10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military

10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military
Author: Elizabeth Weill-greenberg
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2006-04-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 159558675X

So you're walking out of school and parked at the gate is a new, bright red Ford Mustang with a hulk of a man in the front seat. He's sporting a razor cut and wraparound shades. Before you can pass he's out of the car and blocking your path. “Mind if I take a minute”—he has you by the arm now—“to tell you about the great life in today's Army and why you should seriously think about signing up?” The armed forces are having a tough time attracting new recruits lately, in no small part due to the mess in Iraq. Young people are getting wise to the many excellent reasons not to join the U.S. Military, and this handy book brings them all together, combining accessible writing with hard facts and devastating personal testimony. Contributors with firsthand experience point out the dangers facing soldiers, describe the tricks used by recruiters, and emphasize that there really are other options, even in a sluggish economy. It's essential reading for anyone thinking of signing up.

Assessing Fitness for Military Enlistment

Assessing Fitness for Military Enlistment
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2006-02-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309164877

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) faces short-term and long-term challenges in selecting and recruiting an enlisted force to meet personnel requirements associated with diverse and changing missions. The DoD has established standards for aptitudes/abilities, medical conditions, and physical fitness to be used in selecting recruits who are most likely to succeed in their jobs and complete the first term of service (generally 36 months). In 1999, the Committee on the Youth Population and Military Recruitment was established by the National Research Council (NRC) in response to a request from the DoD. One focus of the committee's work was to examine trends in the youth population relative to the needs of the military and the standards used to screen applicants to meet these needs. When the committee began its work in 1999, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force had recently experienced recruiting shortfalls. By the early 2000s, all the Services were meeting their goals; however, in the first half of calendar year 2005, both the Army and the Marine Corps experienced recruiting difficulties and, in some months, shortfalls. When recruiting goals are not being met, scientific guidance is needed to inform policy decisions regarding the advisability of lowering standards and the impact of any change on training time and cost, job performance, attrition, and the health of the force. Assessing Fitness for Military Enlistment examines the current physical, medical, and mental health standards for military enlistment in light of (1) trends in the physical condition of the youth population; (2) medical advances for treating certain conditions, as well as knowledge of the typical course of chronic conditions as young people reach adulthood; (3) the role of basic training in physical conditioning; (4) the physical demands and working conditions of various jobs in today's military services; and (5) the measures that are used by the Services to characterize an individual's physical condition. The focus is on the enlistment of 18- to 24-year-olds and their first term of service.

Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society

Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2019-10-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309489539

The U.S. military has been continuously engaged in foreign conflicts for over two decades. The strains that these deployments, the associated increases in operational tempo, and the general challenges of military life affect not only service members but also the people who depend on them and who support them as they support the nation â€" their families. Family members provide support to service members while they serve or when they have difficulties; family problems can interfere with the ability of service members to deploy or remain in theater; and family members are central influences on whether members continue to serve. In addition, rising family diversity and complexity will likely increase the difficulty of creating military policies, programs and practices that adequately support families in the performance of military duties. Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society examines the challenges and opportunities facing military families and what is known about effective strategies for supporting and protecting military children and families, as well as lessons to be learned from these experiences. This report offers recommendations regarding what is needed to strengthen the support system for military families.

Camouflaged

Camouflaged
Author: Edwin Mayorga
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2008-07-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0615193153

Camouflaged: Investigating How the U.S. Military Affects You and Your Community is a tool for educators to help middle and high school-aged students explore the role of the military in their lives and in their communities. Local New York City teachers, led by the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE), generated the Camouflaged curriculum with the intent of making it accessible to educators across the country in a variety of settings and curricular areas. NYCoRE believes that it is the role of educators as allies to young people to ensure that students have information from a variety of sources before considering enlisting in the armed forces. At this point in U.S. history, military recruiters have unprecedented access to young people in and out of school through a variety of mediums. This curriculum provides a critical lens to help students navigate recruiters' messages and to examine the role of the military throughout this country's history to the present.

