To Youth in High School Now:
What are you going to stand for? As school starts back up, look around at the world that our generation is going to inherit.
Over 1 million Iraqis are dead in the war, and 5 million have been forced to leave their homes. Despite President Obama’s promise to remove US troops, he’s calling them advisors while leaving them in Iraq. The war in Afghanistan, which we’re told is the “good war” where the “real” terrorists are, is going into its ninth year. It’s based on lies, just like the war in Iraq. What the United States is doing there is horrible and brutal, torturing people and bombing civilians while they sleep, just like the war in Iraq.
Is this OK because Obama — and not Bush — is in charge?
Obama sent 21,000 more troops to kill and die in Afghanistan, and plans to increase the size of the military by 92,000. Where are these soldiers going to come from? They are your classmates and friends, your brothers and sisters.
This is why the military recruiters are everywhere these days – at school in the cafeteria, on college campuses, at the mall, in the video games and the TV commercials… lying and trying to suck youth into fighting their wars. They roll up in their Hummers talking about strength and discipline, about how the military will give you a “life with a purpose”. But what kind of purpose?
You can kill and torture innocent people – and probably ruin your own life because of what you’ve seen and done – for an empire that causes misery for the planet, or… you can be about putting an end to all that and creating a better world.
Imagine if school administrations and teachers didn’t allow recruiters onto campus. Imagine if students looked at recruiters as the predators they are and no longer considered the Army a legitimate “career option.” We need a culture of defiance and resistance to military recruiters in high schools across the country.
Don’t be fooled! These wars are just as bad under President Obama as they were under George Bush. This culture of resistance needs to start October 6!
No matter where you are, you have a voice! Whether we resist military recruiters has everything to do with the future we’ll get.
On Tuesday, October 6 students can:
- Wear an orange bandanna or ribbon (the color against torture and war) to show there’s a movement
- Show a film of Iraq veterans telling about the war crimes the US military committed. Invite anti-war veterans to talk to your class or assembly. WeAreNotYourSoldiers.org
- Confront military recruiters at your school or in the mall, telling them why you refuse to sign up, so that other students hear your side.
- Protest at a military recruiting office and call the media to let them know why.
You are greatly misinformed about a great many things. The military has always served as a protector of what a great nation we are supposed to be. Protest war, of course, war is a terrible (sometimes) necessary act. But to condemn the military as you do is to condemn the people who fought and died to give you that freedom. We volunteer and we go where we ordered. If you truly believe in what you believe then protest those who send us where we go.