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How the Pentagon
targets teens
By Nick Turse
Introduction by Tom Engelhardt
, editor of Tomdispatch
 The
Bush administration has "basically committed most
of the army's active forces (including much of the
National Guard), rotating them to the point of
exhaustion," said retired Lieutenant Colonel
Charles A Krohn, former army deputy chief of
public affairs at the Pentagon and in Baghdad, in
the Washington Post.
Eric Schmitt and
David S Cloud, in a front-page story in the Monday
New York Times sum up part of the problem this
way:
The army says it has found ways to
handle the dwindling pool of reservists eligible
to fill the support jobs [in Iraq], but some
members of Congress, senior retired army
officers and federal investigators are less
sanguine, warning that barring a reduction in
the Pentagon's requirement to supply 160,000
forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, or a change in
its mobilization policy, the army will exhaust
the supply of soldiers in critical specialties.
"By next fall, we'll have expended our ability
to use National Guard brigades as one of the
principal forces," said General Barry McCaffrey,
a retired four-star army commander who was
dispatched to Iraq last month to assess the
operation. "We're reaching the bottom of the
barrel." All of this has come in the
course of fighting two small, ugly, colonial-style
wars. And just because Iraq in particular is
increasingly, in Krohn's phrase, a "sustained and
unpopular war", refilling the ranks has proved no
small problem for the Pentagon, which has recently
found itself scraping the bottom of that
recruitment barrel in all sorts of ways.
This may sooner or later result in what
Krohn calls a "hollow army". Add to this, the
near-guaranteed loss of much of what's left of the
none-too-impressive "coalition" in Iraq in the
next year - the Italians announced their first
withdrawal of forces this week (to begin in
September), the British are planning a major
drawdown relatively soon, the stay of the Japanese
troops (already largely locked inside their base
in southern Iraq) is in question - and the Bush
administration is soon likely to find itself, like
the cheese of children's song, standing very much
alone in its mission, with a major domestic and
international recruitment crisis on its hands.
In fact, we may be watching a new
phenomenon: withdrawal by military overstretch.
Now, thanks to one of those documents that seems
to leak constantly from crucial file drawers in
England these days - a memo written by British
Defense Minister John Reid - we know that not just
the British, but the Pentagon has been seriously
considering a major draw-down of forces in Iraq by
early 2006, a near halving of American troop
strength there.
According to the
Washington Post, "The [British] paper, which is
marked 'Secret - UK Eyes Only', said 'emerging US
plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be
handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006',
allowing a reduction in overall US-led forces in
Iraq to 66,000 troops ... The undated memo, which
was reported in the newspaper The Mail on Sunday,
stated that 'current US political military
thinking is still evolving. But there is a strong
US military desire for significant force
reductions to bring relief to overall US
commitment levels'." Of course, given that it's
Iraq we're talking about, between planning
document and reality there are likely to be many
pitfalls.
And the "withdrawal" is
conceptual as well. The American imperial mission
is visibly buckling under the strain. (The 19th
century British must be turning over in their
graves as American power crumbles under the weight
of small wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Until
recently, the Pentagon, in its congressionally
mandated Quadrennial Defense Review, has stuck to
a two-war model of global dominance - our military
should, in essence, be able to mount a decisive
invasion of Iraq and fight a second major campaign
elsewhere on the planet almost as decisively at
more or less the same moment (while still being
capable of defending what is now commonly referred
to as "the homeland").
Just last week,
however, Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt of the New
York Times reported ("Pentagon Weighs Strategy
Change to Deter Terror") that the "Pentagon's most
senior planners" were challenging that model in
fierce internal debates and were opting instead
for being prepared to wage but a single
invasion-of-Iraq-style war combined with smaller
counterinsurgency operations and a bolstering of
domestic anti-terrorism defenses. As Fred Kaplan
recently commented in Slate online ("The Doctrine
Gap"), this will probably make no actual
difference in the size, shape or staggering cost
of our military. But it is significant
nonetheless. It represents a downsizing of
ambitions, what the ancient Chinese might have
called "the rectification of names" - or the
bringing of the naming of things back into line
with reality.
And inside the Pentagon that
reality couldn't be clearer right now. After all,
with the civilian leadership of the Bush
administration proving itself almost incapable of
finding willing natives out there in the imperium
to fight its wars for it, military representatives
have been discovering in the past year that the
natives at home are restless as well. The services
have responded to this situation by trolling
desperately for future troops, thinking about a
draft, and, as we know from recent news reports,
starting to cut endless corners. Recruiters, for
instance, preying on the supposed naivete and
susceptibility to bullying tactics of adolescents,
have been discovered instructing teens in lying to
their parents, forging documents, and beating the
army's drug-test system. When all else failed,
jail time seems to have been a threat of choice.
