Dovish Deceptions Revisited

Earlier this summer, I wrote a column in which I concluded that the veracity of military recruiters compares favorably to that of most American colleges and universities.

Scott Key of Fresno Pacific University’s faculty had claimed that the former were misleading. “All branches of the military have increased the size of cash bonuses,” he wrote, but added, “It is important to note that taxes will be taken out of these bonuses.” “Are you suggesting that a tax cut is in order for these troops?,” I asked him in an e-mail on June 26th.

By the time that I posted my article the following day, June 27th, he had not responded. After Allison Kasic of the Independent Women’s Forum linked to my piece on the National Review Online site, Phi Beta Cons, he finally responded to my June 26th e-mail on June 29th. “I am in the middle of grading student work but I will respond to your question along with the other comments in ‘Dovish Deception,’” he promised. “So, I hope that you can be patient.”

I have been. Surely he must have finished grading those papers by now. Meanwhile, Michael Robinson, a second-year cadet at West Point, gives a ringing endorsement of the school of his choice in a forum where such a rave really stands out—Newsweek magazine.

“In my interviews—usually with staffers, but the Congress members sometimes do attend—I was asked questions about world events, my high-school accomplishments and my desire to serve,” Robinson writes. “Politics didn’t seem to matter much.”

“I’ve heard of parents joining campaigns to try to help grease the nominating wheels, but since officials are staking their reputation on whether you’ll graduate, they’re more concerned with your abilities than whether your parents are Republicans or Democrats.” Surely, college administrators could learn something from this approach.

I noted in ‘Dovish Deceptions’ that military recruiters are subject to a greater degree of scrutiny than are college and university officials. As it happens, under congressional orders, the Government Accountability Office was investigating recruiters at that time, as was the Associated Press.

Unfortunately, “More than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by their recruiters,” Martha Mendoza reported on August 20th. “Women were raped on recruiting office couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to entrance exams.”

But how much of this trend stems from the diversity push to recruit more women for the military? Although their accomplishments are legion, their mere presence in uniform puts them at risk.

In an appearance at Accuracy in Academia’s Conservative University conference two years ago, Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness “recalled illustrative testimony from an Army Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape trainer about a mixed-sex mock POW camp exercise,” John Swingle wrote in AIA’s Campus Report. “If any female participants were physically threatened [implying forcible rape], the men ‘would go crazy because they wanted to fight and defend’ the women.”

“The men would have to be desensitized to violence against women, concluded the SERE trainers, to forestall enemy exploitation of this instinctive concern.” Mendoza’s AP report indicates that, to a degree, this has happened.

“Across all services, one out of 200 frontline recruiters—the ones who deal directly with young people—was disciplined for sexual misconduct last year,” Mendoza reported. “Some cases of improper behavior involved romantic relationships, and sometimes those relationships were initiated by the women.”

“Most recruiters found guilty of sexual misconduct are disciplined administratively, facing a reduction in rank or forfeiture of pay; military and civilian prosecutions are rare.” However, Mendoza goes on to report that “The increase in sexual misconduct incidents is consistent with overall recruiter wrongdoing, which has increased from just over 400 cases in 2004 to 630 cases in 2005, according to a General Accounting Office report released this week.”

The molestation incidents, then, would also make up half of the increase of cases of wrongdoing, giving further weight to the comments that Donnelly, who has served on the board of visitors at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, made at AIA’s summer conference in Georgetown back in 2003.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.