Mr. White of the American Legion and Mr. Longfellow of the VFW bring up several separate issues in their letter "the alternative is a draft." They ask if we would rather have a draft. They make a claim of many benefits from service in the Armed Forces. They ask, "Is it right that young adults be banned from exposure to a noble profession that provides excellent employment and life-development opportunities just because a special-interest group doesn't like it?

Let's respond to these questions and statements. Is re-instating the draft or having an all-voluntary military the only two choices? Are there not other choices? No standing military used for the purpose of military colonization with over 700 documented military bases around the world. No unprovoked attacks, wars or occupations of sovereign countries to take, by force, their natural resources and cheap labor/slavery. How about a return to the principals of the constitution and our Founding Fathers?

The Department of Defense has produced a worldwide dispersion of the military. Now they try to maintain it with the stop-loss (back door draft.) Eight percent of our military is made up of non-U.S. citizens (with an incentive for them and their families to become citizens if they fight for the elite). No wonder the Department of Defense has a recruiting budget in the billions and uses it to target students and parents with expensive advertising campaigns.

And answer this: Who is left to protect our country in national or state emergencies? Is this what our men and women in uniform are doing? It seems that most were in the wrong gulf when "duty" called.

Benefiting from military service? Is loss of life and limb a benefit? Is ending up as one of the 250,000 homeless Vietnam veterans a benefit? What about PTSD and other disabling effects of war that take years to manifest -- are they a benefit also? Show us, in just one community, how many of these ex-service members are using their military skills and training. As you must know, the Veterans Administration budget is being cut drastically each year. What medical or monetary benefits will be available to the thousands of troops currently deployed when they return disabled n if they return at all?

What Just Don't Go and other organizations in the counter-recruitment movement want is "equal access" in the schools -- the same access to the students that the military recruiters have. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1986 that the other side (if one side is heard) must be heard. Anything less has been ruled as "viewpoint based discrimination." We want to show what the recruiters purposely don't show in their fancy, glossy brochures, the truth about over 20,000 wounded veterans since the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the truth about the dead and wounded of past wars of aggression in the pursuit of corporate profit. History and government classes taught in the schools already promote the idea that these wars are fought to protect us from foreign enemies and to protect democracy. The messages and warnings of our Founding Fathers and such Montana leaders as Jeannette Rankin and Burton K. Wheeler about the dangers to our republic of foreign wars of corporate greed are being ignored.

We as activists are only trying to balance a few pounds of truth with thousands of pounds of propaganda. Teach truth in the schools -- there are recruiting stations in nearly every town of significant size. And yes! Recruits do walk into these stations. As long as the military is in the schools in any form, let us offer alternative life choices based on truth.

Jo Ann Thun, Wayne Lewis, and Rick Gildroy are counter-recruitment activists and founders of Just Don't Go, a Montana-based community coalition of students, parents, teachers, peace activists, and veterans committed to stopping the militarization of our schools. Its mission statement can be found on its Web site, justdon'tgo.org.