Military recruitment...of 13 year-olds
Keeping in line with the blog dialogue on military recruitment, here's an article about military recruitment in my home city and state of Trenton, New Jersey. When I was in Trenton's public school system, I was contacted by military recruiters beginning at the age of 13 when recruiters from the Junior ROTC (JROTC) program at my local public high school came to talk to my middle school as part of the program where they tried to get us "oriented" to our future high school. Thankfully, I never joined but my main high school girlfriend did. Around the time when we were graduating from high school, I was looking at going to Ivies and she was looking at going to Iraq (note: I graduated from high school in the first half of 2003 when our current administration's war in Iraq had just begun). Thankfully I was able to convince her not join the military after high school but she felt as if that was her only option despite being a solid student involved in other extracurriculars. There are SO many military recruiters at my predominantly Black, lower-class high school as oppose to, say, the more affluent and White Princeton High School only 20 minutes away? I wonder why this is so. You should too.
posted by Chimaobi Amutah @ 5:22 PM
3 Comments:
Jean-Paul Sartre: When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die.
Comparing the demographics of our military to the demographics of the, say, the people in the White House reveals a huge injustice. In some ways, a universal draft, a la Israel, where every American must spend one or two years in some form of service, could be a good idea in correcting this injustice. I personally wouldn't support such a policy, but it is interesting.
why wouldn't you "personally support such a policy"? Is the moral calculus wrong?
I guess you could say the moral calculus is wrong. It's a tough issue. On the one hand, it could be a great program with tons of good. It would unite our nation as a common experience. Having so many people doing community or military service could achieve great things.
Nonetheless, the libertarian streak in me thinks that such a program, no matter how much good it would do, just breaches personal liberties a tad too much.
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