Recruiters Forged Diplomas, Threatened Arrests And Lied On Drug Tests To Get Teenagers To Enlist After 9/11

Editor's note: This is an excerpt from chapter two of "The Lonely Soldier: The Private War Of Women Serving In Iraq" by Helen Benedict. She is also the author of Sand Queen, which is based on the lives of women on both sides of the Iraq war. See more on her website. 

Since 9/11 and the start of the Afghanistan War, the military has been targeting schools like Mickiela's—schools in communities where jobs are scarce and the students are poor or the citizenship of immigrants—and promising glamorous careers and citizenship to those who join. But by the time Mickiela was in eleventh grade, the government had given recruiters another advantage as well: the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

The act stipulates that no public high school can qualify for federal money unless it gives the address and telephone number of every student to the military and allows recruiters access to the school. Any family that wants to keep its address private has to submit a form saying so, but most people don't know this. Once recruiters have this information, they court students like baseball scouts, calling them at home taking them out for meals, and making any promises they want. Recruiters can do this because the enlistment contract that every recruit must sign states that none of these promises have to be kept—something else most people don't know.  

More