Paid agents of the United States Government are recruiting young people to participate in behavior prohibited by U.S. law. These agents recruit in a manner that discriminates against people based on their sexual preference — i.e., against openly gay persons.
Thus, these agents, identified as U.S. military recruiters, are acting in an unlawful manner asking people to participate in unlawful activities.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964 prohibits unequal treatment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in all areas of employment. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires affording "equal protection of the laws" to all persons within each state, and by virtue of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), such equal protection binds the federal government through the 5th Amendment’s "due process" clause. Thus, in discriminating against gay persons, the military recruiters are violating the Constitutional civil rights of potential recruits, and the provisions of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
A number of academic institutions have banned military recruiters on their property because of discrimination policies, bans which have been upheld by at least one federal court.
But the most egregious offense of these federal agents, i.e., military recruiters, is that they are recruiting young people who, it can be reasonably predicted, will have a great probability to be ordered to participate in illegal wars and occupations (crimes against peace, and possibly crimes against humanity) and to target civilians and civilian infrastructure (war crimes).
The U.S.-led wars against, and occupations of, Afghanistan and Iraq, 2002 to the present, are illegal on their face. No war was declared as required by the U.S. Constitution. The United Nations (UN) Charter to which the U.S. is a signatory, allows military action in only two instances: (1) if authorized by the UN Security Council, or (2) if undertaken in self-defense against an existing or imminent armed attack. Neither of these conditions were met or sought. Under Article VI, Clause 2, of the U.S. Constitution, the provisions of the UN Charter are incorporated into the Supreme Law of the Land of the United States, and therefore the U.S. violated both the UN Charter, and its own Constitution.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has publicly declared that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was and remains an illegal act that contravenes the UN Charter.
Richard Perle in 2003, when a senior advisor to the Department of Defense Policy Board, admitted that the Iraq war was illegal because the U.S. had broken international law, behavior not consistent with the rules of the UN.
U.S. military judge, Lt. Commander Robert Klant, in May 2005, found Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes had "reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq were illegal." He came to this legal conclusion after hearing testimony at Paredes’ trial that:
(a) the wars violated the UN Charter, ratified by the U.S., which forbids force unless carried out in self-defense or with the approval of the UN Security Council, neither of which were applicable to or sought by the U.S.;
(b) torture and inhumane treatment well documented in Iraqi prisons constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, ratified by the U.S., and are considered war crimes under the U.S. War Crimes Statute;
(c) both the UN Charter and Geneva Conventions are part of the Supreme U.S. Law under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution;
(d) the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) requires all military personnel to obey lawful orders, that a general order or regulation is lawful unless it is contrary to the Constitution and laws of the U.S.;
(e) the Nuremberg Principles, applicable to the U.S. and each of its citizens as part of international law, and the U.S. Army Field Manual, create a duty to disobey unlawful orders; and
(f) Article 509 of Army Field Manual 27-10 specifies that "following superior orders" is not a defense to the commission of war crimes unless the accused "did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know that the act ordered was unlawful."
We now have the benefit of the seven leaked confidential British Downing Street Memos, dated from March to July 2002, that paint a damning portrait of the U.S. march to war a full year before its March 2003 invasion. The head of the British Intelligence Service M16 reported in these 2002 memos that "war was now seen as inevitable," that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." "Regime change" was the policy, but without any justification, and "has no basis under international law." The memos also declare: "There is no recent evidence of Iraq complicity with international
Recruiter Abuse: Coercion, Misrepresentation, Harassment, Deception
Reports of serious recruiter improprieties — including fraud and coercion has surfaced and the Army has been forced to investigate 480 allegations of impropriety by recruiters since Oct. 1, 2004.
One recruiter was caught encouraging a recruit to create a fake high school diploma to cover for the fact that he had dropped out. Another recruiter was discovered driving a recruit to a store to purchase a detoxification kit to rid his system of supposed marijuana traces.
Recruiters in Ohio, New York, Washington, Texas and New England said that as long as an offending recruiter met his enlistment quota of roughly two recruits a month, punishment was unlikely. "The saying here is, ‘Production is power,’ " the recruiter in northern Ohio said. "Produce, and all is good."
"The problem is that no one wants to join," the recruiter said. "We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by."
U.S. Army Recruiting Command provides a recruiting handbook to the 7,500 recruiters who are ordered to approach tenth, eleventh and twelfth graders — repeatedly.
Conclusion
U.S. military recruiters should be prohibited from (a) participating in acts (recruitment) that discriminate against persons on the basis of sexual preference, violating protected civil rights, and (b) inducing with historical patterns of misrepresentations the signing of contracts with young people who, it can be reasonably predicted, have a great probability of being ordered to participate in acts prohibited under U.S. Constitutional and statutory law.
Military recruiters are acting as accomplices in inducing others to join an organization (the U.S. military or one of its branches) that is currently violating international law, therefore violating U.S. Constitutional law, and whose servants are being ordered to behave in a manner resulting in commission of crimes and participation in lawless behavior.
Recruiters are accruing personal gain. Matching or exceeding, or failure thereof, superior-mandated recruiting quotas relate directly to career promotions/demotions and, therefore, increased/decreased pay grades. Thus, inducing people to sign a military contract where the recruits will likely participate in prohibited activities directly benefits the recruiter in career promotion and pay increases. Furthermore, the recruiter is participating in a conspiracy with his/her superiors to meet quotas (a) without regard to telling the truth, (b) through uttering various misrepresentations, and (c) perpetrating unwanted harassment.
Military recruitment during the period of illegal wars mandates formal prohibition of such behavior in each jurisdiction where it is occurring. Furthermore, military recruitment deserves permanent bans as long as the milit
ary discriminates against openly gay persons.
[Source citations are available for all facts included in above essay.]
