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Thoughts on Memorial Day

May 31, 2010 / Just Me / Trackback

If you know me at all you know I am not a morn­ing per­son. But get­ting up really early ( I think 6am on a week­end qual­i­fies) to honor peo­ple who were drafted in older wars and con­flicts and vol­un­teered to put them­selves in harm’s way in more recent years — and lost their life because of it, seems so utterly insignif­i­cant and I feel com­pelled to do it.

I marched and felt truly strange when peo­ple along the parade route mouthed their thank yous and applauded. You see, I thank the mil­i­tary for help­ing to shape who I am. In fact, I’m an advo­cate of com­pul­sory ser­vice. It might sound really rad­i­cal to some but when I think of the ben­e­fits and how other great coun­tries have com­pul­sory ser­vice it just seems to me like a good idea.

I often hear peo­ple say how star­tled they are when they go to Can­cun and see mil­i­tary all over the place. It’s a shock because in the US we’re not used to see­ing armed mil­i­tary doing high­way safety checks and patrolling cities and beaches. They are first respon­ders when there is a nat­ural dis­as­ter like a hur­ri­cane or earth­quake and they are very good at it. I was liv­ing there dur­ing a hur­ri­cane and they quickly had sup­plies to us on Cozumel.

Mex­ico fought with allies in WWII but since has only had inter­nal rebel skir­mishes so they use the mil­i­tary to do pub­lic works projects — kind of like our Army Corp of Engi­neers, air­port secu­rity inspec­tions and pro­vide secu­rity for ports, etc. If you don’t serve you can’t vote and you can’t get a pass­port to leave the coun­try. You’re expected to “give some­thing” to your coun­try in order to get those ben­e­fits. I can’t say I object.

You think this is odd? It’s not odd at all. Many coun­tries have sim­i­lar mil­i­tary con­scrip­tion pro­grams and of course all have vol­un­tary ser­vice. The United King­dom, Aus­tria, Liberia and other coun­tries allow enlist­ment at 16 years old.

I am par­tic­i­pat­ing on a panel this Wednes­day at a col­lege about high school drop out re-engagement. What if we offered drop outs a 2 year enlist­ment that included an inten­sive GED pro­gram and then a tra­di­tional mil­i­tary career school? At 18 they would have earned their GED, learned a career, earned 2 years of salary — not spent time on pub­lic assis­tance, served their coun­try and become inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tive adults.

I think I’m going to pro­pose that.

What do you think?


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  • Brenda L

    Karla,

    One more thing — you wear that uni­form well, lady!!!

    • http://karlaporter.com/ Karla Porter

      Brenda L — thanks =) BTW the expe­ri­ence made me under­stand what I was made of, to not doubt myself, to trust myself and to know I could depend on myself, be self-sufficient, strong and deci­sive. Those are attrib­utes I value greatly. They have saved my butt on sev­eral occasions.

  • Brenda L

    Karla,

    That is an excel­lent idea! Our schools are so bur­dened with drop out pre­ven­tion classes and other issues, it would make per­fect sense for stu­dents to have a pro­gram they could turn to. So many small towns across the coun­try have no edu­ca­tional alter­na­tives, and stu­dents are not encour­aged to seek an alter­na­tive way of edu­ca­tion. It’s either tra­di­tional pub­lic edu­ca­tion or drop out and this is not work­ing any more for our youth. Some of the kids just can’t learn in tra­di­tional class­rooms, they need the ‘hands on’ approach, along with a strong sense of accom­plish­ment and self worth. It would work to turn a whole gen­er­a­tion and future gen­er­a­tions around in a pos­i­tive way. I’m all for cap­ping pub­lic school age at 16 and requir­ing either fin­ish­ing school or mil­i­tary. Maybe our Jr./Sr. high schools should be turned into fin­ish­ing schools, instead of tra­di­tional classes?

    On a side note — Locally, our tech­ni­cal school which trained a lot of elec­tri­cians, masons, drafts­men, mechan­ics, plumbers, fire­men, etc. closed their doors after 40 years of service.…..I’ve seen it as a real mis­take. Our 175K pop­u­la­tion has only two choices — Com­mu­nity col­lege or a very, very expen­sive pri­vate 4 year col­lege. No real option for ‘hands on’ tech­ni­cal training.

    Finally — it is great to hear you say your mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence shaped who you are! It’s refresh­ing to hear for a change. Does it make you sick to read the news around the coun­try of how many Amer­i­can flags were burned and destroyed on Memo­r­ial Day? No respect — and I don’t want to hear that it’s someone’s God given ‘right’ in this coun­try to des­e­crate the flag — they should be held accountable!

    • http://karlaporter.com/ Karla Porter

      I’m OK with peo­ple demon­strat­ing and burn­ing flags. I don’t believe it is their God given right, just their good for­tune to have been born here or have processed papers..I would much rather that than a coun­try that cut your hand off for stomp­ing on a flag… or worse. how­ever, if I have to pay taxes then so does everyone.

