What a quandary. These days, if you want to go to college, you may have to join the Army and — like the character in tonight’s Six Feet under — risk getting three limbs blown off and putting yourself out of your misery with a self-administered fatal dose of phenobarbital.
“Should you sacrifice your life to get a college degree in the United States?,” asks Beth Shulman in Alternet’s “Gunning for College.”
And for what? So, so they eventually end up like the callers in to Laura Flander’s Sunday show today on Air America, who despite their degrees, can’t get a job or can’t get one that pays better than $10 an hour?
Tomorrow’s NYT critiques the disparity and ill-timing of rising recruiting bonuses, which work best as competitive incentives during times of thriving job opportunities and in peaceful periods with low risk of death or injury :
An Army recruit in Midland, Tex., signed up for four years in the infantry on April 22, and received a $20,000 bonus. Three weeks later near El Paso, another recruit who chose the same job and length of service received no bonus. […]
[C]ritics described the program as an ineffective tool for attracting troops – a holdover from an era when the most significant recruiting challenges came from competition with a robust economy. Now the main hindrance to recruitment is war, many said, and bonuses should be used to boost compensation for anyone willing to volunteer.
$500,000 and absolution from the pope before I would volunteer to take orders from chimp-boy.
What do you have to offer, soldier-boy?
about 4 beers and a half a pack of smokes.
I’ve never heard of such a thing.
<burp>
it’s sad that as recruitment levels go down they are attracting the most desperate of the desperate. My compadre is finishing up boot camp next week. The only reason he went was to escape the dead-end life he had at home. No amount of money or incentives can make up for the fact that people don’t want to willingly enlist in a military force that is under the command of a trigger-happy cowboy.
Brad Friedman, friendly citizen investigative blogger and proprietor of The BRAD BLOG, is away on vacation. He’s left a trio of very sick puppies in charge of his blog, and I’m honored to be among them.
Sunday afternoon I started this thread about a funeral that happened on Saturday, in Lexingon KY, for Lance Cpl. Chase Johnson Comley, USMC, who was killed in Iraq.
In the opening post, I quoted an article from the Lexington Herald-Leader and highlighted the fact that some of Comley’s relatives have spoken out — in public — against the “president” and the “war”, which is a bit unusual in KY.
That thread and this one are related in very intimate ways … ways I can’t express verbally. The only way I can even imagine expressing it would be banging my head against the wall.
Many other readers must share my feelings of rage and sadness and even occasional helplessness in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds. But we are not helpless. There are all sorts of constructive things that we can all do. And some of them are even fun.
For example … click my sig, and start whispering!
.
you ain’t got a clue what you are doing, nor how your plans effect the world community!
<click pic to enlarge>
Only a fool lies and deceives to save his own skin for history’s sake George.
Unfortunately, Tony Blair shows George the way.
~~~
I had to look at the pic a second time, but it really says it all!
Way to go Oui!
. . . is what Michelle Witmer did in Iraq.
Michelle was the first woman killed in combat in the 400-and-more-years history of the National Guard.
The National Guard. She did not enlist in the Army. She enlisted in the National Guard to pay her way through school at my campus.
As did her twin sister and another sister, both also serving in Iraq then. And both back in the U.S. now, to finish their service in the Guard to go to college.
And all because of the liar in the White House, the chickenhawk who hid in the Guard to get out of a war.
May the ghosts of Michelle and thousands of others haunt him to the end of his miserable days.
I confess I don’t understand why anyone would join the military to get a college degree. Even for students with lackluster performance in high school, student loans appear to be readily available. You won’t be going to Harvard Business School that way, but you’re not going to go on the GI Bill, either.
Yes, you’ll be dealing with the never-say-die bastards who gave you the loans for a long time, but then, which is better: receiving monthly bills or daily RPG fire?
I don’t by any means intend to disrespect those who choose military service because of a sense of duty. I do, however, question the judgment of those who choose military service for any other reason, college included. Enlistment in the armed forces is not a game, a summer vacation, a jobs program, or a quick road to college. It is a dangerous, bloody business that can and does mean death and dismemberment to quite a few people.
Military recruiters go to great lengths to make it seem like enlistment is a) an easy way to get to college, and b) a great entry on your resume. High school students lack the experience to know that neither is true. There are easier ways to go to college, even if you are a poor minority member, and I dunno ’bout you, but I have never in my adult life worked anywhere that military experience counted for shit in the hiring process. I do know plenty of veterans who have had a hell of a time getting their rightful college benefits processed and who have struggled to find jobs after several years of doing practically nothing relevant to civilian employment.
If you want to serve in the military, by all means, do so; we need people pretty desperately right now. If you just want to go to college, try talking to the financial aid office instead.