The Pentagon is desperately trying to stop the hemorrhaging. The army lowered its academic standards last fall, and, just last month, the Wall Street Journal wrote that “To keep more soldiers in the service, the Army has told battalion commanders, who typically command 800-soldier units, that they can no longer bounce soldiers from the service for poor fitness, pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse or generally unsatisfactory performance.”
Just what we need: an army of Federlines.
The military’s recruiting problems shouldn’t come as a surprise. The mayhem in Iraq continues to grow while Afghanistan is playing catch-up, fast. According to the nonpartisan factcheck.org, “By most measures the violence [in Iraq] is getting worse. Both April and May were record months in Iraq for car bombings…with more than 135 of them being set off each month.” In Afghanistan, the Taliban-orchestrated violence has gotten so bad that it has left “much of Afghanistan off-limits to aid workers and has reinforced concerns that the war here is escalating into a conflict on the scale of that in Iraq,” according to the Associated Press. Potential recruits may be young, but they’re not stupid.
Adding to the crisis, there are rumblings that more U.S. troops are needed. Democratic senator Joe Biden recently returned from Iraq, where, he says, American generals told him they need more troops. Republican senator John McCain agrees. But where will we get more troops when recruitment is down, our current supply of soldiers is getting killed or wounded, and Donald Rumsfeld now admits that we could be in Iraq for 10 to 15 years?
Does anybody else feel a draft coming on?
He is exactly right. Now we have the Pentagon talking about taking us away from our two war rediness doctrine. If the times are as dangerous as we keep being told, is that really what we want to do?
Read the full text of John's piece here.
-The Oklahoma Hippy
"Now we have the Pentagon talking about taking us away from our two war rediness doctrine."
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that by abandoning the two war rediness doctrine, it suddenly means that we aren't doing so bad on the recruitment front.
Isn't this a typical Republican strategy -- Don't like the outcome or the way the numbers are working? Well, change the way you measure it, and it will all be fine.
I hate to burst the Pentagon's bubble, but, from the looks of things in Afghanistan, we are already in a two front war!
I hope we won't need a draft. I call on anyone who is still in favor of this war to contact your local recruiting office. Uncle Sam needs your help, and since you're so gung-ho about the war... you go fight it!
-The Hippy's Wife
That is, without exception, the most illogical (if I may dust off that timeworn chestnut) argument I have ever heard of in my life. You mentioned earlier that you supported the initial military efforts against the Taliban post 9/11. Did you sign up for the army as a result of your support for the administration's decisions? Did you support President Clinton's actions in Bosnia and Kosovo? If so then, under your argument, I hoped you went and signed up or else your support would be entirely shallow and hypocritical. Pretty silly right? I agree. So stop trying to throw in everyone's faces that nonsense of 'if you support the president and the war then you should sign up to go to Iraq', because, as illustrated above, its a silly argument.
ReplyDelete~kisses
It's not so illogical if you look at this like this.
ReplyDeleteIn all of the other military engagements that you mentioned, we have not been in a situation where we found our force levels unsustainable. We don't have the recruits to allow our military to sustain this action.
We don't have the National Guardsmen at home to assit with disaster releif or homeland security.
We don't even have enough recruits to keep up our force levels in Iraq without requiring people to serve long after their agreed upon enlistment terms have expired.
We will have to go with one of two options.
We will either have to allow our troop levels to dictate our time table for withdrawing, rather than letting the security situation dictate it.
Or, we will have to find a way to replace those troops, and if we cannot do it on a voluntary basis, then we'll have to do it on an involuntary basis, which no one wants to do.
So, that leaves a third option for those so inclined. If someone feels that it is important to continue to fight this war, then they need to consider enlisting because we need the troops.
People who disagree with the war on principle are not going to be the one's to enlist. Ideology and politics aside, that is simply a practical observation.
People who agree with the war need to consider it that way. Is this war imporantant enough to our Nation that I am willing to sacrifrice and join in the military to assure the outcome I feel is important.
Recruiting numbers are almost as reliable as poll numbers. People don't want to enlist, because they don't geel that going to Iraq is worth it.
That's completely acceptable.
But when someone is claims to be supportive of this war and yet expects other to enlist when they themselves are unwilling, how can that continue to insist that we continue in the manner we have been going?
This would be a silly argument if we had an over abundance of soldiers and resources.
Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq 1, Grenada... in all of those conflicts our Armed forces were sufficently staffed. Saying in that situation that if you support the war then you have to enlist is indeed silly.
But now, in the light of troop shortages and the ever growing number of injured and maimed, our call for people to enlist is something more than a snarky comment.
It is a call for everyday people who have supported the war to consider if what we are gaining is worth the cost. Is it worth it enough for it to be your body on the line? Is it worth it enough that I will leave my family and my job and put myself in physical danger on the other side of the globe?
If the answer is no, then how can we ask an 18 year old kid to go in our place?
So, that's the difference between previous conflicts and this one. We can't continue this way without the enlistment of at least some of the people who claim they support our miiltary action in Iraq.
Do you still feel this is an illogical argument?