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Tiempos difíciles para el reclutamiento militar

Pat Elder

Pat Elder

Cómo COVID-19 está afectando el Programa de Entrada Retrasada y amenazando la salud de los reclutas.

Por Pat Elder / Red nacional de oposición a la militarización de la juventud, NNOMY - 8 de junio de 2020
- Read the English Version

COVID-19 ha impactado profundamente la forma en que los militares encuentran nuevos soldados. El comando de reclutamiento fue atrapado sin preparación para enfrentar la pandemia y se enfrenta a una nueva realidad desafiante.

El reclutamiento militar es una búsqueda psicológica intensa que tradicionalmente se ha basado en la capacidad de los reclutadores para desarrollar relaciones cercanas con los adolescentes. Estas relaciones se cultivaron en las escuelas secundarias de la nación, donde los reclutadores tenían acceso a los niños. Los reclutadores sirvieron como entrenadores y tutores. Trajeron donas a la facultad. Almorzaron con perspectivas, a veces cien veces en un solo año escolar. Los reclutadores militares jugaron baloncesto uno a uno después de la escuela con reclutas potenciales y se hicieron mejores amigos con algunos niños. Tan amigable, cientos de reclutadores masculinos han sido implicados en relaciones sexuales inapropiadas con niñas menores de edad.

Las escuelas secundarias eran el centro del universo de reclutamiento, pero eso terminó abruptamente en marzo cuando se rompió la tubería de alistamiento. Los reclutadores alistaron a personas de la tercera edad y los colocaron en el Programa de Ingreso Retrasado (DEP) en el cual el ingreso de un estudiante al servicio activo se pospone por hasta 365 días. (El Ejército ahora lo llama el Programa del Futuro Soldado). El objetivo del programa DEP es mantener la motivación del futuro soldado mientras

Tough Times for Military Recruiting

Pat Elder

How COVID-19 is impacting the Delayed Entry Program and threatening the health of recruits.

By Pat Elder / National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, NNOMY - June 8, 2020
- Read the Spanish Version

COVID-19 has profoundly impacted the way the military finds new soldiers. The recruiting command was caught unprepared to face the pandemic and is facing a challenging new reality.

Military recruiting is an intense, psychological pursuit that has traditionally relied on the ability of recruiters to develop close relationships with teenage prospects. These relationships were cultivated in the nation’s high schools where recruiters enjoyed access to children. Recruiters served as coaches and tutors. They brought donuts to the faculty. They ate lunch with prospects, sometimes a hundred times in a single school year. Military recruiters played one-on-one basketball after school with potential recruits and became best of friends with some kids. So friendly, hundreds of male recruiters have been implicated in inappropriate sexual relationships with underaged girls.

High schools were the center of the recruiting universe, but that ended abruptly in March when the enlistment pipeline was ruptured. Recruiters enlisted seniors and placed them into the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) in which a student’s entry into active duty is postponed for up to 365 days. (The Army now calls it the Future Soldier Program.) The thrust of the DEP program is to maintain future soldier motivation while minimizing attrition. When DEP members report to basic training, they are accessed (enlisted) into active duty.

Why We Still Need a Movement to Keep Youth From Joining the Military

Elizabeth King

Elizabeth King /Article Originally appeared in In These Times web edition in June 2019 -

A scrappy counter-recruitment movement is trying to starve the military of labor.

Out of the spotlight, dedicated counter-recruiters around the country are steadfast in their organizing to cut off the human supply chain to the U.S. military.

Eighteen is the youngest age at which someone can join the U.S. military without their parents’ permission, yet the military markets itself to—which is to say recruits—children at much younger ages. This is in part accomplished by military recruiters who visit high schools around the country, recruiting children during career fairs and often setting up recruitment tables in cafeterias and hallways. As a result, most students in the U.S. will meet a military recruiter for the first time at just 17 years old, and children are getting exposed to military propaganda younger and younger.

The recruitment of young people to the military is as old as the military itself, and has become more and more normalized along with the general militarization of schools. According to the Urban Institute, more than two-thirds of public high school students attend schools where there are “school resource officers,” a name for school-based police. This police presences comes on top of the role of military recruiters on campuses, or at college and career fairs.