By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Recruiters promise college tuition, success and adventure. They say you'll never see combat and can choose any job you want. But these promises evaporate as soon as a young recruit signs her contract. Weill-Greenberg writes about her own experience with recruiters as an undercover journalist, and interviews military parents and students. Through testimony and statistics she shows that if a recruiter's pitch sounds too good to be true that's because it is.
"'You could get shot -- God forbid -- in front of your apartment. More people were killed in New York last week than Iraq,' the Sergeant told me repeating one of the recruiters' favorite mantras.
Recruiters will do or say just about anything to convince young people that the Army is not about war. No, the military isn't all guns and tears and pain. It's hip, cool, rebellious even. (My recruiter told me to 'cut the umbilical cord' when I said I didn't think my mom would approve.)"Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg is a journalist based in Jersey City, New Jersey. She has written for the Washington Blade, In These Times, Common Dreams and The Brooklyn Rail. Elizabeth has worked as a community organizer on many criminal justice issues, like the death penalty, the prison-industrial complex and the case of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.