  • http://www.setracon.com ndslot­nick

    Wow, Karla! It is great to hear another vet­eran advo­cate for com­pul­sory ser­vice. I have been an advo­cate of com­pul­sory ser­vice since early in my mil­i­tary career, and it only increased as I was assigned to other coun­tries that had it. My hus­band doesn’t agree with me on this, but his opin­ion is col­ored by serv­ing dur­ing the Viet Nam era. He vol­un­teered, but got an up close look at a drafted Army of sol­diers often didn’t want to be there, but weren’t as adept at get­ting out of it as many who fled to Canada, burned their draft cards, or had the polit­i­cal pull, money, or other means to avoid serv­ing. When I talk about com­pul­sory ser­vice, I am talk­ing about it being an oblig­a­tion for every­one (of course, minus those who are dis­abled, etc.) The first year of mil­i­tary ser­vice is a tremen­dous time of growth for most young peo­ple. Com­pul­sory ser­vice would greatly enhance the matu­rity level of those same young peo­ple before they enter col­lege and/or the work­force, as well as giv­ing them a greater appre­ci­a­tion for the free­dom we are afforded in this coun­try. There are a num­ber of coun­tries that have been doing it for years that have good mod­els in place — some with oblig­a­tions as short as one year and as long as 2 1/2 years. Many coun­tries also use mil­i­tary ser­vice as a meanst to teach their young adults about life in other parts of their coun­try — by inten­tion­ally assign­ing city boys to the coun­try, moun­tain dwellers to the ocean­front areas, etc . I think that the capa­bil­ity to pick and choose from the best aspects of dif­fer­ent sys­tems could be a great benefit.

    • http://karlaporter.com/ Karla Porter

      ndslot­nick — I have seen sug­ges­tions for some­thing like a national ser­vice corp, kind of like a domes­tic peace corps. I like that idea too. We need peo­ple to help with nat­ural dis­as­ter relief and devel­op­ment of areas in Appalachia, etc. What I am not fine with is kids learn­ing a sys­tem that was put in place with good rea­son but worked over by peo­ple who feel enti­tled to have oth­ers do the work of sup­port­ing them or those raised to think it’s accept­able or worse — desir­able.. Hav­ing the free­dom to be non-productive at the cost of oth­ers is not accept­able. I believe there are bet­ter ways than cur­rently in place to engage youth. Maybe not the same way for every child is the answer. Schools are run like assem­bly lines to pump out peo­ple who can recite times tables…

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  • Shen­nee

    Karla–
    You really are an most won­der­ful authen­tic per­son. I am so very blessed to have met you and I con­sider you a true friend:) I thank you for your past ser­vice to our coun­try, and all you do to impact the lives of count­less oth­ers.
    Happy Memo­r­ial Day!
    Shen­nee

    • http://karlaporter.com/ Karla Porter

      Shen­nee — I highly doubt the bless­ings part is true but the authen­tic part is for sure. I hope your week­end was fan­tas­tic too!

  • http://www.rinish.com Rin­ish

    Karla,

    I served as both a reservist and active duty enlisted per­son in the Army and I think what makes our Armed Forces so great is that it’s made up of an all vol­un­teer force. So the ones that serve are the ones who made the deci­sions to serve and decide in which skill set they serve in. So as far as com­pul­sory ser­vice I’m not a fan. How­ever, I do think an ini­tia­tive focused on drop outs enter­ing into a pro­gram such as the one you described could help some the rate of suc­cess for drop outs get bet­ter. I would ven­ture to say that most (I’m care­ful not to say all) of the drop outs do so because of a lack of direc­tion or proper guid­ance and struc­ture. The mil­i­tary would be a great way to instill some of these char­ac­ter­is­tics into the young drop out

    • http://karlaporter.com/ Karla Porter

      Rin­ish — Our mil­i­tary is no doubt GREAT but really our gen­er­a­tion is the first to see it all vol­un­teer. So many drafted sol­diers did amaz­ing things from Washington’s Army through the Viet­nam War, it must be a tes­ta­ment to their patri­o­tism and under­stand­ing that fail­ure was not an option in order to pre­serve what we have, our way of life and bor­ders. Above and beyond the ben­e­fit of a more edu­cated nation the ben­e­fits of going through boot camp could help stem our obe­sity epi­demic, train the major­ity of our pop­u­la­tion in basic first aid and defense — not to men­tion how to iron a shirt for a job inter­view. I hear what you’re say­ing about the word “com­pul­sory” and I think offer­ing incen­tives too attrac­tive to turn down (like tuition for­give­ness, tax incen­tives, etc) could work to engage peo­ple with­out hav­ing to go that route. I’m start­ing to like it more and more… if it ever gets to Con­gress I’ll count on your sup­port =) P.S. I would only be in favor of vol­un­teers being deployed.


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