March 5, 2005
Military Recruiter Accused of Sexual Assault of 6 Female Recruits - Points Out Why Recruiters Must Get Out of Our Schools!
By: Jack Dalton
While taking a short break from the article I am in process of writing on, and about active duty war resister Carl Webb, and talking with my friend Doris Colmes (who fled Germany in 1938 with her parents to get away from Hitler and the Nazi's) I read the following headline on the web site "Not In Our Name" - "Military recruiter Accused of Sexual Assaults."
The article goes on to list all the 31 counts of sexual assault and rape this recruiter is now charged with. All of which took place over an 18 month period of time.
"Nationwide, military recruiters reportedly have been linked to at least a half-dozen sexual assaults during the past few years, since the creation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. This broad education law requires, among other things, that high schools give military recruiters greater access to students."
I wonder how many more such instances of sexual assault by recruiters have taken place and gone unreported? Why are we allowing recruiters on this nation’s high schools in the first place? Why are not more people in this nation outraged by this? Why have so many been willing to allow, what was supposed to be a bill about education (ha ha), to give military recruiters access to all information on and about all students on all high schools which receive federal funding? Why do we sit back and tolerate this government telling schools they will lose their federal funding if they do not work in cooperation with military recruiters?
Why do I persist in asking rhetorical questions? That said, why have we allowed our nation's high schools and the students of those schools to become the military's primary source of "recruits" for the current U.S. military juggernaut?
We have all sat back in silence for way too long and now we have a governing body, BushCo, that has created a military arm that now eats it's young.
For years we have been inundated with stories and reports about the systemic problem of rape in the military. 19 investigations in the past 16 years have done nothing to stop that problem women in the military are confronted with. Now, today, with the environment of "anything goes" created by Bush and company, women will be sexually assaulted by recruiters in the nation's high schools before they even get to boot camp. Is this part of "spreading freedom and democracy" the Bush cabal keeps articulating?
We and I mean we, all of us, really do need to do a lot more than keep having "meetings" to discuss what has to be done and just get busy. Openly and publicly and we had best to get busy the sooner rather than later. We do not need a lot of planning meetings to counter the recruiters. Here are a couple of organizations and their web sites that have a lot of good useable and current information we can all use in this effort, including brochures that can be downloaded - the only thing needed is people that will be willing to commit themselves to using the material and then get busy. We can use the in-between busy times to hold "planning meetings" but we must get busy with the anti-recruitment efforts now, today.
The more we wait, the longer we hesitate, the more young people will continue to be misled, taken advantage of, and now, sexually assaulted. This must be stopped!
American Friends Service Committee
Quaker House: Anti-Recruitment
Not In Our Name: Stop Recruitment Efforts in Our Schools
Is The Army Focusing On Black Youths?
Military Recruiters Out of Schools
Anti-War Group Targets Military Recruiters on Campus
Jack Dalton is a disabled Vietnam veteran and co-editor of the Project for the Old American Century web publication and his email address is jack_dalton@comcast.net