The “Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict” was ratified in December 2002. It is supposed to keep children under 18 from being preyed on by recruiters and guarantees basic protections to former child soldiers seeking refugee protection in the United States or who are in U.S. custody for alleged crimes.

Victor Jackson witnessed violations firsthand after being approached by a recruiter while in high school.

“He (the Air Force recruiter) made a lot of promises to me and the only promise they kept was the part about me getting hollered at and bossed around,” said Mr. Jackson, who was discharged after serving 13 months. “He lied about the options I would have once I got in, the opportunities for me were altered and even the dream sheet they have you fill out is a lie.”

Mr. Jackson signed up to make money as he awaited the birth of his daughter, but later regretted it. “They moved me from Texas to Delaware, which wasn’t my place of choice. I was told that I would get at least 6 months to prepare myself to go overseas but within 3 months I was in Saudi Arabia. They made us watch videos to put in us hate for people across seas but I saw that everyone over there is not like that. They are a bunch of liars,” he said.

“Military recruitment tools aimed at youth under 18, including Pentagon-produced video games, military training corps, and databases of students’ personal information, have no place in America’s schools,” said Jennifer Turner of the ACLU Human Rights Project. “The United States military’s procedures for recruiting students plainly violate internationally accepted standards and fail to protect youth from abusive and aggressive recruitment tactics,” she said. The ACLU report was released May 13.

The report notes that recruiters disproportionately target poor and minority students and use public schools as prime recruiting grounds. The ACLU charges exaggerated promises of financial rewards, coercion, deception and sexual abuse by recruiters nullify so-called “voluntariness” of recruitment. A 2007 survey of New York City high school students by the New York Civil Liberties Union and other organizations found more than 1 in 5 students, including students as young as 14, reported the use of class time by military recruiters.

Jeremy Jenkins, a high school senior, was first approached by a Marine recruiter at 16-years-old. “They (military recruiters) are always at school career days and other events with attractive setups to entice young people. I think the national defense is important but recruiters should only impart knowledge to young people and not influence them under the age of 18,” he said.

Mr. Jenkins is on his way to the Naval Academy because of his dream to be a pilot. “It had nothing to do with a recruiter or the Jr. ROTC because I didn’t want to join on. However, the Navy has presented me with an opportunity to achieve my dream but of course they make no guarantees,” he said.

Statistics from the New York survey noted nearly 1 in 5 respondents at selected schools did not believe anyone in their school could properly advise them about the risks and benefits of military enlistment. Additionally, almost 1 in 3 students surveyed were unsure if such a person was available in their school. Nearly half of respondents did not know who should be told about military recruiter misconduct.

“I wanted to join the Marines in the 8th grade because they had brochures at the carnivals we had at school,” said Toni Cervantes, who is now college bound. “But I quickly changed my mind after hearing stories from my friends who joined and discovered that it was nothing like the recruiters promised. The so-called free ride is a long process.”

Are Blacks and Hispanics the primary recruiting targets? According to information from the Department of Defense, from 2000 to 2007, the percentage of Blacks enlisting in the various armed forces decreased by 6 percent while Hispanic enlistment jumped about 30 percent. Defense Department population studies revealed most recruits are from lower income backgrounds and only 8 percent of recruits have a parent who is a professional. With over $1 billion a year spent on recruiting efforts, the Defense Department examines long term trends in the youth population and evaluates how to increase interest in the military.

“It’s no mystery that the armed forces target the urban areas,” said an Army military recruiter in Houston and the country’s southwest region. “We go to a lot of Black and Hispanic schools for career days, programs, and other functions because we have a quota to meet every year as it relates to Blacks and Hispanics. It is true that those students are more adamant to join on with us because of the opportunities that are given to them—although many may disagree. But we do help a lot of people who don’t have any other option coming out of high school.”

These are the teenagers and young adults — roughly 16 to 24 years old — who are not in school and basically have no hope of finding work. The bureaucrats compiling the official unemployment rate don’t even bother counting these young people. They are no one’s constituency. They might as well not exist.

Except that they do exist. There are four million or more of these so-called disconnected youths across the country. They hang out on street corners in cities large and small — and increasingly in suburban and rural areas.

If you ask how they survive from day to day, the most likely response is: “I hustle,” which could mean anything from giving haircuts in a basement to washing a neighbor’s car to running the occasional errand.

Or it could mean petty thievery or drug dealing or prostitution or worse.

This is the flip side of the American dream. The United States economy, which has trouble producing enough jobs to keep the middle class intact, has left these youngsters all-but-completely behind.

“These kids are being challenged in ways that my generation was not,” said David Jones, the president of the Community Service Society of New York, which tries to develop ways to connect these young men and women with employment opportunities, or get them back into school.

It is extremely difficult because, for the most part, the jobs are not there and the educational establishment is having a hard enough time teaching the kids who are still in school.

“Schools have not made much of an effort to bring this population back in,” said Mr. Jones. “Once you fall out of the system, you’re basically on no one’s programmatic radar screen.”

So these kids drift. Some are drawn to gangs. A disproportionate number become involved in crime. It is a tragic story, and very few people are paying attention.

The economic policies of the past few decades have favored the wealthy and the well-connected to a degree that has been breathtaking to behold. The Nation magazine has devoted its current issue to the Gilded Age-type inequality that has been the result.

Just a little bit of help to the millions of youngsters trying to get their first tentative foothold in that economy should not be too much to ask.

It’s not as if these kids don’t want to work. Many of them search and search until they finally become discouraged. The summer job market, which has long been an important first step in preparing teenagers for the world of work, is shaping up this year as the weakest in more than half a century, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

Now, with the overall economy deteriorating, the situation for poorly educated young people will only grow worse. As Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies, told The Times recently:

“When you get into a recession, kids always get hit the hardest. Kids always go to the back of the hiring queue. Now, they find themselves with a lot of other people in line ahead of them.”

As the ranks of these youngsters grow, so does their potential to become a destabilizing factor in the society.

Labels: draft, John McCain, military readiness