What Your Country Can Do for You
An induction officer swears in a group of new recruits at New York City’s Whitehall Street induction center during the Berlin crisis, July 27, 1961. (via Getty Images)
By abandoning its old standards and appealing to more selfish ends, the military has exposed itself to the likes of Jack Teixeira.
Toward the end of the 1982 movie An Officer and a Gentleman, drill instructor Emil Foley challenges his recruit Zack Mayo to a fight, and brings him to his knees.
“You can quit now,” Foley, played by Lou Gossett Jr., tells the bloodied Mayo.
It’s one of many hurdles the recruit, played by Richard Gere, endures on his long road to becoming a Navy pilot. …
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