Do any of you actually even know someone who is serving or, say, has served in the last 10 years? I mean someone you actually know really well, not just a friend of friend. Do you personally know anyone who has died in the line of duty? Do you know anyone who has been awarded a decoration for valor? Do you know a disabled vet? If so, have you ever asked them anything about the actual ethics and professionalism of militay leadership, questions about how the military actually works?
The disconnect between the American people and the military grows wider every day as fewer and fewer of the country’s citizens, especially the ones who shape our culture, those on the far right and far left, have never spent a moment in uniform nor do they even know anyone who has.
As I said in an earlier post on the subject of torture, the young men and women who commit these heinous acts are all products of our society. They are what we have made them, and the military reflects our collective morals and ethics. PFC Lyndie acting out her femdom fantasies on helpless Iraqi POWs is now the same young woman who is soon to be an un-wed mother.
Gang bangers in the Corps… why should that surprise anyone here? Members of the Aryan Nations spray painting graffiti in B-dad… just as natural an expectation as eco-terrorists spiking trees in Oregon.
And Doug, that recruiter who was putting the full court press on your son… why do you think he has to work so hard to recruit someone that he has to resort to “badgering”? Maybe it’s because the elite American cultural attitude towards the military keeps so many fine young men and women, like your son, from seriously considering the military as a career.
Maybe a fine, morally up-standing young man like your son could make a real difference as a leader in the Corps. But I guess we’ll never know. But the next time there’s a breakdown in leadership in the ranks, think about who else kept their son or daughter from being there and maybe making a difference.
By the way, one of the news stories in today’s Kuwait Times is about a gang of “Women mistaken for men linked to crime spree in US.” Imagine my surprise to see the dateline COLUMBIA and the quote from Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.
I suppose that Marine recruiter ought to call Ms. Cooper, Ms. Furtick, Ms. Holliday and Ms. Richardson and stop bothering well-off middle-class white boys of all political persuasions.
SGM – Amen to what you posted. You only have to look at the Ivy League schools and some other bastions of liberalism removing ROTC programs from their campuses and forbidding military recruiters onsite. If the city of San Francisco is a foreteller of the future, we won’t have a nation 50 years from now. Then we have Murtha, the poster boy of the military hating crowd, demoralizing our active troops and serving to dissuade would be troops from volunteering. The left scorns, no, as Bill Clinton says, Loathes, the military. And you can see the scorn above heaped at our governor, who proudly wears the uniform and serves, just because he isn’t right now in Iraq carrying a rifle. That says it all.
You folks on the right sure are making a simple situation complicated. The reason the military is having difficulty recruiting is because young people are generally opposed to the war in Iraq and they’re voting with their feet. Even the radical neocon young men and women are generally staying away in groves. I for one strongly support any school that refuses to allow military recruiters on campus. It’s the patriotic thing to do.
bud –
Thanks for your telling comments. When it comes time to surrender, I will vote for you to carry the white flag. You might need to duck when they swing the scimitar.
All –
I’m working in Northern Virginia this week. After seeing the blog entry and the comments, I went to another floor and spoke briefly with an active duty Army major (O-4). He directed me to the Army Study Guide where I found this:
He may be exaggerating, he is, after all, responsible for recruiting results for Rumsfeld and Bush, no? So NPR has this report that says that the Army may be overusing special exemptions to fill its ranks. After Googling around a bit I found repeats of the first story and lots of old reports. I’m sure the Marines will treat their service members quite well in the military jail while the investigation continues. That these Einsteins and their civilian colleagues were about to show up for a rumble where there would be no one else is an encouraging sign that the war against gangs can be won.
But I’m distressed at the schadenfreude expressed by folks who often claim to support the troops. I understand that you don’t care for Bush and his policies, but keeping the military from recruiting is going a little too far, no?
More bad news for bud: all those prestigious law schools and the impressive briefs of their professors mattered naught as they lost 8-0.
