One Enlists, One Graduates
He hugged me when I walked in the back door and found him unexpectedly standing in my kitchen. Unlike so many of my 18-year-old son's friends, who've crossed that invisible line into manhood where it's not considered cool.
Because he and my son had drifted apart, I had not seen him in awhile. I knew he had barely finished high school because, like so many young people these days, there wasn't much there for him. He wasn't college-bound, wasn't into theater or band or sports. He had never quite fit in.
So I asked him what he'd been up to, this tall boy with the sweet smile.
"I joined the Army," he said quietly. "So I'm trying to go around and say good-bye to everybody."
When he told me this I tried not to gasp.
Not quite two weeks ago my son walked across a stage and accepted his high-school diploma. A few days before that his friend boarded a plane for Fort Benning, Georgia, to begin basic training.
Two young men. Two paths. It could have been so different.
At five years and counting, we still don't know much about the tragic price of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. How many soldiers will die or to put a face on it, how many like the 20-year-old female Marine who brought a stuffed animal with her to Iraq and was killed last week, will never live to see 21. We also don't know how many will come home severely depressed or suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Or how many will be plagued by traumatic brain injuries, though the recent Rand study gave us a pretty good idea with its staggering estimate of some 320,000 veterans battling the condition.
As if that weren't enough there's a related horror for this generation of soldiers to fear. According to new U.S. Army estimates, soldiers in Iraq are trying to kill themselves at a rate of five a day. The trend is so alarming that at a recent gathering of the American Psychiatric Association, the head of the National Institute of Mental Health warned: "It's quite possible that the suicides and psychiatric mortality of this war could trump the combat deaths."
Yet one thing we do know is this: we have turned the armed forces into the largest vocational training school for young people in the country. What other educational enterprise regularly fields slick, direct-mail pitches to potential recruits with promises of cars, cash, and college tuition? Not long ago I went to the mailbox and, lo and behold, there was one from the Marines for my son. Like the other pitches he's received, I tossed this one out.
But some young people aren't so lucky. They don't have a parent looking out for them or they don't have great options. The military counts on this. With both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continuing indefinitely, the Army intends to add 65,000 troops by 2010. That's a lot of bodies to dredge up. Is it any wonder that the military was recently caught granting waivers to felons? Or that the majority of new recruits come from families earning less than $60,000 a year?
This is why my son's friend signed on to become a combat medic. Not because he had a passion for war or wanted to fight terrorism or because his father had been an Army Ranger and so the service was in his blood.
His parents were divorced and he lived in a modest apartment with his father. His father ran a small car-detailing business and barely got by.
No, he enlisted in the Army because he was lost. He enlisted because in an economy with few good-paying jobs and little opportunity it was the best future he could envision for himself.
"I applied to be a fire paramedic but they're not taking anyone under 22," he said that afternoon in my kitchen.
After completing his medic training, he said the Army would be shipping him to Alaska or Germany. "Or I might be deployed to Iraq," he said after a pause. "I hope not. I'm really scared of IEDs."
That afternoon his twin sister had come with him. "I am really going to miss him," she kept saying. Her brother kept mentioning the pending date too, as if he couldn't quite fathom it.
This is part of the problem too, and why most Americans have been so thoroughly removed from the realities of the war. Most of us don't have sons or daughters in Iraq or Afghanistan. Most of us haven't had to watch our children wrestle with an impossible decision: a dead-end job at home or a potential career path through the armed forces. Or worse.
When my son walked across the stage to accept his diploma, I reminded myself of this. Then I thought of a tall sweet boy going through another ritual a few thousand miles away. And how it could have been different for him.
Follow Mona Gable on Twitter: www.twitter.com/monalg
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War sucks!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothin.
A state of near-permanent recession is the greatest friend the "all volunteer" army has. Where college is not an option, either for lack of ability, desire or financial resources, and where decent paying blue-collar jobs have all but disappeared, there are few other options for high school grads or drop-outs (aside from crime).
As our economy continues to deteriorate, the military will reap the benefits, finding it easier and easier to meet its recruitment goals. It the recession deepens into a something resembling a depression, there will be plenty of soldiers to fight as many wars as our chicken hawk leaders desire to fill the coffers of their military industrial complex friends.
