In my experience as a high school student and Jr. ROTC student I saw the Airforce was doing much like Fint said though not all recruiters are as "honest" in their duties as he is/was.

Where I have personally seen recruiters going after the lower class specifically is the Army. That's simply my own personal experience at the high school and Jr. Collegel level. Now of course it could have simply been that group of recruiter's tactics but it did seem consistant semester to semester.

Honestly, as a liberal on the board I would have to say that I do not mind recruiters coming on to High School campuses. What I would like as a parent is notification and I honestly don't know if that is happening. I don't want notification so that I can keep my kid from the information I want notification to that I can prepare myself, my wife and my son and discuss it with them rationally instead of being blindsided. The truth is even with notice most parents would be blindsided because they either don't pay attention or don't care and are simply fighting because they are lemmings.

The military is a good place to be either for a career or for a few years to get some money for college or just life experience. Plus the respect that military veterans get these days as well as job preference I have witnessed (Security Clearance too) is really advantageous.

The real deal however is we as Americans need someone to protect our freedom with deadly force. It's unfortunate of course but it is unavoidable and the truth. While I have disagreed with the current conflict from day one I still hold my belief that we do need a very strong, mighty military presence in the world; We need to be intimidating. The biggest problem I have is that I really feel that the current administration has taken our military men and women for granted and I almost feel like at a political level their lives are trivialized.

Right now a vast majority of Americans are demoralized because all we hear from the media are bad things about the war in Iraq. I want to hear the good things, I don't watch the daily news and instead turn to alternative news sources that focus more on the big picture of things. This "War on Terror" has nearly lasted as long as the US involvement in WWII. No end is in sight and yet this administration expects the American people to march in step with them until the end - when ever that is. It simply isn't realistic, while there are a good number of folks out there who will follow until the end with a smile on their faces there are more who will not. That was shown today in the Senate and the House with the resolutions passed asking for something in the way of plans...

If there had been some measureable success, if OBL had been captured, if WMD of some significance had been found, if the insurgancy wasn't more successful at recruiting than the US ARMY has been in the last 4 years moral in this country would be better.

These things have not happened, the progress to what the American People wanted out of this conflict has not been realized and now we are demoralized.

War is not a place you can expect to hear good things from, people will die and for what? Well, in Iraq that is a good question because all of the original things we went there for simply haven't come to pass - regardless of why. Our campaign has not been successful enough. The only real success we have had is the deposition of SH and of course the process towards creating a democracy where democracy has little chance of existing. Those ARE good things but they ARE NOT what the American people wanted.

We wanted OBL captured and killed as revenge for 9/11.

We wanted to be right about the WMDs in Iraq and prove to the world that the UN needed to do something. Instead we have seen that the UN while corrupt in many many ways (Oil for food, France, Russia and Germany selling directly to Iraq and ignoring sanctions) they were for the most part right to say - "There are no WMD and you can't start a war there over that."

The UN is a corrupt organization and I'm actually a little glad that John Bolton is a ball buster on one hand but on the other I question whether he can actually be effective with those tactics or if he will simply piss the UN personnel from each country off. Not to say I wouldn't be happy with that at least...

I know I've strayed from the topic but I think it is reasonable to consider that the American people are demoralized and in its most liberal centers like SF those people are even more demoralized because our government by and large outside of this state does not represent them.

We have Republican majorities everywhere we look and our issues are being competely ignored because we are only 49%.

We're still your neighbor, our kids go to school with yours and we're still Americans.

The American people are not capable of supporting a long standing war with ZERO milestones. In WWII there were propaganda news reports that glamorized the effort but still it was effective and it made the people at home feel as if they were actually helping by concerving and buying war bonds. Now we have nothing like that and at this point if we did it would be a little hollow and the liberal side of the media would rip it to shreds.

Being demoralized with our military progress on the War on Terror how is it that you can honestly expect American parents to be thrilled to see a recruiter at their high school promising money and experience and rarely mentioning that they could end up in a news report about soldiers killed by a bomb on some road in some country barely able to sustain electricity much less construct a reliable ICBM with nuclear or biological capabilities.

It doesn't seem reasonable to me and I STILL think my son would do well to join the service and I STILL wish I had.

Although I would not want my children to enlist as I did because they are exceptionally well prepared for college and I can easily afford it....I would be distraught to see recruiters excluded from schools....if only because...if no one volunteers....we will be drafting nonvolunteers...or worse yet, we will have no one to defend our nation.

I always advised teens with college options to avoid enlisting...but I ensured they were aware of opportunities for commissioning....which was my primary goal anyways. Almost anyone can get their college tuition paid for by an ROTC program. Chances are good that we will not be in a war four years from now...
I imagine that many kids that I spoke to are serving in Iraq as I post this.

AFJROTC is designed as purely a citizenship building program. We gave equal time to all employers and much more to colleges. When I managed my state's program, we still had well over 50% enter the military in one fashion or another.
The other services fund their JROTC programs much better but consider them part of the recruiting program.

We agree then - I just felt it that a cooler head and rational liberal response might help shed some light on the crazy liberal behavior.

Of course there is no telling what's actually going through the mind of those folks in SF. I certainly don't pretend to understand it.