What’s not clear from this article is that George Mason University was the only school that filed a brief that was on the winning side, making me wonder about the benefits of an Ivy League education.
Full disclosure: I beat the draft – I had a low lottery number – in 1971 by enlisting and served six years as a Russian language voice intercept transcriber, MOS 98G; I had a middle-class upbringing. My employer has engineers in Iraq under contract to the federal government supporting communications and infrastructure. My nephew, now a captain (O-3) in the Army, returned from his second tour in Iraq in June; he had a middle-class upbringing. The gal in the cubicle outside the office I’m using has a son who’s a medivac chopper pilot in Iraq; he went to private and public schools, graduated from Virginia Tech; the dad is an engineer. A friend recently returned from Iraq and is off to Kuwait.
Mike, I also know several middle-class kids serving in the military or who recently served. I know these people because that’s who I work with and my kids go to school with.
But let’s not debate this anectdotally. My perception is that poor and working class families are over-represented in the military. I’ll try to research this to see if it’s true. If you have legitimate research to the contrary I’ll graciously concede the point.
SGM,
My son is 6 feet tall and weighs 120 pounds.
If you want him carrying a 70 pound pack, I hope it is on wheels. 🙂
Since you are completely unaware of the conversation that he had with the recruiter, maybe you shouldn’t make assumptions about how it went. Let’s just say that the recruiter never identified himself as a member of the military until well into the conversation. He began with general questions about school, plans after graduation, etc. It was only after gathering that information that he then turned the conversation into a recruiting pitch. It was pure telemarketing…
I would think that most 18 year kids are smart enough to realize that there is an option to enlist. Having to do “cold calls” would seem to be a pretty poor way to find qualified recruits.
There are some fine people serving in the military. There are also some who are not.
Living in Columbia, we get to interact with active and retired military personnel frequently through sports and school activities. My personal experience has been that they are as diverse as the general population. Some good, some bad.
One stereotype I admit to having personally bought into based on these experiences is that the kids of military parents tend to be, um, (thinking of a politically correct term), ‘independent thinkers’.
And maybe I’ve allowed my personal bias to enter into the equation. My father-in-law is a Marine. He refuses to speak about his experience in WWII as a bomber pilot.
He put the Marines over his family and everything else. That’s a messed up philosophy in my view. My father was a cook on a Coast Guard ice breaker during the Korean War. He enlisted at age 18 and served for about five years. When the Vietnam War was still going on as my older brother was approaching 18, my father made it clear that my brother would NEVER serve in that “war”. Luckily, we never had to consider that option.
Doug, you interjected your son’s experience into the discussion not me. If the point you wanted to make was cold pitch recruiting calls is somehow inefficient, then that’s what you should have said. As it was, you criticized the recruiter for “badgering” your son and implied that the recruiter was acting unethically for having the temerity to even call.
Yes, military recruiting follows the “best” sales pitch methodology used by all modern advertising and sales operations. It’s actually a pretty efficient use of your tax dollars. Why? Because it works.
That recruiter probably got your son’s name from a school list of graduating students along with their GPAs. There’s probably ethnic and gender info on the list as well. Based on trends in the local area, he’ll check-off those names he thinks might be likely candidates. He can make 6-10 cold calls an hour for a couple of hours a day and then schedule actual interviews with the 3 or 4 nibbles that he’ll get. Of those 3 or 4, one might actually enlist (actually the rate is much, much lower).
He’s got a tough job that has some very objective performance standards that he has to meet day in and day out. Also, he probably really doesn’t like recruiting (you might guess the kinds of people that he has to deal with on a daily basis) and would much rather be back with his friends in his old unit.
So, you say that “most 18 year [old] kids are smart enough to realize that there is an option to enlist.” Does that mean that you think military recruiters should just hide in their offices and not bother nice people, maybe just wait for the street urchins and other dregs of society to come calling? After all, those kinds of people have no other real choices, right?
You mention your father and his pressure on your brother, do you perhaps see a generational trend here?
