Caldera on Army Recruiting

* Re “Army Has Plenty to Offer Youth of U.S.,” Commentary, June 4: Directly out of high school, my son, Larry, enlisted in the Army to serve a three-year commitment beginning in July 1993. His goal was to earn money for a college education. He separated from the Army in August 1996, having successfully completed his tour as an M1A1 Abrams tank crewman. He is now a civilian soldier in the California National Guard, serving as a tank crewman. This month he graduated from Riverside Community College with an associate degree in administration of justice. Next month he enters the Police Academy at RCC. All of his education, including the academy, is being funded in part by the G.I. Bill.

I have no doubt that in 28 weeks some police agency will employ one of America’s finest young men.

STEVE DONLIN

Corona

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If Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera is correct that “virtually every soldier is a student working on an undergraduate or graduate degree,” then why don’t we eliminate the expense of the middleman and offer universally free college and university education? Or are the armed forces offering degrees in the several arts of killing, as they do at the School of the Americas?

THEODORE W. HOOKER

La Puente

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Caldera calls military service “the best training and education experience in the world.” Is he suggesting that young Latinos and Latinas ought to choose the Marine Corps over Harvard, Stanford or UCLA? The military’s primary mission is not education or even job training. It is military interventions, which since World War II have not been defensive actions but controversial adventures in the service of geopolitical and corporate interests.

Will Caldera ensure that the new recruits receive high-tech training that is transferable to civilian life? Or will the overwhelming majority of these Latino sons and daughters end up in combat units in the next undeclared war, from which many will never return?

What Caldera’s column unwittingly reveals is that what the Pentagon calls a volunteer army is in fact a thinly disguised economic draft. Those communities deprived of a decent education, cut out of California’s elite universities and high-tech future, are being tracked into military service, law enforcement and the prison-industrial complex (either as inmates or guards).

As a Chicano Vietnam veteran and educator, I challenge Caldera to concern himself less with meeting his recruiting quotas and more with getting young Latinos into higher education, where they will learn the most precious obligation of citizenship in a democracy--critical thinking.

JORGE MARISCAL

Associate Professor

UC San Diego, La Jolla