But, hey, we didn't invent this game. Not by a long shot. It's been a thriving business since the the days of the Roman Empire. Just note how few rich kids ever go to war without a draft.
There are plenty of reasons to consider not joining the military. You've hit on some of them.
Don't forget there are plenty of reasons to join, too -- the chance to defend the nation, training, education, pay and benefits, camaraderie, the ability to rise on merit, the inculcation of values and responsibility, and the ability to provide useful service in local communities are only a few of these.
The military isn't for everyone, but I'm sure I'm not the only one whose life would have gone WAY off track except for having signed that enlistment contract all those years ago.
Amen to that. I was that boy in her kitchen 40 years ago. I couldn't have been more lost. The Army saved my life.
Bring back the draft = end the war. Next?
The republicans, Mr. McBush in particular, continue to bring up President Jimmy Carter as an example of a failed President. Referencing this post I will state that I felt the need to join the US Army in 1976 as a means to get away from where I was at and take a chance at something else. I must say that as my Commander in Chief, Mr. Carter didn't send me anywhere that risked my life for badly thought through reasons, but then, Saddaam didn't try to "Kill My Dad". James Carter is a hero in my eyes & McBush is a jerk for denigrating his name!!
Only reason Carter is viewed as a 'failed president' is that none of his social reforms could get through- they were all blocked by congress. Sound familiar? This is exactly why Pelosi and Reid's congress is viewed so unfavorably... Republicans blocking Democratic bills and motions
Ms. Gable,
I read and appreciate your thoughtful essay. You point out rather poignantly the difference between the haves and have nots in modern society. However, you skirt one issue that we collectively need to reconsider and that you, as the mother of a teenager, probably do not wish to go near. i.e., should we consider reinstatement of the draft?
The benefit of the draft, ideally carried out through a lottery, is that we would expose a broad spectrum of society to military service. Some would respond that, no, a free society should not impose such an obligation. However, so long as there is strife around the world that requires U.S. military presence, we are better off having that presence comprised of the broadest possible cross section of our society.
I would also note that for many (most?), the experience in the military is not a career in itself, but a stepping stone to a better life grounded in a career path seeded by the military experience.
For the record, I am a combat wounded military pilot of the Vietnam era, who went on to a highly successful corporate career via a then attractive G.I. Bill.
The GI Bill now that McCain opposes. Nice going. What if you had not had the chance?
I said "then attractive". Obviously the current G.I. Bill needs vast revamping and it is deplorable that politicians either don't want to fund it or want to structure it as a retention tool. Investment in an effective G.I. Bill has an incredibly high return for society.
This is what angers me to no end about the GOP. They pander to the poor by using social issues, and then when they fall for it due to lack of knowledge, they eliminate any options these same voters would have to obtain a greater future. The army recruiters were violating every code of ethic on the books going to poor oppressed states like Michigan, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Mississippi, the very places that have been GOP strongholds. After the GOP lures them into service by holding the banner of military service as the bastion of patriotism, those same young men and women return maimed, traumatized, or, even worse, in a pine box, and people like McCain thank them by denying them the same benefits given to veterans during WWII. McCain had his prestigious lineage and his rich wife to bail him out of Vietnam, but other veterans who endured the same fate as McCain are homeless, never being able to pull themselves up because their was no one there to give them a hand up.
McCain really disgusts me.
McCain's rich wife bailed him out of Viet Nam? I'm no John McCain fan, but WTF?
When he came back, his only job, non military was a PR person for his wifes father. It was her families political connections and money that helped get him into politics.
His succeses are not entirely his own at any point in his life.. maybe thats true for most of us... but in his case and BUSH's it stands out quite notably... from getting into college, staying in college, paying for college and getting to be pilots, while both being at the bottom of their classes in both HS, college and as pilots, and both having a good time partying and drinking instead of applying themselves given the headstart they had over so many.
Regards
Bertha, McCain was not married to Cindy during or after the Vietnam War. You are the same kind of pond scum that is saying that Obama is Muslim. Get you facts straight.
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