Last Friday, May 20th, the U.S. Army ordered its 7,500 recruiters to participate in what it called a “values stand down day.” During this day, recruiters quit their desperate attempts to lure young people into the Army and instead gathered with other recruiters to watch a video from the Army’s senior recruiting officer Maj. Gen Michael Rochelle, reaffirm their oath to the Army, and discuss recruiting practices. The reason for this highly publicized stand down day was the hundreds of recent allegations of misconduct made against recruiters. Everything from threatening young folks with arrest, to helping possible recruits cheat on drug tests. Such allegations were not surprising to us. Our work answering calls from the GI Rights Hotline brings us into contact daily with young folks who tell stories of recruiters lying and threatening them with imprisonment or with a ruined future if they do not enlist. Others tell us of promises made by recruiters about life in the military, promises that they realize are false as soon as they arrive at boot camp.

A March 27, 2005 New York Times article exposed the extreme pressure that Army recruiters face to enlist young men and women to join a military fighting in a nightmare of a war. This desperate need for young men and women to fight in its wars is underscored by the fact that the Army is currently 6,600 recruits short of its quota. One recruiter spoke of his past combat deployment as being less stressful then recruiting, while another recruiter said that he had requested a transfer to duty in Iraq. Anything to get out of recruiting; or as the recent allegations of misconduct have shown, do anything to get recruits.

It is not only this pressure to feed the Pentagon’s war machine with fresh bodies, though, that we believe has driven recruiters to lie. We would suggest it is the very fact that this entire war in Iraq is rooted in lies. And it is from these lies that all the immoralities of this war fester. The over 100,000 dead and wounded Iraqis and Americans, the scandals at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay prison camps, the soaring suicide rate among U.S. service members both in Iraq and upon their return home, the frightening frequency of rape of U.S. troops by U.S. troops, and now the relatively mundane exposure of recruiters lying. Peace truly is the first casualty of untruthfulness, and we are seeing daily the horrific consequences of the untruthfulness of those who started and continue to justify this war.

In the same sermon quoted above, Williams argues that if the Gospel of Christ does not have an absolute and timeless prohibition of the use of violence and killing (as Weigel, Neuhuas and Novak falsely claim), it at least unquestionably calls for the rejection of lies and the embrace of the truth. As Christians, as believers in the Truth of Christ, we must disengage ourselves from the lies of this war. We must recognize that nothing good can ever come from this war nor the occupation of Iraq so rooted in the lies of the Bush administration.

Instead, we must trust in Christ’s promise that in knowing and following Him, we will know the truth and the truth will make us free.