The Military's New #1 Threat

Nowadays most parents are outraged when they learn that their graduating high school senior is thinking about enlisting in the military. What parents once viewed as a grand step in their child’s life has now become a nightmare.

The No Child Left Behind Act, which forces schools to provide the military with student information, requests that schools notify parents and students of the opt-out option. But many schools are doing a poor job in giving out this information and many parents as well as students are left confused or uninformed. In an article by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos titled, "Heavy Military Recruitment at High Schools Irks Some Parents", school officials said they believed the reason for parents and students confusion is due to the fact that “Every school has adopted different notification policies, some being more effective than others,”.

All the confusion and violations of students’ privacy has made students and parents alike extremely angry and upset. Now more than ever parents are opposing the idea of seeing their sons and daughters march off into the military. An article titled “Growing Problem for Military Recruiters: Parents” by Damien Cave stated “The Pentagon - faced with using only volunteers during a sustained conflict, an effort rarely tried in American history - is especially vexed by a generation of more activist parents who have no qualms about projecting their own views onto their children.”

With the desperately increasing military advertisements and low number of new recruits, parents fear the return of a military draft. "With the draft, there were limited opportunities for avoiding the military, and parents were trapped, reduced to draft counseling or taking their children to Canada," said Lawrence S. Wittner, a military historian, "But with the volunteer armed force, what one gets is more vigorous recruitment and more opportunities to resist." Many have decided to form independent organizations and groups in order to raise awareness and gain supporters. Parents Against a Draft is one of the many organizations formed in response to the fear of a military draft.

With the ongoing pointless war in Iraq, many informed parents are choosing to opt-out of allowing military access to their sons and daughters personal information and continue to be a powerful threat to the military.

Sources:

Info

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,160406,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/nyregion/03recruit.html

http://parentsagainstadraft.org/

Pics

http://louisville.edu/student/localresources/images/Parents-1.jpg

http://murray.senate.gov/images/news/030108-ed-full.jpg

http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/04.10.20.KerryDraft-X.gif