Courage 101... LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110003237

Courage 101
Military training transforms young lives--and draws harassment at some schools.

BY WILLIAM MCGURN
Sunday, March 23, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas--Folks who think America's young people aren't what they used to be ought to meet David Gorka.

A 21-year-old son of Ohio, Mr. Gorka has been dragged off from basic training to lunch with a group of observers from the now-alien world of civilians. That means the chance of eating a meal without a sergeant barking in his face. Mr. Gorka originally signed up for the Air National Guard right before 9/11 hit, mostly as a means of finishing his studies at the University of Toledo. With units around him now deploying and combat no longer abstract, he's asked if it's made him rethink his choice.

"Some of my friends think I'm crazy, and they tell me 'You could be sent over there,' " says Mr. Gorka. "I now see people shipping off [to the Middle East] and I think that's gonna be me." But I'm glad it might be me, because I'm glad to have the privilege to serve my country."

A young man's naivet?? If so, our all-volunteer armed services have tens of thousands just like Airman Gorka. These days, recruiters confirm, the reluctance to view the military as a positive choice comes chiefly from two sources: parents understandably concerned about having their sons and daughters put in harm's way, and high school officials either hostile to the military or unaware of what it has to offer--or, sometimes, both. That was one reason Congress included a provision in last year's No Child Left Behind Act requiring public schools to provide military recruiters with student directories as well as to grant recruiters the same access to campus they would give to recruiters from colleges or business.





Like all the other branches, the Air Force has also set up a program to bring teachers, counselors and administrators here to Lackland to show them what military life is really about. "I totally changed my mind about the military since coming here," says Sue Culham, a career coordinator from Oregon who was impressed by the educational levels airmen have and the training they receive. The teachers learn that 99% of today's airmen have high school diplomas, and that two-thirds of them also have some college.
But not all educators are as open-minded as Ms. Culham and the others on this tour. Lt. Col. Angelo T. Haygood, a navigator who commands the top Air Force recruiting squadron out of Sacramento, talks about the obstacles and petty harassment recruiters still face notwithstanding the new law.

One of his female recruiters, for example, had a protester literally thrust her body between her and the student she was talking to. Because the law allows parents to opt out, one popular administrative dodge is to incorporate an opt-out provision into the same form parents sign to register their kids and hope they don't read too closely. Up in Rhode Island, meanwhile, the same American Civil Liberties Union that argues a 13-year-old girl ought to be able to have an abortion without her parents' knowledge now tells us that a 17-year-old high school junior is too delicate to take a phone call from a military recruiter without mom or dad explicitly signing off.

Even the most ardent recruiters acknowledge the military is not for everyone. But it can do wonders. In the room where BVDs are being issued to a fresh batch of trainees, the sergeant in charge tells us that many young men arrive not even knowing their waist size. "You know who's been buying their pants their whole lives," he smiles. "Momma."

You read the transformation of these lives in the faces of the moms, dads, girlfriends, boyfriends and baby sisters in the reviewing stand on graduation day, watching in proud disbelief as their loved one marches by in his or her dress blues. Teachers see it all the time. "Some of these kids go off loud and immature," says Kandy Frazier, a high school senior counselor from Carthage, Mo. "Then they come back in their uniforms and it's all 'yes ma'am' and 'no ma'am' and you just say to yourself, 'Wow.' "

We saw it up front, at a graduation parade held the morning after President Bush warned that America was only days away from a reckoning. The president's words lent a special poignancy to the oath that graduation day, as the new airmen swore allegiance to their commander in chief and pledged to defend the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." As these words were repeated by the men and women before us, there were many moist eyes in our group.





On Friday David Gorka took that same oath at Lackland. And it helps to remember that he is joined not only by the 45,000 who pass through this base each year but the tens of thousands of other young Americans taking the same oath at similar ceremonies at Parris Island (Marines), Fort Benning (Army) or the Great Lakes Recruit Training Center (Navy), not to mention the thousands of young officers who will be graduated by our service academies this spring or commissioned on other campuses through the Reserve Officers Training Corps.
"I don't think of it as killing," says Airman Gorka. "I think of it as serving my country and doing what we have to do to protect our freedoms." What does it say about an age where the students sometimes understand that better than their schools?

Mr. McGurn is The Wall Street Journal's chief editorial writer.