My points are: There is a culture gap between the American people and their military. Most citizens don’t really understand much, if anything, about it. The reason for these conditions is that so few people have any direct, personal association with the military.
This leads to too many people unjustly stereotyping and criticizing the military (and by extension, the men and women who serve). The reason these people vilify the military is because they believe it doesn’t reflect their personal values.
Those same conditions also lead to other people looking at the military with “rose colored glasses.” These are the people who think that the military should be infallable and can’t understand why there are occasional leadership breakdowns or bad decisions.
The only way to change any of this is for citizens to interject their core values into the military by serving and by encouraging their children and grand children to serve. The military is a reflection of America and of the value or lack thereof that Americans have for it. If little Johnny or Suzie are too good and precious to serve, then the military we get will never reflect Johnny’s and Suzie’s values or the values of the people who raised them.
Quoting an “O4” military officer isn’t exactly getting info from the most informed source. It always amazes me when cable news programs bring in a “Military Expert” who happens to be a Colonel in one of the services. Colonels are a dime a dozen, maybe less, and from experience first hand, not all those birds are the most knowledgable of anything. An O4 sits two levels below the bird and consequently their numbers are in the billions (not really)so military rank doesn’t suggest expertise for all.
I enlisted because of the draft frankly. I had been to Ft. Jackson on a 6th grade class trip and seen the soldiers in tents on a cold and rainy day and thought, not me. Besides being from Charleston, Navy was in the blood (figure of speech).
I have young nephews in the military, one recently deploying to Iraq.
The calibur of recruits in the military doesn’t seem much different than in the 60’s as I recall several members who avoided jail time by enlisting. They weren’t drafted, but in a different way had on two choices, military or jail.
My last 4 years in the military were working for the Judge Advocate General, I did court martials, administrative discharges and the like. All caliber of people passed in front of my desk on their way out. I don’t think it’s changed much, maybe just more noticable because of an anti war sentiment.
>Does that mean that you think military
>recruiters should just hide in their offices
>and not bother nice people, maybe just wait
>for the street urchins and other dregs of
>society to come calling? After all, those
>kinds of people have no other real choices,
>right?
No. I think cold calling from a list of names is a waste of tax dollars. I’d like to see the success rate on this program. I bet it’s less than 1%.
Unfortunately, the system is set up for recruiters to meet quotas on quantity, not quality. Just as in the private sectors, employees are motivated by the metrics. If you tell a recruiter his job rating depends on finding X recruits, he’s going to do whatever it takes to get X recruits. Maybe the metric should be changed to “Find X recruits who have a 3.0 GPA, can run a mile in under 6 minutes, bench press half their weight 20 times, and can get a letter of recommendation from a teacher or pastor”.
Wonder what our military would look like
in that case?
I don’t have a problem with recruiters in schools making the case for the benefits that are available in the military and I don’t look negatively at those who make that choice. I’m not anti-military, I’m anti-Iraq War.
Sometimes quotas aren’t to blame…
AP Probe Looks at Recruiters’ Misconduct
More than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by their recruiters. Women were raped on recruiting office couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to entrance exams.
A six-month Associated Press investigation found that more than 80 military recruiters were disciplined last year for sexual misconduct with potential enlistees. The cases occurred across all branches of the military and in all regions of the country.
“This should never be allowed to happen,” said one 18-year-old victim. “The recruiter had all the power. He had the uniform. He had my future. I trusted him.”
At least 35 Army recruiters, 18 Marine Corps recruiters, 18 Navy recruiters and 12 Air Force recruiters were disciplined for sexual misconduct or other inappropriate behavior with potential enlistees in 2005, according to records obtained by the AP under dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests. That’s significantly more than the handful of cases disclosed in the past decade.
The AP also found:
-The Army, which accounts for almost half of the military, has had 722 recruiters accused of rape and sexual misconduct since 1996.
