Recruiters And Ethical Behavior

I ask you to consider the following story from the Los Angeles Times:

"A few days after he arrived at boot camp here, Joshua Fry no longer wanted to be a Marine.

He was confused by the orders drill instructors shouted at him. He was caught stealing peanut butter from the chow hall. He urinated in his canteen. He talked back to the drill instructors. He refused to shave.

Finally, he set out toward the main gate as if to head home. He was blocked, but now he had the chance to tell his superiors a secret: He was autistic. Fry figured this admission would persuade the Marines to let him return to the group home in Irvine for disturbed young adults where he was living when he enlisted.

Instead, he was sent back to Platoon 1021, Company B. The drill instructors became more helpful, and in April 2008 he finished the grueling 11-week regimen and was sent to Camp Pendleton for infantry training.

Within weeks he was under arrest for desertion and possession of child pornography.

Documents in Fry's court-martial case detail a troubled upbringing and a Marine career that was both improbable and misbegotten.

But far from being a routine instance of a young man unable to adjust to military life, the Fry case has exposed an awkward issue for the Marines and other military services: Recruiters sometimes take ethical shortcuts to make their quotas at a time when Americans have tired of the nation's wars and finding recruits is difficult.

According to court documents, Fry's recruiter knew he was autistic. "

The truth is that Joshua Fry should never have been recruited for any branch of the military. His recruiter knew that but signed him up anyway. And this is not an isolated incident. Some 265 Marine recruiters have been relieved of duty for misconduct -- most of the time for hiding something in a recruit's background.

In 2007, there were 2426 claims of recruiter misconduct. Of those, 593 were verified. In the Marines alone that year, there were 211 claims with 118 verified. What is happening here? Are these just bad people? I don't think so.

These recruiters have been put in a very difficult position. They are given a quota to fill because the military needs soldiers to fight two unpopular wars -- one of which was totally unnecessary. If they consistently fail to meet their quota, they could possibly ruin their military career or any chance of advancement.

Most didn't want the job to begin with, and now they're under pressure to fulfill an almost impossible task. So some of them cut corners. It's not right or ethical, but it is kind of understandable. The real culprits are the people who started these wars, especially the Iraq War, and the people who refuse to end it and bring our soldiers home.

Isn't it time? Now matter how much the politicians in Washington or the military generals would like to solve the problems we have created in Iraq, they cannot do it. We may have opened Pandora's Box in that country, but it is the Iraqis (and only the Iraqis) who must put the lid back on that box.

We cannot solve their problems. They must do it themselves. All we can do is stand in the way and delay their solution. And by doing so, we lose more American lives and destroy the readiness and effectiveness of our military.

It is time to pull ALL of our troops out of Iraq. No -- it is well past time to do that!