Letters to the Editor
-
My take...
I agree with most of this article. For what it's worth, I spent five years in the Marines, then got out and started using my GI bill money. Now I'm a year into my PhD, so I've seen both of the environments being compared. Racially and class-wise, the military is way more diverse, and it remains one of the best ways for those from the "wrong" demographics (read: poor people) to travel the world or get an education. I certainly couldn't have done either without it.
That being said, I think the SYSTEM of the military is incredibly flawed. Military recruitment operates on the same incentive/punishment system as commission sales, but the shark-like recruiters (who had been good marines and good guys before they got into the recruiting gig) almost exclusively target naive kids who are finishing high school. Is it any wonder that they can trick these poor guys and girls with a sales pitch depicting the military as a good way to party, get laid, and be macho?
This wouldn't be such an atrocity, in my opinion, if the military wasn't contract-based, and the contracts weren't years long. In some other countries, there are no contracts. The soldiers get a pension based on how long they've served. This seems like a better setup to me, with some reasonable policies in place to keep everyone from quitting as soon as there is some fighting to do.
By the way, since I've left the marines, I've become pretty left-wing, but it still pisses me off when people disparage the troops because they're frustrated with the war or the current administration. I haven't seen it much--certainly not as bad as I've read Vietnam was--but I've seen it on campus a little bit, and on some blogs, and it seems to be getting worse.
Sorry to hijack the thread with my long-winded soap-box.
Ike