Kids Learn That Killing Is Fun at the Army's Lethal New Theme Park

[HowHasItComeToThis]

SEE http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/113079/?page=3

Kids Learn That Killing Is Fun at the Army's Lethal New Theme Park

By Penny Coleman, AlterNet. Posted December 19, 2008.

The Army's new recruitment tool lets high-tech video game centers desensitize, condition, train and even enlist America's youth.
A provision of No Child Left Behind, one of the first pieces of legislation proposed by the Bush administration, forced schools to open their doors to recruiters and provide contact information for students as young as 11.

J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience & War, calls such marketing tactics "an illegal tool in the recruiting arsenal" and a "violation of international law."

The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, ratified and signed by the U.S. Senate in 2002, categorically forbids the Pentagon, or the militaries of any of the other 124 signatory nations, to attempt to recruit children 13 to 16 years old. The Pentagon simply chooses to ignore it, and Congress has neglected to enforce the treaty. (A meticulous documentation of the Pentagon's recruiting tactics explicitly directed at children can be found in a recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union, Soldiers of Misfortune.)

Staff Sgt. Kevin Haver is a recruiter, a 25-year-old native Philadelphian, pumped up, tightly wrapped in his uniform, and one of a score of active-duty soldiers currently assigned to the AEC. He's taciturn at first. Having ascended to the warrior class, he has learned to despise and distrust all that is not military. Or at least, to act that way.

[liberal N proud]

1. SICK!

[havocmom]

2. Pretty soon: a nation of psychotics, by psychotics, for psychotics

:(

[Occam Bandage]

3. The protocol does not prevent advertising to children.

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/6/protocolchild.htm

It prevents recruiting or conscripting children into the armed forces. So long as the children do not join the military before they are of age, there's nothing in the protocol that I can find that would prevent recruiters from advertising, getting contact information, etc., etc.

[crim son]

4. Not my kids.

Even my nine year old has wondered recently why anybody would join the military, because the job basically involves being prepared to kill people. It's an extreme view but it suits me fine. If he thinks differentlyl when he's eighteen we'll talk, but I don't expect that to happen.

[YOY]

5. Have they actually even had success used in their video game tactic?

I've heard of little success.

Perhaps this is a move to pump it up a notch?

Kevin Haver sounds like a real piece of work...

[I814U]

6. Not only that it's waste of money in general...

...it's not like there aren't hundreds of military themed video games already. Did you know the military is one of the biggest advertisers on G4TechTV, a network that caters to the video gaming crowd?