Go Mom! Go Dad!

Several - I'm not sure how many, actually - years ago there was a dreadful sci-fi flick called "Mom and Dad Save the Universe." It was so bad you can't even find out stuff about it online except a few comments on how bad it was.

Well, Mom and Dad may not be saving the universe these days, but some of them are saving something more down to Earth. Friday's New York Times had the good news.

Two years into the war in Iraq, as the Army and Marines struggle to refill their ranks, parents have become boulders of opposition that recruiters cannot move.

Mothers and fathers around the country said they were terrified that their children would have to be killed - or kill - in a war that many see as unnecessary and without end.

Around the dinner table, many parents said, they are discouraging their children from serving.

At schools, they are insisting that recruiters be kept away, incensed at the access that they have to adolescents easily dazzled by incentive packages and flashy equipment.

As the war in Iraq has dragged on and bogged down - or, perhaps more accurately, revealed its real nature - the portion of parents prepared to recommend the military to their children has dropped dramatically. And while, as the article notes, parents really can't stop their 18-and-up children from enlisting, not many of those youngsters are willing to join the military over their parents' objections. (So much for "children never listen to their parents any more.")

In the face of this, the military is dropping dark hints about what may come. Last month, chief Army recruiter Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle said the all-volunteer force could be in jeopardy. And recently-retired chief of staff for Army recruiting Col. David Slotwinski said that if parents don't help "make the all-volunteer force successful," then "you're faced with the alternative, and the alternative is what they were opposed to the most, mandatory service." That is, help us grab your kids or we'll draft 'em.

Many of the parents are most disturbed by the aggressive campaigns recruiters engage in, especially if those parents learn only belatedly about the requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act that military recruiters get access to lists of students' names, addresses, and phone numbers unless their parents specifically say otherwise. That's an option of which many parents say they were unaware because the information was buried in a mass of other papers from the schools.

In the midst of this seriousness and parental anger, however, this struck me funny:

The Pentagon ... is especially vexed by a generation of more activist parents who have no qualms about projecting their own views onto their children.

Remember when the knock on the current generation of parents was that they were too permissive, that they didn't teach their children values? Now, apparently, the complaint is that they do teach them values. Just, shall we say, inconvenient ones.

Footnote: Another possible aspect to this is it's an exercise in pre-emptive CYA. Before the 2004 election, a number of people predicted that the draft would return in its wake. The military and the White House insisted it wouldn't. Could it be that the ground is being laid for blaming war opponents for a call to resume conscription?