Nothing For The Best Years Of Your Life

In one of my classes, I have four veterans--that I know of.  That's a pretty fair number in a class of twenty-seven students.


Two of them were in the Navy, one in the Army and the other in the Marines.  One of the Navy vets is a woman.  


Somehow, in the class, the topic of enlisting came up.  My personal philosophy goes something like this:  I am against war in principle.  Outside of a direct attack from another country, I can see no reason to go to war.  (I also believe that if Country A cannot prove that Country B was responsible for the attack against it, those countries should not be at war.)  


That said, I am a realist.  Unless there is a major development in the consciousness of the human race, there will always be one country ready to attack another, and almost every country will have armed forces.  And, I would like to see people in those forces who will think before they attack.  


Also, there are some people who are seemingly born to be in the military.  That's where they belong.  And, as I tell my students, one's purpose in joining the military should be to be in the military.  If you join for something else--to get school paid for, to learn a trade or just about any other reason--you're not likely to get what you want.  All of the veterans in my class said as much; in fact, the Army veteran said that recruiters "will promise you anything to get you to sign on the dotted line."  He's not the first person I've heard saying that, and he probably won't be the last.


One of the best points, though, was made by the female veteran.  "They don't give you something for nothing," she warned the other students.  "If they pay for your education, the time they want you to spend in the military afterward more than pays them back,"  she explained.  But the worst part, she said, is that "If you're going to school while you're in the military, work comes first.  They don't care about your school; they'll make you skip classes for your job."  She wasn't talking only about combat situations, either:  She recalls that she and some of her mates had to skip classes, and fail courses, to help with a building project on a base in this country.


Plus, she said, they are less respectful of people's beliefs than most people realize. She cited her own experience as an example:  While in the Navy, she got pregnant.  When her commanding officer learned of it, he told her she "had" to get an abortion--or else.  No matter how much she explained to him--or anyone else--that abortion goes against her religious beliefs, no one would hear her, and her officer would only reiterate his demand. Finally, after she refused to have her abortion, she was discharged.


Still, plenty of young people--particularly in this climate of high unemployment and college costs--will join the Armed Forces in the belief that they will be "taken care of."  But the Army, or any other branch of the Armed Forces, does not give "free" health care, housing or food, any more than the government or any bank provides "free" loans for education 


Really, students' joining the Armed Forces in order to pay for college (or grad or trade school) is, in some ways, not so different from taking out six figures in loans.  In the latter, graduates become slaves to their loan payments; in the former, enlistees become, in effect, property of the branch of service in which they enlisted.  Either way, the student has mortgaged his or her future, and is going to pay back much, much more than he or she received in loans or as benefits from the military.


And, the 18- or 19-year-old who enlists or takes out loans has heard that "you don't get something or nothing," but has never really experienced it in his or her life.  So, just as these young people don't realize how much more, in time as well as in other ways, they will pay back for their loans than they took out on them, they also don't understand that the military and government collect "interest" on the benefits, including educational ones, from those whose schooling they pay for.  That "interest" includes the time they will have to serve, as well as what economists like to call the "opportunity costs." And those things don't even include what could happen to an enlistee if he or she is sent into battle!