semper fry

Dispair and hoplessness.....no opportunities except for street life or incarceration. These are the choices awaiting lower and working class poor when they get out of school. Not too jolly of a prospect......scrape, steal or die-not the thing middle or upper class kids think about when they turn eighteen. But there is an alterlative for these kids with seemingly little chance of advancement-it's the military .The armed forces becons, welcomes and even challenges the youth from across the tracks with promises of college money, travel and skills for higher paying jobs. What do they really get ? A chance to defend the country ? A way out of poverty ? Perhaps, but for some the way out is in a flag draped casket. Recruiters sit in offices waiting with brochures and rote monologues detailing the wonderful world of the army,navy, national guard or marines. "Here's a chance to belong to something really huge, be in a real 'family'.....get the recognition and purpose that has evaded you since your birth". Sounds good to me, it does. They do leave out some important facts, though. This all-voulenteer force that is now attempting to police the middel east and change certain countries into demoracies is stretched to the limit. Politicians know that instituting the draft would cost many votes so the armed forces are under-manned, under armored and basically abused by this government. The end result is a bunch of well-meaning kids trying to escape dead-end lives winding up being used to fight illicit wars and have the prospect of delayed and/or substandard medical care if they get disabled from active duty. Psychological help for veterans is in really short supply as well so an alarming number of young veterans wind up emotionally troubled or worse yet, suicidal. It's a cruel irony that awaits the young vet upon coming home after active duty. Being shot at or shooting at people, seeing fellow soldiers die forever changes these kids. They join up to find glory only to get used up and spat out by the very organization that promised them a brighter future.I wonder what the recruiter knows of the potential misery that awaits these unfortunate kids....the betrayal, not of their fellow soldiers but of the system that sends them out in the world to do the bidding of politicans who have never served in active combat and who will protect their own children from having the experience of war up close and personal. It is the greatest insult to humanity, this treatment of the poor as a commodity to be use like fuel to burn for the sake of some pointless and exploitive conflict that kills thousands of innocent people, uses innumerable resources, causes unimaginable pollution and destruction and benefits a handful of rediculously wealthy war-profiteer buisnesses. Recruiting is a dirty job and someone has to do it, but who is this person and what do they really know about the fruits of their labor ?