Bleeding Talent

Bleeding Talent
Author: T. Kane
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2017-07-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 113751129X

Shaping the debate on how to save the military from itself. The first part recognizes what the military has done well in attracting and developing leadership talent. The book then examines the causes and consequences of the modern military's stifling personnel system and offers solutions for attracting and retaining top talent.

Undaunted

Undaunted
Author: Tanya Biank
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0451417984

As she did so provocatively with military spouses in Army Wives, Tanya Biank gives us the inside story of women in today’s military—their professional and personal challenges from the combat zone to the home front... Since 9/11, more than 240,000 women have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan—more than 140 have died there, and they currently make up fourteen percent of the total active-duty forces. Despite advances, today’s servicewomen are constantly pressed to prove themselves, to overcome challenges men never face, and to put the military mission ahead of all other aspects of their lives, particularly marriage and motherhood. In this groundbreaking, insider’s look at the women defending our nation, Tanya Biank brings to light the real issues—of femininity, belonging to an old boys’ club, veiled discrimination, dating, marriage problems, separation from children, questions about life goals, career trajectories, and self-worth—that servicewomen are facing by focusing on four individual stories. Brigadier General Angela Salinas, the Marine Corps’ first Hispanic female general, faces the challenge of commanding an all-male institution. Second Lieutenant Bergan Flanagan finds herself on the frontlines in Afghanistan, serving in the same military police company as her husband. As a marine drill instructor, Sergeant Amy Stokley demands the very best from the recruits at Parris Island. And Major Candice O’Brien deals with deployment to Afghanistan, with two young children and a strained marriage back home. Undaunted is the story of these courageous trailblazers—their struggles, sacrifices, and triumphs in the name of serving the country they love.

One Bullet Away

One Bullet Away
Author: Nathaniel Fick
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0618773436

An ex-Marine captain shares his story of fighting in a recon battalion in both Afghanistan and Iraq, beginning with his brutal training on Quantico Island and following his progress through various training sessions and, ultimately, conflict in the deadliest conflicts since the Vietnam War.

Military Experience in the Age of Reason

Military Experience in the Age of Reason
Author: Christopher Duffy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 526
Release: 2005-12-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135794588

First published in 1987. War in the 18th century was a bloody business. A line of infantry would slowly march, to the beat of a drum, into a hail of enemy fire. Whole ranks would be wiped out by cannon fire and musketry. Christopher Duffy's investigates the brutalities of the battlefield and also traces the lives of the officer to the soldier from the formative conditions of their earliest years to their violent deaths or retirement, and shows that, below their well-ordered exteriors, the armies of the Age of Reason underwent a revolutionary change from medieval to modern structures and ways of thinking.

"The Good War"

Author: Studs Terkel
Publisher: New Press/ORIM
Total Pages: 707
Release: 2011-07-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1595587594

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize: “The richest and most powerful single document of the American experience in World War II” (The Boston Globe). “The Good War” is a testament not only to the experience of war but to the extraordinary skill of Studs Terkel as an interviewer and oral historian. From a pipe fitter’s apprentice at Pearl Harbor to a crew member of the flight that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, his subjects are open and unrelenting in their analyses of themselves and their experiences, producing what People magazine has called “a splendid epic history” of WWII. With this volume Terkel expanded his scope to the global and the historical, and the result is a masterpiece of oral history. “Tremendously compelling, somehow dramatic and intimate at the same time, as if one has stumbled on private accounts in letters locked in attic trunks . . . In terms of plain human interest, Mr. Terkel may well have put together the most vivid collection of World War II sketches ever gathered between covers.” —The New York Times Book Review “I promise you will remember your war years, if you were alive then, with extraordinary vividness as you go through Studs Terkel’s book. Or, if you are too young to remember, this is the best place to get a sense of what people were feeling.” —Chicago Tribune “A powerful book, repeatedly moving and profoundly disturbing.” —People