roachboy

the clauses in the written contract that seaver bit above are the conditions of possibility for recruiters saying whatever they think will work to get someone to sign. it is the explicit erasure of any verbal agreements.

given that these erasure clauses are in the contract that you would sign in order to hand control over your life away for x years in exchange for whatever motivates you in terms of rewards/benefits, the question of recruiter tactics becomes a purely ethical matter.

to demonstrate systematic ethical violations, you would have to assemble the case that such violations were in fact systematic. which would mean that you or your lawyer would have to (a) get access to this information and (b) get it admitted as evidence. the information exists---but it is mostly from organizations like the american friends service committee--as part of a larger analysis of contemporary recruitment patterns that argues they are an element in the regulation of social reproduction incoherences. so there is data, but it is situated in particular ways, and is organized on the basis of particular political assumptions. which is fine. the real problem is that i assume this kind would be tried in a military court. i wonder what chance that would leave him in terms of getting this kind of information admitted. i would assume that these chances tend toward zero, but that's just an assumption.

i dont see the courage that folk above have claimed it requires for a kid who signed on for military service, whose understanding of the contract that he signed has NOT been demonstrated, who arrives in iraq and realizes that what the americans are doing there has nothing to do with the illusions he had been under, and so he decides to object first then desert--i dont see the courage that folk would claim is required to swallow your ethical objections and carry on. i would see in this swallowing of your ethical objections as FUNDAMENTAL capitulation. the courage would come in refusing to continue and accepting the consequences. the courage would come in refusing to continue and in trying to link this refusal to systematic problems--like patterns of recruiters lying to recruits---like the justifications of american policy in iraq at all.

if you are within a particular rationality and you decide that rationality is pathological, there is no courage whatsoever in deciding "o well, i am fucked so i might as well carry on. allow me to heroically dismiss my ethics. allow me to continue doing as i am told." i dont see anything remotely like courage in that IF you come to the conclusion that the rationality is pathological. not all do. not all would.

so this isn't to say "therefore anything" with reference to military service as a whole. this isn't about military service as a whole: this is about moral objections to a conflict and what is required to act on those objections.
it is obvious that not everyone has such objections--but that not everyone has these objections means NOTHING about the objections themselves---it only means that they are not universally shared--which makes sense, given that the commonality is military service and that within that, the neutralizing of ethical objections to "the mission" is part of what enables the military to operate. so there are no general statements about the character of those who serve without ethical objections to what they are doing that can be made here.

there may be a case concerning recruitment tactics, but that is different and like i said would require particular information and so forth.

folk seem to be getting in a twist above because they conflate situations like that outlined in the op with general criticisms of the military.
seems kinda paranoid to me.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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