The unsettling events of the past decade – eight years of Bush-Cheney's reign of terror, 9/ 11, an economy in the doldrums, two wars dragging on for years and now a black president in the White House, have some Americans feeling particularly paranoid. Hate groups are quietly increasing their ranks and recruitment efforts, anti-immigration fervor is high, guns and ammo sales have spiked and the Explorer program of the Boy Scouts of America is training teenagers to fight terrorism and illegal immigration.
Although Sir Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts movement in America was a passionate pro-military patriot and scouting does have an element of quasi-military regimentation (duty, obedience, honor, patriotism etc), for the most part youngsters in the program are taught values like discipline, teamwork, responsibility and self-reliance. We don't expect scouts to be well armed and combat trained. But apparently, some adults feel that a scout's training should not be limited just to learning rope knots, lighting campfires, pitching tents and earning merit badges through community service.
IMPERIAL, Calif. — Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.
The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.
“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.
It is all quite a step up from the square knot.
The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.
“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”
The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.
“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”
No matter what the Explorer leaders say about the training being confined to simulated settings, we know that children like to show off their skills to impress others, especially the ones they also enjoy practising. Filled with patriotic zeal and paranoia, some may begin to nurture adventurous fantasies.
Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.
“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”
What is to prevent Cathy or another Explorer from deciding that the man mowing the lawn next door is an illegal immigrant or the gas station attendant looks like a terrorist and taking matters in his/ her own hands with the hope of becoming the neighborhood hero? In any case, how is this a good idea, pumping unnecessary fear into young minds and teaching them to take lethal action? We point fingers at fundamentalist Islamic nations for fueling jihadist fires. We claim that the ill education offered by the madrassas is early training for terrorism later in life. What are we then doing through such stupid drills under the aegis of a respectable youth organization like the Boy Scouts? Creating future xenophobic, trigger-happy goons? How can we go about "civilizing" the rest of the world when our elected leaders attack other countries without provocation like the old Soviet Union and torture prisoners like middle eastern theocracies and third world dicatorships? How safe can we become by ridding ourselves of decency and common sense? Should we now also go down the same road as the Congo, Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone and train child soldiers? How safe will that make us? And how civilized?
"Be Prepared" is the motto of the Boy Scouts. "For what?" Baden-Powell was often asked. "Why, for any old thing," he's supposed to have answered. Any old thing, indeed. At this rate of fear mongering, that may no longer include helping little old ladies waiting to cross the street!
Accidental Blogger 