Interestingly, some of those teens have fought
back, going public with a spate of scandalous
revelations that forced a one-day "values
stand-down" during which the military's recruiting
standards were to be reviewed.
As Nick
Turse shows below, the military has ramped up its
operations not only out there in the real world,
but in the ether of the Internet, where that
handsome, friendly civilian you might just happen
to run across may turn out to be none other than
your local recruitment officer on the prowl.
How the
Pentagon targets teens
By Nick
Turse
It's been a tough year for the US
military. But you wouldn't know it from the
Internet, now increasingly packed with slick,
non-military looking websites of every sort that
are lying in wait for curious teens (or their
exasperated parents) who might be surfing by. On
the ground, the military may be bogged down in a
seemingly interminable mission that was supposedly
"accomplished" back on May 1, 2003, but on the
Internet it's still a be-all-that-you-can-be world
of advanced career choices, peaceful pursuits and
risk-free excitement.
While there has been
a wave of news reports recently on the Pentagon's
problems putting together an all-volunteer
military, or even a functioning officer corps,
from an increasingly reluctant public, military
officials are ahead of the media in one regard.
They know where the future troops they need are.
Hint: they're not reading newspapers or watching
the nightly prime-time news, they are surfing the
Web, looking for entertainment, information, fun
and perhaps even a future.
In addition to
raising the maximum enlistment age, no longer
dismissing new recruits out of hand for "drug
abuse, alcohol, poor fitness and pregnancy",
allowing those with criminal records in, and
employing such measures as hefty US$20,000 sign-up
bonuses (with talk of proposed future bonuses of
up to $40,000, along with $50,000 worth of
"mortgage assistance") to coerce the cash-strapped
to enlist in the all-volunteer military, one of
the military's favorite methods of bolstering the
rolls is targeting the young - specifically teens
- to fill the ranks.
What the military
truly values is green teens. Not surprisingly, the
Pentagon pays companies like Teenage Research
Unlimited (TRU), which claims it offers its
"clients virtually unlimited methods for
researching teens" to get inside kids' heads. It
was also recently revealed that the Department of
Defense, with the aid of a private marketing firm,
BeNow, had created a database of 12 million
youngsters, some only 16 years of age, as part of
a program to identify potential recruits. Armed
with "names, birth dates, addresses, Social
Security numbers, individuals' email addresses,
ethnicity, telephone numbers, students'
grade-point averages, field of academic study and
other data", the Pentagon now has far better ways
and means of accurately targeting teens.
Pentagon on the prowl
BeNow and
TRU, however, are just two of a number of private
contractors working through JAMRS - the Pentagon's
"program for joint marketing communications and
market research and studies" - to fill the ranks
of our increasingly-less-eager-to-volunteer
military. JAMRS claims that it's only developing
"public programs [to] help broaden people's
understanding of military service as a career
option".
However, it also hires firms to
engage in all sorts of not-for-public-consumption
studies that are meant to "help bolster the
effectiveness of all the services' recruiting and
retention efforts". Put another way, behind the
scenes the military is in a frantic search for
weak points in the public's growing resistance to
joining the armed services. Some of this is
impossible to learn about because access to the
studies via the JAMRS web portal is restricted.
Should you visit and inquire about examining their
research, you are told in no uncertain terms that
"access is currently limited to certain types of
users" - none of which is you.
What we do
know, however, is that JAMRS is currently focusing
on the following areas of interest in an attempt
to bolster the all-volunteer military:
Hispanic barriers to enlistment.
A project to "identify the factors contributing to
under-representation of Hispanic youth among
military accessions" and "inform future strategies
for increasing Hispanic representation among the
branches of the military".
College drop outs/stop outs
study. A project "aimed to gain a better
understanding of what drives college students to
... drop out and determine how the services can
capitalize on this group of individuals (ages
18-24)".
Mothers' attitude study. "This
study gauges the target audience's (270 mothers of
10th and 11th-grade youth) attitudes toward the
military and enlistment."
During the
Vietnam War, Hispanics took disproportionate
numbers of casualties and similar disparities have
been reported in Iraq. JAMRS, apparently, is
looking to make certain that this military
tradition is maintained. Additionally, eyebrows
ought to be raised over a Pentagon that is looking
at ways to influence the mothers of teens to send
their sons and daughters off to war and at a
military eager to study what it takes to get kids
to "drop out" of school and how the military might
then scoop them up.
Perhaps the most
intriguing line of research, however, is the
"Moral Waiver Study" whose seemingly benign goal
is "to better define relationships between
pre-service behaviors and subsequent service
success". What the JAMRS informational page
doesn't make clear, but what might be better
explained in the password-protected section of the
site, is that a "moral character waiver" is the
means by which potential recruits with criminal
records are allowed to enlist in the US military.
