Opt Out of the War Machine

Posted on February 27, 2006 by glasscastle

MERIDEN, Conn. — A federal rule that puts information about students
into the hands of military recruiters is raising concerns among some
parents.

A provision in the No Child Left Behind Act, which measures student achievement,
also requires school districts to provide information about those students
to military recruiters when asked.

Now, some parents in Meriden have gone on the offensive. They’re spreading
the word about a little-known provision that lets parents and students
sign forms to opt out, keeping that information away from military recruiters.

”I really had to dig to find this information," said Lucinda Perry
of Meriden, who first learned of the opt-out provision while reading a
magazine article last year.

from the Boston Globe

Well, you Dowbrigade reader’s don’t have to dig. Here are the PDF’s

They are available on multiple sites in the Internet – we got them through
a site called "Leave
My Child Alone". While we are on the topic of Military Recruiting,
let us reveal a bit of personal information.

A couple of years ago, one of our sons, after graduating from high school,
was at loose ends.  He "wasn’t ready" for college, and couldn’t
find a job. Every morning, even in the dead of winter, we would kick
him out of the house with orders to look for "Help Wanted" signs, answer
want
ads,
etc.
He
went
through
the motions, but he really didn’t know WHAT he wanted to do, so nothing
came through.

Turns out the Armed Forces maintained a recruiting center in the small
suburban town near Boston where we lived at the time, about a block and
a half from the High School, where the coffee was always hot and the
heat turned up. Coffee and sympathy, and an alternative to the cold hard
streets where nobody wanted to hire an 18-year-old recent high school
graduate with no experience or enthusiasm for a job.

By the time we figured out where he was spending his time, he had signed
a letter of intent. He wanted to be a marine. If a joint or two of marijuana
didn’t leave a distinct signature in human urine for 4-6 weeks, he would
probably be in Baghdad or Karbala right now.

He’s come to his senses since then, thank God, although he is still
a Bill O’Reilly Republican, and is studying at a local Community College
while working for a building management company near his apartment in Brighton.
But we worry about all those other kids getting sucked into military
recruiting machines in towns and cities across America.

In our son’s case, his official military “Sponsor”, some 20-year-old PFC wasting time at that boring suburban recruitment center and with a quota to fill, had actually advised our son on how to beat the piss test. Luckily, the only ill results of his completely bogus advice (drink 3 quart bottles of vinegar the day before the test) was that said son spent 12 hours vomiting and his room smelled of vinegar for a month.

It is no secret that the military is a hard sell thee days, and no wonder.
We would be willing to bet that the majority of current veterans leaving
the armed services, those who are finally getting out, after multiple
deployments and repeated involuntary extensions of their tours, would make lousy
recruiters.

That’s when we got our latest brilliant idea. Next to every US Armed
Services Recruitment Center, we should open a small storefront prominently
labeled "TOSOTS", which stands for "The Other Side Of The Story" and which
would be open all the same hours as the recruitment centers, but which
would be staffed with vets who had been there and live to tell about it,
with the straight dope, guys in wheelchairs, amputees, sure, but also
just plain joes willing to remember and tell it like it really is – war
is hell.

Don’t our kids deserve the chance to hear both sides of the story before
they sign away a big chunk – maybe the final chunk – of their lives?

Of course, someone would have to foot the bill for renting the storefronts
and paying some kind of salary to the vets who would staff it, but it
could and should be integrated to a multi-faceted program to help recent
vets get re-integrated to society, get employed and develop job skills,
and find a way to turn their experiences into something positive.

Any Internet millionaires up for a project to to directly save a few
thousand young American lives? Back in the 60’s we used to ask each other
the semi-retorical question "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"
Maybe, for the first time, we have a chance to actually make that happen.

 
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