Interesting conversation taking place here... thanks to everyone who has participated.

I wanted to chime in about the concept that military recruiters are not salesmen. However nice it sounds, I and most of my friends in school have experienced this to be a false statement.

Why are military recruiters salesmen?

* Salesmen have quotas to fill.

* Salesmen are under a lot of pressure and can frequently break the rules in order to meet these quotas.

* Salesmen do not have national stand-downs when incidents of fraud are not a nation-wide problem.

* Salesmen do not sit in their offices, waiting for 'patriotic' young men and women to stroll by - they go out to shopping malls, schools, and popular youth hangouts.

* Salesmen have over a 4 billion dollar budget for slick brochures, Humvees, T-shirts, professionally produced TV ads, and a variety of fancy items.

* Salesmen need to violate millions of youth's privacy by getting their contact information WITHOUT their consent.

* Salesmen use their powerful contacts to perpetuate conditions in communities where people have no option but to buy their product.

* Salesmen sometimes continue to call you, even when you've asked them to stop.

* Salesmen don't tell you the important details about contracts that you sign.

* Salesmen like to tell you everything about a product, EXCEPT the negatives (there's lots of money for college [except most don't get it], job training [most doesn't lead to a future career], travelling [iraq?], but war... don't worry about it [death? mutilation? lifetime psychological trauma?])

* And the best: Salesmen will always tell you that they aren't salesmen - they're just your friends. Or they're just doing their service. But that's their greatest trick.

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While both the armed forces and some big universities have slick brochures, joining the military is NOT the same thing as going to college. It's illogical to make that correlation. Why?

* When you join the military, you join for 8 years and it's extremely difficult to get out. When you go to college, it's generally for 4 years and you can leave at any moment.

* Colleges teach you to think for yourself and be vocal about your beliefs. The military teaches you to take orders and shut up.

* Colleges pride themselves of being safe spaces for youth to learn. The military is one of the most dangerous places you can be, especially if you're a woman [90% report harassment, 1/3 get raped], a person of color [vast majority report racially offensive behavior], or queer [constant harassment and will be removed if open about your sexuality]. Not to mention death, mutilation, post tramautic stress disorder, depleted uranium, etc.

* Colleges teach you to learn about different histories, learn about people, and understand different cultures. The military trains you to ignore real history, objectify and dehumanize people, and obliterate different cultures.

* Public colleges are struggling to provide quality education in the face of huge budget cuts. Money has been effectively taken from our schools and given to the military for the production of guns, tanks, and war. I'd like to see our educational system get the kind of budget priority that the military gets.

* One of the big reasons that colleges have to advertise is to let youth know that they have other options BESIDES the military.

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It is true that there are some military recruiters who are "better" than others - in the sense that they just omit important information rather than outright lie, but that doesn't mean that they are "good".

As much as military recruiters, even ones opposed to the war in Iraq, want to state that they are the 'good type', they are still a critical part of the system that is harming this nation and the world at large.

If you are opposed to the war in Iraq, how can you justify recruiting people for it? Yeah, you need to feed your families, but there are other options. And if there aren't - it should be the government's responsibility to make sure you have a job - or at least to make sure you have that food.

There is no justification for the complicit perpetuation of injustice. Contributing towards oppression is not 'just a job.'