Future shock
Another of JAMRS'
partners is Mullen Advertising, which "works with
JAMRS on an array of marketing communications,
planning, and strategic initiatives. This work
includes public-facing, influencer-focused joint
offline and online advertising campaigns". One
Mullen effort is the very unmilitary-sounding
MyFuture.com. It's a slick website with
information on such topics as living on your own,
writing a cover letter, or finding a job and
includes tips on dressing for success. ("Take
extra time to look great.")
Without the
usual tell-tale ".mil" domain name, MyFuture
offers what seems like civilian career advice
(albeit with some military images sprinkled
throughout). You can, for instance, take its "work
interest quiz" to discover if you should "go to
college or look for a job". However, the more you
explore, the more you see that the site is really
about steering youngsters towards the armed
forces.
For example, when you take that
quiz, you are prompted to ask your school guidance
counselor "about taking the ASVAB Career
Exploration Program if you'd like to know more
about your aptitudes, values, and interests..."
Not mentioned is that the ASVAB is actually the
Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery - a
test developed during the Vietnam War as "the
admissions and placement test for the US
military".
When I took the quiz, I was
told: "Based on your responses to the activities
listed, here are the work styles that may be
appropriate for you: investigative [and]
artistic." To follow up on my investigative
aptitude, MyFuture.com offered eight civilian
career suggestions, ranging from veterinarian to
meteorologist. It also recommended eight military
counterparts, including law enforcement and
security specialist. For my artistic aptitude,
MyFuture suggested that I "may like activities
that: 'Allow [me] to be creative [and] let [me]
work according to [my] own rules'." Apparently,
there are eight military jobs that will allow me
to stretch my imagination and do just what I want,
artistically speaking. Who knew, for example, that
the perfect move for an artistic, freethinker
would be joining an organization based on
authority and conformity - and then becoming a
"food service specialist"?
MyFuture.com
claims that its "website is provided as a public
service", while the JAMRS site refers to it as a
"public site for potential military candidates to
discover more about career opportunities
appropriate for their interests". Of course, it's
really an effort to recruit kids.
Tomorrow's military, today?
Another Mullen Advertising-created site is
aimed at a different population. Like MyFuture,
Today'sMilitary.com is a polished-looking site
that lacks a ".mil" in its web address, but
instead of targeting teens, the website announces
that it "seeks to educate parents and other adults
about the opportunities and benefits available to
young people in the military today". In
JAMRS-speak, that means it's a "public site
targeted at influencers".
Today'sMilitary.com is filled with
information on financial incentives available to
those who join the military and web pages devoted
to "what it's like" to be in the armed forces and
how the military can "turn young diamonds in the
rough into the finest force on the face of the
earth". We learn that army basic training is
"[m]ore than just pushups and mess halls". In
fact, quite the opposite of a torture test, it's
actually a "nine-week-long journey of
self-discovery".
The Marines' boot camp
comes across as an even more routine, though less
introspective, affair with nary a mention of its
rigors aside from "a final endurance test of
teamwork". Scanning through the pages, we even
learn that life in the military is not just
"exciting, challenging and hugely rewarding", but
that in their off-time, military folk "go for
walks ... and they even shop for antiques" (which
may account for some of the antiquities that seem
to go missing from Iraq).
Today'sMilitary
even takes the time to dispel "myths" like:
"People in the military are not compensated as
well as private sector workers." According to
Today'sMilitary they are - just don't tell it to
the Marines, who recently roughed up their
highly-paid mercenary counterparts in Iraq. "One
Marine gets me on the ground and puts his knee in
my back. Then I hear another Marine say, 'How does
it feel to make that contractor money now'?" So
reported a former Marine now working in the war
zone as a "private security contractor".
Mercenaries in Iraq generally rake in $100,000 to
$200,000 per year. Earlier this year, under
pressure from Congress, the Pentagon announced
that it, too, would start paying out this type of
cash. One caveat - you've got to be dead.
Such unpleasantries as death and combat go
largely unmentioned on Today'sMilitary.com (or on
any of the other sites mentioned in this article).
