Why fight for empire?

In February, both the Army Reserve and the Marine Corps missed their recruiting goals for a second consecutive month. The Army Reserve fell 1,936 recruits short of its active-duty personnel goal--the first time in five years that this has happened--and 33 short of reserves. The Marine Corps was short 192 recruits in February and 84 in January-- marking the first time in 10 years that it has had trouble reaching its goals.

In response, the U.S. military is stepping up its efforts to entrap youth in the military machine. Democracy Now! reported on March 3 that the military is adapting its marketing pitches to recruit more African-Americans and Latin@s.

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Ron Jacobs reported in the March 5/6 Counterpunch that students at the Uni versity of Vermont in Burlington recently received emails from a recruiter in the area with the heading "Army pays off student loans." And both the Army and the Marines are increasing the number of recruiters--the Marines by 10 percent, the Army by 20 percent--and offering larger enlistment and reenlistment bonuses to recruits and soldiers.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army is pushing its video game as a recruiting tool. The gaming website XGP Gaming describes it: "Built in partnership with the U.S. Army ... 'America's Army: Rise of a Soldier' offers the most true-to-life Army experience, allowing you to create a soldier and take him through the thrills and adventure of an army career."

This summer the game, which has been available via the Internet, will be sold for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 gaming consoles.

Recruiters are trained in the mentality that allows sexual abuse to be committed with impunity within the military, and as such present a serious threat to the youth they are exposed to.

The Indianapolis Star of March 1 reported on the case of a 36-year-old recruiter who had been arrested for sexual assault against six young women, most of them high school students. This is the latest of at least six reported cases of sexual assault by recruiters in the two years since the passing of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which allows military recruiters greater access to students' personal information. Charges against recruiters have been filed in Baltimore, California, Indianapolis and New York.

In the Indianapolis case, investigators have said that the recruiter, Indiana National Guard Sgt. Eric P. Vetesy, used official information to target young women who were particularly vulnerable to authority, due to their ages and backgrounds. Since Vetesy's arrest, he has been removed from a recruiting assignment, but was able to remain in the Indiana National Guard.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Law rence Di Rita blamed media coverage of the atrocities in Iraq for the decline in recruits. He evidently doesn't want youth or their parents to know how terrible this war is. "I mean, without question, when there's the kind of coverage that there has been about casualties--and we certainly mourn all the casualties, but they are covered--parents factor those kinds of things in to what they want their children doing," he said.

Resistance to military recruiters has picked up in campuses and communities throughout the United States. Protests have been held in Atlanta, Berkeley, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Hackensack, N.J., Los Angeles, Madison, Wis., New Haven, Conn., New York, Philadelphia, Seattle and Temescal Canyon, Calif., to name a few. Several of these protests have successfully kicked recruiters off campus, and several have resulted in the arrest of protesters.

On March 8, the San Francisco Board of Education will consider a motion to cut all its ties with the military, including "ending military recruitment on campuses; ending the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC); and guaranteeing that all students and parents are informed of their right to deny military recruiters access to their names, addresses and telephone numbers."

In the face of a brutal occupation that Washington isn't planning to end anytime soon, and the very real possibility of a draft--the Selective Service is set to report to the White House on March 31 that things are in order to implement the draft within 75 days--this resistance is only bound to grow.

Youth from across the country will be in the streets on March 19, the second anni versary of the war, to fight for their lives.