Personal misery and emotional vulnerability drove this woman to join the army reserves

Evidence

OVER THE COURSE of the next year, Lina decided that she would like to be engaged to Laith, and the two had a torturous long-distance courtship. Laith was also involved with another American girl at the time, and it drove Lina crazy. She was miserable, unable to figure out what to do with her life. She felt totally lost, and one day in October 2002 she stopped at the army recruiting table on her campus. The salesmen in drab green uniforms sweet-talked the young lady into joining the army reserves. It would pay for school, she figured, and give her some discipline, which she knew she needed. She joined, believing she would be an operating-room specialist and be stationed at a hospital near Walter Reed, close to Laith in Virginia. She signed the forms and told her father later. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 657

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is October 2002 — pre-Iraq War. Worth asking how the reserve contract changed after the invasion, and whether Lina’s specific MOS (operating-room specialist, Walter Reed) meant she later faced deployment she did not anticipate.
• SEED: The recruiters sweet-talking a grieving, lost young woman at a campus table — and the concrete promise (school money, discipline, proximity to her fiancé) — is an angle for writing on how military recruiting succeeds on emotional vulnerability rather than patriotism.