In fact, the only such allusion is on a web page
that coaches parents on ways to push their
children to consider the military. It instructs
parents to "encourage them with subtle hints" to
foster conversation on the subject and offers
talking points to refute the possible trepidations
of your own little potential enlistee about the
armed forces. Among the "tough questions" a child
might raise is a simple fact, driven home nightly
on the news - "It's dangerous." Today'sMilitary
offers the following answer:
There's no doubt that a military
career isn't for everyone. But you and your
young person may be surprised to learn that over
80% of military jobs are in non-combat
operations ... A military career is often what
you make of it. Tell that to
non-combat troops like Jessica Lynch, the late
Corporal Holly Charette and her fellow 14
casualties from a recent suicide car-bomb attack
on a Marine Corps Civil Affairs team in Fallujah,
or the large number of other troops in support
roles who have found themselves directly in harm's
way. As a Voice of America article recently put
it, "Increasingly, there is a fine line between
combat and non-combat jobs, especially in a place
like Iraq, where there is no front line, and any
unit can find itself in a firefight at any
moment."
Assault and (aptitude) battery
Major General Michael Rochelle, head of
the Army Recruiting Command, recently stated,
"Having access to 17 to 24-year-olds is very key
to us. We would hope that every high school
administrator would provide those lists [of
student phone numbers and addresses] to us.
They're terribly important for what we're trying
to do." In the wake of the revelation of the
Pentagon's massive new database of America's
youth, chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita
claimed, "We are trying to use appropriate methods
to make ourselves competitive in the marketplace
for these kids who have a lot of choices." But as
Nation magazine editor Katrina van den Heuvel
recently wrote in her Editor's Cut blog, it isn't
just choices keeping the kids away:
The debacle in Iraq has made
recruiting an impossibly difficult job and
recruiters are sinking to new lows in the face
of growing pressure to fulfill monthly quotas as
well as fierce opposition from parents who don't
support the president's botched Iraq war
mission. One of the military's new
lows brings us back to the subject of ASVAB and
the methods of the Vietnam era. Faced then with
the need for expendable troops, secretary of
defense Robert McNamara instituted an unholy
coupling of the war on poverty and the war in
Vietnam - Project 100,000. Project 100,000 called
for the military, each year, to admit into service
100,000 men who had failed its qualifying exam.
The program claimed that it would outfit those who
failed to meet mental standards, men McNamara
called the "subterranean poor", with an education
and training that would be useful on their return
to civilian life. Instead of acquiring skills
useful for the civilian job market, however,
"McNamara's moron corps" as they came to be known
within the military were trained for combat at
markedly elevated levels, were disproportionately
sent to Vietnam, and had double the death rate of
American forces as a whole.
Today, a
desperate Pentagon seems to be following a
strikingly similar path. As Eric Schmitt of the
New York Times has written, the army is
increasingly turning to high-school dropouts, has
already almost doubled last year's number of
recruits scoring in the lowest level on the ASVAB
and is "accepting hundreds of recruits in recent
months who would have been rejected a year ago".
Meanwhile, those who happen on the Pentagon's
ASVAB website will find another slick design, with
few military trappings, no ".mil" web address and
lots of objective career counseling. You have to
troll around the site to discover in the fine
print that it's offered as a "public service by
the US Department of Defense, Defense Manpower
Data Center".
Like Today'sMilitary.com,
the ASVAB site makes a pitch to parents, exhorting
them to "encourage your teen to take the ASVAB".
It also tries to influence teachers to "integrate
the ASVAB program Into the classroom", even
recommending that portions be "assigned as
homework" to students.
Strapped for
bodies, the Pentagon is putting on a full court
press to fill the ranks. Its new package of
promotion includes: big signing bonuses and
drastically lowered standards; NASCAR,
professional bull-riding, and arena football
sponsorships; video games that double as
recruiting tools; TV commercials that drip with
seductive scenes of military glory or feature The
Apprentice host Donald Trump; disingenuous career
counseling websites; and an integrated "joint
marketing communications and market research and
studies" program actively engaged in measures to
target Hispanics, "drop outs" and those with
criminal records for military service. The
Department of Defense, in short, is pulling out
all the stops, sparing no expense, and spending at
least $16,000 in promotional costs alone for each
single soldier signed up.
Obviously, the
Pentagon wants recruits badly and cash-strapped
teens represent one of the best chances to fill
uniforms. The military clearly thinks that
America's youth couldn't really pass your basic
intelligence test. Its websites downplay danger
and its slick TV commercials show bloodless scenes
of adventure and heroism that don't square with
images (and news) now coming home from Iraq to
anybody's neighborhood. From hiccuping recruitment
rates, it's clear, however, that America's teens
already know these ads and websites are missing a
few critical elements - scenes of American troops
acting as foreign occupiers, killing civilians,
torturing detainees, fanning the flames of
discontent and failing to deliver basic safety or
security not just for Iraqis but for their own
troops.
Nick Turse works in the
Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University.
He writes for the Los Angeles Times, the Village
Voice and regularly for Tomdispatch on the
military-corporate complex and the homeland
security state.
(Copyright 2005 Nick
Turse)
(Used by permission from Tomdispatch)
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