-Across all services, one out of 200 frontline recruiters – the ones who deal directly with young people – was disciplined for sexual misconduct last year.
RTH – My guess is 1 of 200 teachers was disciplined for sexual misconduct last year. 1 of 200 policemen, doctors, clergy ditto.
And I forgot to mention Congressional reps. Gary Condit, Barney Frank, Conyers to name a few. Probably higher than 1 of 200 for that group.
Well, Dave, let’s bring your “guess” down to a local level.
My school district has 1100 certified teachers and 1400 other employees.
By your “guess,” every year, this school district should have at least two teachers and seven other employees disciplined for sexual misconduct. That’s a total of seven individuals in one district.
I wonder if any of those sexual offenders would have preyed upon more than one student? I seem to remember that sexual predators typically don’t limit themselves to one individual.
If this statement is accurate, then we can project that the seven predators in my district might have committed sexual misconduct with a minimum of 10 students, total.
Some of the ten districts in the Midlands are larger. So, by your “guess,” no one has noticed that there’s an epidemic of 70 school employees disciplined for sexual misconduct per year. By your guess, every year, the Midlands families of over 100 student-victims of sexual misconduct have remained silent.
Where’d you pull that “guess” from, anyway?
Correction:
My school district has 1100 certified teachers and 1400 other employees.
By your “guess,” every year, this school district should have at least five teachers and seven other employees disciplined for sexual misconduct. That’s a total of twelve individuals in one district.
I’ll let you do the math on the rest…
SGM, I accept service on your dismissal of the opinions of those who haven’t served. I grew up in the military, but never had the honor of wearing the uniform.
And Dave, I share your contempt of those who of my generation who loathe the military. But don’t think it’s a new phenomenon. I can’t seem to lay my hands on my copy of The Right Stuff at the moment — maybe it’s at the office — but Wolfe included a dead-on assessment of the bourgeoisie’s long-standing aversion to the military. And he was writing it from the perspective of explaining the demographics of the officer corps in the 1950s.
In the meantime, I refer you to Kipling, who documented the same attitude on the other side of the pond in the previous century.
A lot of people grow up looking down on the military, and have for generations. I, in turn, because of my upbringing, tended to look at civilian life as inherently inferior — all that money-grubbing instead of serving your country. I have come as an adult to have much greater respect for people in the private sector — some of them, anyway.
As for bud’s assertion that “My perception is that poor and working class families are over-represented in the military.” They may be, in the overall uniformed services. This arises from the fact that they are more likely to seek the military for the economic advantages it offers them — something that would not be an incentive to someone brought up to be a stockbroker.
It’s equally true that combat troops — particularly elite unites — are somewhat the other way. I don’t know about their families’ incomes, but I do know that minorities are underrepresented — and there’s a strong correlation there with income, as we all know. For instance, of the 160 men among the Rangers who fought the “Black Hawk Down” engagement on Oct. 3, 1993, one two were black. In the book I’m reading now about Recon Marines in Iraq in March 2003, there was one black marine in the whole platoon.
Of course, that’s anecdotal too, but statistics I’ve read in the past (and don’t have at hand at the moment) back it up — a lot of minorities in support units, more representative demographics in combat. I’ll be interested to see what you come up with as you research it. I suspect you’ll find the same.
Finally, I wouldn’t expect the set of schoolteachers to have quite as many sexual assaults as the set of young men in uniform. That’s neither to praise nor condemn nor excuse either group. It’s just what one would expect with larger amounts of testosterone.
And to Dave’s point — actually, I think 1 in 200 is still a disturbingly high number, even among young men who are selected for their aggressiveness. It indicates a need for a serious review of procedures and oversight of recruiters. I also think that the one in 200 who commits such an act upon a trusting young girl should spend the rest of his life in Leavenworth. Or Gitmo, if we can spare the room.
Oops, I forgot to link you to the Kipling. I was referring of course to "Tommy," published in 1892:
And I made a mistake. There were 140 Rangers in that company in Mogadishu.