IVAW plans to kick off our Truth In Recruiting campaign with Sept. 17 national day of action!

[unhappycamper]

IVAW plans to kick off our Truth In Recruiting campaign with Sept. 17 national day of action!


This day of outreach will follow on the heels of General Patraeus’s report on the recent troop “surge” in Iraq and will mark the beginning of a truth-in-recruiting effort led by IVAW members and allies across the country. While top military brass and the war mongers in the White House continue to assure us that we just need to be patient, and that things in Iraq are improving, those of us who have risked our lives while deployed to that country know the true futility and brutality of the occupation. We believe that any man or woman considering joining the military has the right to know the realities of military service and the true extent of the sacrifice it entails.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to rage on with ever-increasing violence and destruction, the U.S. military is at its breaking point. Our troops are being deployed repeatedly in combat zones for longer and longer periods of time. Most troops in Iraq are there for at least their second tour, some are there for a third or fourth time. Thousands of soldiers have been involuntarily held beyond their "voluntary" service obligation by the stop-loss policy. Many more thousands have been recalled to active duty as part of the Individual Ready Reserve. Our veterans are returning with unprecedented levels of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and life-changing physical injuries. While the burden of this misbegotten, shameful war continues to fall on the same troops and military families, recruiters are finding it more and more difficult to find eager military recruits.

In order to meet their recruiting quotas, many recruiters use deceptive tactics that don’t tell the whole truth. As Adam Kokesh, former Marine Corps sergeant and Iraq vet, says, “For many of those who enter the military today, their enlistments are based on lies. There are those who join hoping to go to Iraq for a variety of personal reasons, not knowing the truth about the occupation. But there are many more that are promised by recruiters that they will never go to Iraq, that they will get plenty of money for college, that they will receive adequate health care, and that the military will honor the time limit of their contracts without using the stop-loss or involuntarily extending them.”

Every man and woman who decides to join the military deserves to know the truth about military service. If someone is willing to make the life-changing decision to serve in the military and potentially sacrifice their life, health, family, and sanity, they are owed the truth about what that sacrifice entails. Unfortunately, many new recruits are lied to and misled by recruiters who are under immense pressure to meet recruitment quotas. We owe it to our troops and our young people to let them know the truth so they can make an informed decision with all the information possible.