[Laurita]

“They offer these trinkets to lure our children to enlist,” Watson said in a phone interview from her home in Bolinas, Calif. “This is very aggressive, demographic targeting to have conversations with our kids that should not be happening.”

Those trinkets are $50,000 enlistment bonuses, college educations, all medical, dental and optical services and proceedures paid as well as no-cost prescriptions.
$250,000 life insurance for $16.00 per month. Eligibility for home loans. Free health and fitness facilities.
Food, clothing a roof over their heads and a monthly salary. In addition to learning invaluable skills taught nowhere else.

Call it "welfare" and the Liberals are all over it, call it "Military Service" and they say it's deplorable, go figure.

[Alia]

I, personally, have NEVER heard of a $50K enlistment bonus. Furthermore, in re the medical, dental, etc.: It can't just happen on a whim. Military person can't usually just say "Oh Yeah, I need braces". If there is an emergency related to JOB PERFORMANCE -- it gets done. I don't understand the "breast improvements" for females. Have no idea where that relates to "military performance". Maybe in the intel and counter intel ops? Yep, military uniforms are paid for (mostly); all personal matters are not. The pay is low. Yep, $250K for life insurance for $16.00 a month -- and the vast majority of soldiers/marines come home just fine. Lots of civilians pay for insurance policies they never need to use.

Yes, they do learn valuable skills; the first being obedience to orders; not self-rule and feelings. That's the hardest to break in civilians when they enter the military. You have to actually... PERFORM the job you are told TO DO. No civil rights lawyers or tort lawyers going to be able to "defend" your civilian right to be disobedient to superiors. Be abusive to your "underlings" and you end up in big trouble.

It ain't welfare. It means having your "personal life" on hold; something civilians *think* they know of; but they don't. They do when they put in 60-hour-workweeks; but in the civilian sector there's usually perks that go with those long workweeks. This is not true for military. You get the job done no matter how long it takes you. Civilians would not do this.

Call it "welfare" and the Liberals are all over it, call it "Military Service" and they say it's deplorable, go figure.

Yes, you are so right here. How many homeless, on subsistance (fed/state) go in to fight an opponent army with your death foremost in their target and goal?