Ads for Army serve important purpose

Watters is a fourth-year history student.  

By Andrew Watters

While it may be tempting to criticize the Army and other
branches of the Department of Defense for their new advertising
campaigns on the basis of cost
(“Army targets, misleads U.S. youth,” Viewpoint, May
28), an analysis of the current trends in this country will
show that the “Army of One” campaign and the new video
game are justifiable efforts at increasing the strength and quality
of the U.S. Army.

For years now, recruitment numbers have declined in all of the
armed services. The Army has not escaped the fact that fewer people
are joining each year and those who do sign up seem to be motivated
more by personal gain than patriotism. Ask any recruiter how
difficult his or her job is, and chances are that you’ll hear
how recruits these days are not in the service for national service
but to gain experience for the business world, to receive
scholarship money for education, or even to improve a barren
resume. The possibility of citizens signing up from a sense of
patriotism has become much more remote.

Can anyone deny the importance of a well-equipped, well-trained
army for the security of a free state? Vossoughi clearly feels that
pacifism and apathy are more effective at maintaining a
country’s sovereignty. While it must be admitted that the
Department of Defense sometimes engages in actions or operations
that deserve ridicule, on the whole it is painfully obvious through
more than two centuries of wars that a military force is a
necessary tool to maintain this country’s existence.

Today’s military must therefore be the strongest,
best-trained and best-equipped force in the world. If the new
“Army of One” campaign and “America’s
Army” video game give the United States any advantages, then
the country’s purposes have been served. Apparently,
today’s citizen-politicians agree because they fund the
Department of Defense quite well, especially in programs like the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which concentrates on
developing future technology for tomorrow’s battlefields. One
might recall that DARPA developed the Internet many years ago,
partnering with UCLA and contractors to build the revolutionary
network.

If Vossoughi is concerned with taxpayer expense of the campaign,
let us remember that the balance of powers in this country serves
as a check on wasteful spending. Congress must approve the
president’s budget each year, and the fact that our
representatives are popularly elected and have approved the 2002
budget should indicate that there is money in the budget for such a
program. Furthermore, multi-billion dollar U.S. operations in
Afghanistan and other countries make television advertising and the
development of a video game almost insignificant in the yearly
expenditures of the Department of Defense.

Vossoughi criticizes the Army in particular for the fact that
“the majority of characters are men of color” in its
new advertising campaign. She claims that recruitment efforts today
are racially slanted and are predominantly present in “mostly
non-white, non-affluent schools,” which “are crawling
with Army recruitment officers ready to snatch (high school
graduates) up.” Vossoughi even criticizes the highly
successful Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program
because it “promotes authoritarian values, gun use and a
version of history that looks at … soldiers rather than …
citizens.”

Such arguments are clearly designed to make the Army and other
services appear as a racist establishment preying on the non-white,
inner-city youth of this country. But in retrospect, the
Army’s new advertising techniques contain the same messages,
the same people, and the same styles as many contemporary
advertising campaigns from the heavy hitters like Nike, Gatorade,
Sprite and Sony. Take a look at how many “people of
color” are in these ads, and you’ll see the same trend
reflected in the “Army of One” campaign. If we are to
believe Vossoughi’s argument that blaxploitation and
“perverted” racial awareness are part of the
recruitment efforts, we must extend her argument to encompass much
of today’s urban or “ethnic” advertising.

Quite naturally, including ethnic characters in a game or in a
TV spot isn’t the result of a kinder, gentler Army. Of course
it’s designed to appeal to an ethnic audience. Today’s
Marine Corps, for example, has leaflets centered around its
well-known desire to recruit black female officers. Part of the
issue is that the officer corps in all of the armed services are
largely white and male, though with an increasing percentage of
blacks and women as a result of previous recruitment campaigns,
while the enlisted corps have a higher percentage of ethnic and
female troops.

The problem with Vossoughi’s column is that she suggests
through her criticism that recruiting increased numbers of ethnic
soldiers and officers is somehow an insidious result of ulterior
motives. The Army is not trying “to draw America’s kids
into an institution geared toward violence and obedience instead of
pushing them to pursue … higher education,” the
Army’s main selling point today is that it offers money for
college. If the Army can successfully recruit more ethnic high
school graduates to obtain college education through the Montgomery
GI Bill and other incentives, it will successfully increase the
proportion of ethnic officers in its forces and increase the
percentage of ethnic enlisted personnel who have the option of
college. Can anyone really claim that this is a bad thing?

The critical question one must ask is whether the recruitment
efforts are an evil attempt to coerce ethnic high schoolers into
some sort of terrible mind-numbing institution or are merely a
reflection of societal trends that all advertisers appeal to. The
answer, I would suggest, lies in recruitment numbers and
comparisons with other advertising campaigns today. If, in fact,
the “Army of One” and “America’s
Army” devices succeed in increasing the percentage of ethnic
members in influential positions in society, then their expense and
use remains justified and criticizing people for joining the effort
at national self-defense is misguided.

Vossoughi claims that “cuts in education have subsidized a
ballooning military budget.” In response, it is clear that
the military budget is much lower today than during the Cold War,
and that federal grant programs from the Department of Education
have allowed great numbers of students to obtain college education
at reasonable cost since their inception. The suggestion that cuts
in education are the cause of today’s military spending is
absurd and shows that the article is yet another attempt to
demonize the Department of Defense for doing its legally mandated
job: defending the United States from all of its enemies.

While we must never lose sight of a perfect society, let us
always remember that there are in fact enemies of this country who
don’t respond to friendly negotiations, and we must meet
those who are forceful with force.

Vossoughi suggests that giving video cameras to children in
war-torn Afghanistan, among others, would show the “death and
destruction, sexual abuse and displacement caused by the U.S.
military.” Perhaps she should give cameras to the people of
Somalia as well, to show how warlords and racketeers control the
food supply and perpetuate injustices. Perhaps she should give
video cameras to the people of Iraq, who have suffered chemical
weapons attacks and other tragedies at the hands of Saddam
Hussein’s regime. Perhaps after seeing documentation of the
evils in other countries, Vossoughi will realize that a U.S.
military force is capable of doing some good in this world.

We must ensure that the military has enough quality people to
remain an effective force. Such ends can only be accomplished
through solid recruitment efforts. The recruitment techniques of
today therefore remain justified.