Chapter 17: Students Against Militarism: Youth Organizing in the Counter-Recruitment Movement

Since ending conscription in 1973, the United States has relied entirely on volunteers to staff its vast armed forces. With the United States in a permanent state of war preparation, and with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan generating significant opposition, it has proven difficult to recruit sufficient volunteers to the military. Lack of viable economic prospects for many youth makes for an excellent recruiter’s aid, drawing in a steady stream of enlistees who sign up for the promises of job training, help with paying for college, or cash bonuses and healthcare benefits. Nonetheless, in predicting that “at some point the economy will turn around,” Major General David Mann, the U.S. Army’s top recruiting officer, recently suggested that recruiters will need to make expanding “school presence” one of their “key focus areas” (Mann, 2011, p. 3). Such an emphasis fits into the post-conscription history of the U.S. military: Over the past 30 years, schools have increasingly become key sites for military recruitment. For example, due to federal legislation enacted in 2002, public schools must accept military recruiters on campus or else face loss of federal funding. As a result, recruiters now have a widespread—if not increasingly challenged—presence in school classrooms and hallways across the country. Recruiters’ presence in schools goes beyond providing information to students who express an interest in the armed forces. In the Army’s School Recruiting Handbook, recruiters are urged to fully immerse themselves in high school activities—by volunteering to chaperone dances, proctoring tests, coaching sports, and through other means—in order to achieve “school ownership” (United States Army, 2004, p. 2).