yet more thoughtcrimes from Liberal Street Fighter
The doubleplusgood Bush Administration drive to take what is good about America and make it ugly continues apace:
Peace Corps Option for Military Recruits Sparks Concerns
The U.S. military, struggling to fill its voluntary ranks, is offering to allow recruits to meet part of their military obligations by serving in the Peace Corps, which has resisted any ties to the Defense Department or U.S. intelligence agencies since its founding in 1961.[…]
Congress authorized the recruitment program three years ago in legislation that drew little attention at the time but is stirring controversy now, for two reasons: The military has begun to promote it, and the day is drawing closer when the first batch of about 4,300 recruits will be eligible to apply to the Peace Corps, after having spent 3 1/2 years in the armed forces. That could happen as early as 2007.
It is stunning how much radical reorganization has been rammed through since January 2001 when the wingers completely took over DC with their bloodless judicial coup.
The recruitment program has sparked debate and rising opposition among current and former Peace Corps officials. Some welcome it as a way to expand the cadre of idealistic volunteers created by President John F. Kennedy. But many say it could lead to suspicions abroad that the Peace Corps, which has 7,733 workers in 73 countries, is working together with the U.S. armed forces.
Of course, they have been able to ram through so much of this with the help of a compliant “opposition” party and a media that seemed hellbent on being as friendly to this administration in inverse proportion to its hostility to the Clinton Administration.
The Peace Corps’ mission is straightforward:
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship.
Three simple goals comprise the Peace Corps’ mission:
1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans.
None of this, of course, is contrary to what a soldier might want to do with his life after serving some time in the military. One could argue that it is just another form of service, as the measure’s sponsers did:
Two longtime proponents of national service programs, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), devised the legislation “to provide Americans with more opportunities to serve their country,” said Bayh’s spokeswoman, Meghan Keck. When it stalled as a separate bill, aides to the senators said, they folded it into a 306-page defense budget bill, where it did not attract opposition.
Opponents point out:
Several former Peace Corps leaders said they hope that Congress and the Bush administration will reverse course and scuttle the program. They include former senator Harris Wofford (D-Pa.), who helped found the Peace Corps as a young aide in the Kennedy White House; Carol Bellamy, the former New York City Council president who headed the Peace Corps from 1993 to 1995; and Mark L. Schneider, who was a volunteer in El Salvador in the late 1960s and headed the Peace Corps during the last two years of the Clinton administration.
“Democratic and Republican administrations alike have kept a bright line separating the Peace Corps from short-term foreign and security policies,” Schneider said. “Blurring that sharp line is a bad idea, particularly now, given the unfortunate rise in anti-American sentiment following the Iraq war.”
Yup, calm calls for a rational pullback from this really bad idea will definitely result in immediate action.
One might ask, however, why we are suddenly hearing about this now? Well, with recruiting falling short, the military needs to put on a happy face to get warm bodies from the meat grinder:
After the law went into effect in 2003, the Defense Department was slow to promote the option of combining military and Peace Corps service, but it is now energetically flogging the “National Call to Service” program, recruiters said. The Army, which began a pilot project in 10 of its 41 recruiting districts in October 2003, expanded it into a nationwide effort this year. The Air Force, Navy and Marines offer identical programs, said Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
In all of the services, recruits are eligible for a $5,000 cash bonus or repayment of $18,000 in student loans if they agree to spend three months in boot camp, 15 months on active duty and two years in the Reserves or National Guard.
After that, they can fulfill the remainder of their eight-year military obligation in the Individual Ready Reserves — available for call-up, but without regular drilling duties — or by serving in the Peace Corps or Americorps, the domestic national service program created in 1993.
Vasquez emphasized that recruits have no guarantee that they will be accepted into the Peace Corps. Once they complete their active duty and Reserve or National Guard service, they can apply to the Corps. But they will not receive any preferential treatment, and the Peace Corps is not changing its admission standards, he said.
So, we are going to possibly do damage to an organization that is part of American “soft” power by associating it with the military in order to trick eighteen year olds to risk their lives in our imperial war.
Soft power, therefore, is not just a matter of ephemeral popularity; it is a means of obtaining outcomes the United States wants. When Washington discounts the importance of its attractiveness abroad, it pays a steep price. When the United States becomes so unpopular that being pro-American is a kiss of death in other countries’ domestic politics, foreign political leaders are unlikely to make helpful concessions (witness the defiance of Chile, Mexico, and Turkey in March 2003). And when U.S. policies lose their legitimacy in the eyes of others, distrust grows, reducing U.S. leverage in international affairs.
There has always been a struggle by humanitarian aid organizations to maintain a distance from direct cooperation with military organizations. This isn’t to say that retired military personnel can’t volunteer or go on to have productive careers in the humanitarian community. It is important, though, that there be neutrality where aid workers and their organizations are working, both for their safety and the safety of the civilians they are trying to help:
Neutrality means that organizations do not take sides in a conflict. Impartiality means that need is the only condition for determining who receives aid–not political affiliation, ethnicity, or any other criterion.
Aid organizations obviously lose their neutrality if they operate under the direction of the US military. Humanitarian aid also loses its impartiality if politics, rather than need, determines who receives aid. On the ground, that might translate to the military preventing aid workers from assisting non-liberated zones, for example.
Adherence to impartiality and neutrality, even in an imperfect way, is a practical asset to aid workers, in addition to the ethical value. Being viewed as US allies makes them easy targets for Iraqi guerrillas. “We don’t want our workers compromised by having military protection,” said an official of Save the Children (UK) earlier this month, as debate in the international aid community formed around the Pentagon’s emerging plan.
This policy is just another attempt from the right to co-opt the language and programs of more progressive Administrations and people to turn it to their political ends, and the result will be damage to an organization with an established history and a militarization of yet another arena in our society.
Peace may sometimes be gained at the end of bloody conflict, but the very agencies that people can use to wage peace should not be twisted to become yet another way to continue to wage war.
