Should Military Recruiters Be Allowed in High Schools?

YES
The United States has had an all-volunteer military since the draft was abolished in 1973. That means the
military depends entirely on recruiters to attract an educated, highly sophisticated, and well-trained force
to defend our nation and win our wars.
Visits to high schools and access to school-directory information are critical to our recruiters'
effortsparticularly because our standards require new soldiers to have a high school diploma or better.
The presence of military recruiters in high schools does not force students to join the military; it simply
alerts them to an option.
We want to make sure every high school student is aware of the career and training opportunities the
military has to offereverything from being in the infantry to learning how to work high-tech equipment
or be a medical technician.
Using student lists, the local recruiter can contact students, discuss their goals, and encourage them to stay
in school and graduate. Recruiters can then follow up with those students interested in pursuing the
military as a career option.
Recruiters also visit schools to inform educators about the services the military has to offer to all students,
even those not interested in the military. We have free programs to improve test-taking skills and to help
students find careers that suit their talents.
Our recruiters need the same access to students as employers and colleges, so that both students and
educators are informed that military service is a viable career option.
S. Douglas Smith, Spokesman, U.S. Army Recruiting Command
NO
Right now, recruiters desperate for warm bodies to be shipped to Iraq are prowling selected high schools
and neighborhoods across the country with sales pitches that touch on everything but the possibility of
being maimed or killed in combat.
The teenagers who are the prime targets for recruitment are being told just about anything to ward off
whatever misgivings they may have. Need money for college? No problem. You want to go to a nice
place? Certainly. Maybe even Hawaii.
A young man who recently registered, as required, with the Selective Service System received an upbeat
brochure in the mail touting the military's 30 days of annual "paid vacation," its free medical and dental
care, its "competitive retirement" benefits, and its "home-loan program."
There was no mention of combat, or what it's like to walk the corridors and the grounds of the Walter
Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where you'll see a tragic, unending parade of young men and
women struggling to move about despite their paralysis, or with one, two, or three limbs missing.
Because the stakes are so high we should be straight with potential recruits. The fundamental task of the
military is to fight and kill the enemies of the United States, and fighting and killing is a grotesquely
brutal experience.
Military recruiters do not belong in the halls of our public schools, where they are preying on youngsters
who are especially vulnerable and impressionable.
Bob Herbert, New York Times columnist

Is Torture Ever Justified?

YES
Imagine this scenario: A terrorist has planted a nuclear bomb in New York City. It will go off in one hour.
A million people will die. You capture the terrorist. He knows where it is. He's not talking. If you have
the slightest belief that hanging this man by his thumbs, or some other method of torture, will get you the
information to save a million people, are you justified in doing so? Not only is it permissible; it is a moral
duty.
However rare the cases, there are circumstances in which torture would be required to acquire life-saving
information. And once you've established the principle, the argument is not whether torture is ever
permissible, but whenin other words, how big, how imminent, how preventable does the threat have to
be to justify it?
In 1994, 19-year-old Israeli Corporal Nahshon Waxman was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. The
Israelis captured the driver of the car used in the kidnapping and tortured him in order to find where
Waxman was being held.
Faced with a similar choice, an American President would have a similar obligation. To do otherwiseto
give up the chance to find your soldier lest you sully yourself by authorizing torture of the person who
possesses potentially lifesaving informationis a deeply immoral betrayal of a soldier.
There is much to admire in those who refuse on principle ever to take up arms (or, in this case, torture)
under any conditions. One should be grateful for the saintly among us. And one should be vigilant that
they not get to make the decisions upon which the lives of others depend.
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post columnist
NO
To fight terrorism we need intelligence. But the intelligence we collect must be reliable and acquired
humanely, under clear standards understood by all. Using torture, even for the best of reasons, is wrong
and should not be legal. To do differently not only offends our values as Americans but undermines our
war effort, because abuse of prisoners harmsnot helpsus in the war on terror.
First, subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence, because under torture a detainee will tell the
interrogator anything to make the pain stop. Second, mistreatment of our prisoners endangers U.S. troops
who might be captured by the enemy, if not in this war, then in the next.
Third, prisoner abuses exact a terrible toll in the war of ideas, because inevitably these abuses become
public. When they do, the actions of a few darken our reputation in the eyes of millions. American values
should win any war of ideas, and we can't let prisoner abuse tarnish our image.
We are Americans, and we hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment of peopleno matter how
evil they may be. America stands for a moral mission, one of freedom and democracy and human rights at
home and abroad. We are better than these terrorists, and we will win. The enemy we fight has no respect
for human life or human rights. They don't deserve our sympathy.
But this isn't about who they are; it's about who we are. These are the values that distinguish us from our
enemies, and we can never, never allow our enemies to take those values away.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona