Disabled Veteran's Tribute Upsets Army Recruiters In Minnesota

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=370043C8-923F-4A50-A719-7211E05E9C06

Duluth, Minn. — As those thinking of becoming soldiers arrive on the slushy doorstep of the Army recruiting station here, they cannot miss the message posted in bold black letters on the storefront next door.

“Remember the Fallen Heroes,” the sign reads, and then it ticks off numbers — the number of American troops killed in Iraq, the number wounded, the number of days gone by since this war began.

The sign, put up by a former soldier, has stirred intense debate in this city along the edge of Lake Superior.

The seven recruiters at the station here, six of whom have served in Iraq, want the sign taken away. “It's disheartening,” Staff Sgt. Gary J. Capan, the station's commander, said.

“Everyone knows that people are dying in Iraq, but to walk past this on the way to work every day is too much,” Capan said.

[LostinVA]

1. Too much what? Reality? Truth?

[baldguy]

2. The simple truth is: if you join the Army now, then you're going to Iraq.

If Iraq was a worthwhile cause, then they wouldn't have problems recruiting. They still trying to con people into thinking of the Army as a scholarship program.

[dsc]

3. who do these recruiters think they are?

They are supposed to be defending the Constitution, not trampling all over it.

[babylonsister]

4. I love it! Not-so-subtle activism at its finest. Too bad

the amount of lives saved from this little act can't be quantified. :applause:

[tyedyeto]

5. After I read one of the comments in the story

Next door, Capan, 31, said his recruiters wanted the sign removed. One woman who had just returned from duty in Iraq, he said, found the sign especially disconcerting and impersonal. “It was upsetting to veterans who don't look at their friends and colleagues killed as numbers on a list,” Capan said.


This pic should be posted along with the numbers:

[gratuitous]

6. Upsetting to veterans, is it?

Welcome to the party then, veterans. Because as upset as you are that your friends and colleagues are reduced to "numbers on a list," there are millions of us all across the country who are upset that there had to be a list compiled in the first place. Besides, how do you think your fallen comrades are regarded in the White House? Do you think George W. Bush agonizes over every death? No, they're just numbers on a list to him. He doesn't attend military funerals. He forbids photos of the flag-draped coffins coming in to Dover.

So you're upset? Good.

[zbdent]

8. Okay, miss, maybe he should post pictures of the

disabled veterans themselves, in all their glory, with missing limbs . . .

(miss, speaking to the "veteran" who had "just returned from duty in Iraq" . . .)

[tyedyeto]

9. Good idea... or pics of...

the crosses commemorating the Fallen after they were run down by the crazy dude in Crawford this past summer.

[tyedyeto]

10. Anyone know if there is an updated version of this pic

First time I saw it was a year or so ago and now there should be more soldiers pics on *'s face.

[alphafemale]

7. This is an excellent way of protest.

I don't think there's anyway this sign be removed forcibly, or restricted in the way that a regular protest action would be.

Where recruiters are in strip malls this could be repeated across the country.

[jmowreader]

11. I can emphathize with both sides

You know what a recruiter sells? A used car with a cracked block--that, once bought, can't be sold for at least four years. And right now, the used cars they have to sell are capable of killing you without warning even if you maintain them and drive them carefully.

There are only two conditions for the army: at war, or not at war. If the army is not at war, you either do drills over and over again, work in some sort of service organization (medical facility, warehouse, office, maintenance facility), or you do area beautification because the general likes to see all his soldiers outside working and the shit you joined the army to do, can't be done outside.

If the army is at war, you either do the things you got to drill on, continue to work in the service organization, or spend the first three months you're in theatre trying to remember how to use your equipment because while you were pulling weeds and painting rocks so the general would see you working outside, you forgot how to do your job.

Here's the problem from the recruiter's perspective. A recruiter gets a mission every month--recruit five male high school graduates, two female high school graduates and three college graduates of either sex, say--and if he fails in his mission enough times, they throw him out of the service into an economy with no room for him. There's an obvious solution to their problem (hire people who really are used-car salesmen and have THEM recruit soldiers) but they won't use it. Instead, they try to turn successful combat arms soldiers into used-car salesmen. (My brother-in-law recruited for two years. He signed up one person, and there was no war when he was recruiting.) So you've got these poor bastards who received three weeks of training on how to sell a product that's almost impossible to sell under normal circumstances, and now it's even less desirable. This sign is not helping matters any.

On the other hand, the veteran has the perfect right to let people thinking about joining the service know, "if you walk through that door and raise your right hand, there is a good possibility that you'll be on this sign."

Although I feel sorry for the recruiters and the terrible task Bush has handed to them, I say the sign should stay.

[patrice]

12. I think the possibility of dying is part of the attraction of the military

to many people. It creates great potential for meaning(s) where few or little meaning/purpose existed previously. Afterall, you have to justify all of that dying somehow.

I wish anti-war efforts focused more on what we do to others when we decide to kill for whatever purpose/meaning/values. That discourse could focus more on why the following statement is literally true:

Oil Royalty = Pilate
BushCo = Herod
ALL Innocent Dead = Jesus
You = ?