Getting fresh meat to feed the Iraq meatgrinder

Even after reducing their quota the Army missed it for the fourth month in a row.

The Army announced yesterday that it missed its recruiting goal for the fourth consecutive month, a deepening manpower crisis that officials said would require a dramatic summer push for recruits if the service is to avoid missing its annual enlistment target for the first time since 1999.

Desperate times require desperate actions which as Jazz reported the other day apparently even includes kidnapping.
It's almost as if the Bush administration anticipated this problem because as it turns out No Child Left Behind really means that no child will miss the opportunity to be deceived and lied to by ever present military recruiters.

How has it happened that recruiters -- who used to come only on career days -- are now present in our schools much of the time? I would wager that most parents have no idea that the No Child Left Behind Act offers public high schools a choice: Provide access to and information about students "for purposes of military recruitment" or risk losing federal funding.

What does this have to do with educational reform, what No Child Left Behind is supposed to be about? A letter sent to educators in October 2002 by then-Education Secretary Rod Paige and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is revealing. It states: "Sustaining that heritage [defending freedom] requires the active support of public institutions in presenting military opportunities to our young people for their consideration. Recognizing the challenges faced by military recruiters, Congress recently passed legislation that requires high schools to provide to recruiters, upon request, access to secondary school students and directory information on those students. Both the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 reflect these requirements." It seems obvious that recruitment drives in schools have nothing to with educational reform. This is about our government solving its recruitment problem.

A majority of Americans now think the Iraq war was not worth the cost. Because of that the biggest obstacle to military recruiters is now the parents who don't want their sons and daughters killed in Bush's war for oil. The No Child Left Behind act is increasingly being used to take parents out of the loop.

But this is a country at war, and we have to ask ourselves whether children between the ages of 14 and 17 have the maturity to make what may be life-or-death decisions based on promises of easy cash and a college education -- promises that sometimes don't come true.

The answer to this question is easy. NO. As the war on drugs and the attempts to reduce deaths of teenagers in automobile accidents have demonstrated 14 to 17 year olds have a "it can't happen to me" vision of life. They require parental guidance when it comes to life and death decisions. No student should have one on one contact with a recruiter without a parent present. That's what "Family Values" is all about.