Peace Activists Organize to Counter-Recruit

Networks of anti-war activists, known as counter-recruiters, are forming to persuade young people not to enlist in the military. The military is having a harder time recruiting since the Iraq war, and counter-recruiters fear young people are enlisting out of desperation, encouraged by promises the military cannot keep. According to Rick Hampton of USA TODAY, March 7, 2005, only ten percent of the new recruits needed come looking for the military. The other 90% have to be sought out.

In 2003 and 2004, counter-recruiters formed a national network at meetings in Philadelphia, Hampton reports. The American Friends Service Committee put together a brochure called Do You Know Enough to Enlist? which looks just like a military recruitment brochure. A 1986 federal appeals court decision allows opponents of the recruiters equal access to students. This has allowed the teacher’s union to get counter-recruiters into Los Angeles schools regularly visited by military recruiters. They are able to "make public address announcements, distribute literature, show documentaries and give classroom presentations." A San Francisco group uses the same decision to dress up like grandmothers to visit San Francisco schools in a counter-recruitment effort. They call themselves the "Raging Grannies." In some other areas of the country, counter-recruiters have to work outside the school property because they are considered unpatriotic, and there is too much hostility toward them inside the schools alongside the recruiters.

Counter-recruiters claim that they do not tell the young people not to join. They simply try to show them other options for fulfilling their ambitions in life. They try to explain that the military may not be able to keep promises they make about educational and career opportunities and that there may be a better way for the students to pursue their aspirations. They try to explain the realities of combat and the horrible things a recruit might see, which could change him or her forever. If the recruit has signed some form of commitment, such as the Marines’ Delayed Entry Program, they will help a reticent student get out of it. Sometimes, the Marines aren’t completely honest that the student can still change his mind.