mohandasgandhi:

I have a number of stories that I could potentially share with you but I’m only comfortable with sharing one, which is, perhaps, the least outrageous of the bunch. I don’t like getting too personal on this blog for a number of rather obvious reasons but I find this to be too important not to share. I will, however, remain vague. I doubt I’ll leave this up for long either.

Over the last few months, my family and I have been trying to convince my little brother not to join the U.S. military. He recently graduated from the police academy and was poorly advised to join the military to increase his chances of being hired into more prestigious ranks. Despite presenting him a mountain of evidence which clearly states that this is not true, he’s hell bent on joining anyway. Now, his reasoning for wanting to get into law enforcement purely rests behind his desire “to help people.” We can discuss how joining the military and returning to be a police officer is a terribleidea but I’ve already lectured him on why that is ad nauseum. That’s not the point of this story anyway.

If he were to join, given the rank and position assigned to him, it would be mandated that he be deployed to a major combat zone, aka Afghanistan. He would also be amongst those the most highly targeted and not only likely to die but to come back without a soul/a complete mess. This is my little brother. Of course I don’t want him to be deployed but he’s also not the type of person who can handle the realities of war.

Anyway, he went to a recruitment office in Milwaukee, I believe the one on Oakland, which is famous for recruiting poor minorities. They told him he needed to be off of a certain medication for over a year before he could enlist. He wasn’t happy about this so he talked to his doctor, who refused to engage in dishonesty and say he hadn’t prescribed my brother this certain medication in over a year. Upon relaying this bit of information to the recruitment office, they told him to convince our parents to write a letter and lie, saying he’d been off this medication. Of course, my parents (who don’t even want him enlisting in the first place) refused and my dad, being the guy that he is, wrote a very lovely letter to the military and several influential politicians. I’m not sure why the military wants my brother off this certain medication but they could be potentially endangering him and his health by getting him to enlist and begin training early. One of the major consequences of taking this drug is the possibility of developing serious heart problems and he’s been diagnosed with having an issue with heart palpitations, which the medication only makes worse, especially when one engages in heavy physical activity. Great, so having him lie and enlist early could kill him. That’s nice.

However, lying on a U.S. military application, if found out, could also result in a dishonorable discharge, which would absolutely destroy his career in law enforcement for the rest of his life. They pushed and pushed him to lie, including several higher ups out of Milwaukee. Now, since Tumblr is firmly on the “fuck the police” wagon, you may see that as a good thing. Great, one less cop. I happen to agree. However, even though I am biased, my brother is not the type of person we mostly see in law enforcement these days. He’s an incredibly sensitive and caring individual. He volunteers in homeless shelters for fun for Christ’s sake. I don’t see him as a police officer but more as a guy behind the scenes working with victims. He does too. Those are the positions we need more of but since the U.S. military is short on personnel that hasn’t already served 3-4 tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, they’re hard on recruiting new individuals.

In addition to the mountain of other garbage I’m not comfortable with talking about on a public forum, this incident only hardens my belief that the U.S. military doesn’t give a shit about its recruits and I’ll be damned if they’re going to send my little brother off to Afghanistan, a country whose citizens are being murdered in an act of hegemonic state terrorism, so that he can die or be one of the 45,000 who come back injured, or one of the 250,000 who come back with a severe brain injury, or one of the 18 veterans who kill themselves each and every day. The military wanted my brother to lie and potentially destroy his career, depriving the U.S. of someone law enforcements needs, someone who’s very talented with talking to vulnerable people and is a largely nonviolent person.The U.S. military can go fuck itself.