My son is considering joining the Marines next year. What should we be asking recruiters?

[Hekate]

14. Coast Guard, Navy, or Air Force instead? Also, when I worked with the Vets for Peace after 9-11...

… the book “War Is a Racket” by the hero General Smedley Butler was recommended to me many times. It’s available at Amazon for only $5.99.

I had to wait until some other people responded to your OP before I could write. My problem is that I came of age during the Vietnam War. I thought maybe we and our government learned something about the sheer wastage of young lives during that war — but no, when we were attacked on 9-11 with BushCheney at the helm, and an unfortunate number of old Nixonians back in DC, it turned out we had learned nothing at all.

I am not a pacifist, and I believe there are times and places for military to be deployed. I trust Joe Biden — but I no longer trust our government institutions or the Pentagon to care for our sons and daughters as they should, especially the ground troops like the Marines and Army. There’s too much money to be made, and BushCheney’s pals made money hand over fist. They treated our troops like toy soldiers, not human beings.

This is the project my friends and I worked on for years, Arlington West at the beach near Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara. VFP Chapter 54’s member Stephen Shirrell, a local carpenter, birthed the idea and the chapter took it up and supported it fully. The idea spread up and down the coast from there.

https://www.independent.com/2008/05/26/five-years-and-counting/

All the best to you and your son.