Could the United States have a volunteer military if the armed services weren't allowed to recruit young people? Of course not. How could young people be recruited if recruiters aren't allowed to go where young people are - such as in the nation's high schools?

Yet there are people - perhaps well-meaning, perhaps not - who seek to ban military recruiters from high schools. One of them is Denice Traina, mother of two and co-chairwoman of Georgia's Green Party. Last week, she was in Augusta urging the Richmond County Board of Education not to let recruiters into schools until equal access is granted to the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and other such organizations.

Traina didn't do her homework. Those organizations are not barred from the schools - they're just not as aggressive as the military in seeking access. A Peace Corps official in Atlanta, for instance, said her group has never had a problem getting into Georgia public schools. All they have to do is ask.

Traina also seems to think that the Peace Corps and like groups are the antithesis of the military - rivals, if you will, in competition with one another. Well, that's not how it works. The programs offer different incentives and opportunities. Young people who sign up for the military are looking for an entirely different kind of fulfillment and lifestyle than Peace Corps volunteers - and vice-versa. Incidentally, both are huge assets for our country.

Further evidence that Traina didn't do her homework was her complaint that school officials violate students' privacy rights by releasing personal information - names, addresses, phone numbers - to recruiters. Actually, if schools didn't open up this information, they would be in violation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which grants the Pentagon access to all public school directories.

We don't know if Denice Traina is simply nave - i.e., a misguided peacenik - or if there's something malevolent at work in her Green Party's harass-recruitment campaign, which - intentional or not - undermines the United States in a time of war. That smacks of anti-Americanism.

Loyal Americans should try to help military recruiters, not hinder them. Who does the Green Party think will protect their constitutional rights to anti-American advocacy if recruiting efforts fail? Would they then back a military draft? No way!

Greenies, like many on the far left, hate the military; their actions indicate they want to destroy it just as much as al-Qaida does. Shutting down recruiting programs is one way to accomplish that from within.

We are confident most Americans are too patriotic and have too much common sense to ever let that happen. Yet it's still painful to watch the hate-America groups try.