The Peace Army

Shakespeare's Sister has a good post on the McCain-Bayh bill that'd allow military recruits to fulfill part of their service obligations in the Peace Corps.  Apparently, the program was popped into the Defense Bill from a couple years ago and, well, funny thing, no one ever informed the Peace Corps.

Whoops.

I'm a little conflicted on the program, to tell you the truth.  On the one hand, it seems like a good idea to give recruits exhausted from the army a chance to wipe the blood from their hands and do some humanitarian work.  Nevertheless, I've got to come down against it for three reasons.

1) As Shakes said, it'll break down the traditional barrier between Peace Corps and military, potentially making Peace Corps volunteers targets overseas.  That's got to be avoided at all costs.

2) I fear it'll become nothing more than a way to trick uncertain kids into signing up for the army.  Even now, they're told that it'll be a breeze, they'll be out in a couple years with thousands of dollars for college, they'll just be doing a desk job.  Then they're sent to Iraq.  Add in this option that they could spend most of their time in Costa Rica building huts on the beach and, well, I've got a feeling desperate recruiters will leverage it both mercilessly and unethically.  I was talking to a recruiter the other day, in fact, and he said meeting quotas was impossible.  If it kept up like this, he thought they'd need a draft.

3) In addition to getting tricked into signing up, if you use the Peace Corps as a sweetener, folks might think they're joining for shorter tours.  Not necessarily.  In this age of stop-loss policies and constant rotations, you may not only never get to your Peace Corps portion, the short tour which you thought would be halved by humanitarian work can now stretch out years, and youll be called up in every future battle fought. 

Si I come down against.  I would love more funds, energy, and cash pushed towards national service in this country, but it's got to be done separately from the military.  All ways of serving the country should be honored, but that doesn't mean they should be mixed.  The Peace Corps should not be a sweetener to become a soldier.  It's not an incentive program, it's a powerful, free-standing portion of America's foreign relations strategy.  That we've neglected it in the past few uears is shameful.  We shouldn't compound the sin by perverting it into an arm of the military.