Is Enlisting in the Military Right For You?

Here’s a one-minute self-assessment on your suitability for a military career:

Would you enjoy risking your life for what U.S. military commanders often describe as counter-productive missions or pointless “muddling along“?

Do you appreciate being yelled at and senselessly abused?

While your friends might be getting regular jobs and enjoying the good life, maybe getting married and having kiddies, you’ll be living in a barracks with sergeants yelling at you, busting your gut in strenuous training. Sound good?

How do you feel about dramatically increased risk of sexual assault?

How do you feel about dramatically increased risk of suicide?

Soldiers must expect to carry 120 pounds for long distances and up hills, so back injuries are plentiful, along with the life-limiting dangers of combat training, inlcuding from the testing of weaponry and chemicals. Sound appealing?

Does the idea of physical injury or death in some country far away where the citizens who are unhappy with your presence shoot at you or blow off your legs with a roadside bomb encourage you to enlist?

Do you long for traumatic brain injury or PTSD or moral guilt, or all three?

Expect to see the world? You’re more likely to see a tent on the dirt in some place too dangerous to explore because the people do not want you there.

How will you feel if you start out believing you’re serving some noble cause and realize half-way through that you’re just making a few greedy people rich?

We hope that this short self-assessment has been helpful to you in making an important life choice.

Think about Section 9-b of the Enlistment/Reenlistment Contract before you sign it:
“Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/reenlistment document.”

In other words, it’s a one-way contract. They can change it. You cannot.

 

PDF. Billboard Campaign.

THINK BEFORE YOU SIGN!

Think hard before you enlist in any military for any country.

Consider the myths that we’re taught about war and peace, and how false they are.

Consider the many reasons why we must eliminate war in order to survive.

Read this: I Never Expected To Become A Conscientious Objector

Consider alternative and more effective ways of creating safety.

A Global Security System: An Alternative to War (AGSS) relies on three broad strategies for humanity to end war: 1) demilitarizing security, 2) managing conflicts without violence, and 3) creating a culture of peace. These are the interrelated components of our system: the frameworks, processes, tools and institutions necessary for dismantling the war machine and replacing it with a peace system that will provide a more assured common security.  More info.

What the U.S. Army claims doesn’t match reality:

The Army says these things are false, but they are facts.

Post 9-11 Veterans….
…than average civilians of a similar age

…are more likely to suffer from mental health issues – FALSE
FACT: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been identified in 12% to 20% of noninjured veterans and in 32% of combat casualties. Eight percent of the US general population experience PTSD symptoms

… commit suicide at higher rates – FALSE
FACT: A recent analysis found a suicide rate among veterans of about 30 per 100,000 population per year, compared with the civilian rate of 14 per 100,000.

…have higher rates of substance abuse – FALSE
FACT: Individuals deployed to recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown significantly higher rates of SUD diagnoses than civilian populations; in 2013, 44 percent of those returning from deployment had challenges with the transition, including the onset of problematic substance use behavior

…are more likely to be unemployed – FALSE
FACT: While the national unemployment rate is 5 percent, the unemployment rate for Gulf War-era II veterans who reported serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both, had an unemployment rate of 8.4 percent— 68 percent higher than the national rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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