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thedrifter
06-18-05, 06:36 AM
06.17.2005
Not a Recruiting Crisis, But a Cultural One
By David DeBatto


Much has been written recently about the failure of the U.S. Army to meet its recruiting goals over the past few months.

Even the active Army, which had been able to achieve its goals earlier in the fiscal year, has fallen short in the past four months. As almost anyone with any interest in the news already knows, the reserve components (Army Reserve and Army National Guard specifically), have been especially hard hit by the recruiting drought, with the Guard being almost one-third off its fiscal-year-to-date goal.

There have also been some well-publicized stories about a few overworked and stressed-out recruiters engaging in unscrupulous methods to try and make their monthly goals. In fact, the recruiting picture has become such a problem for the Pentagon, that last week officials took the unprecedented step of prohibiting the individual services from releasing their monthly recruiting figures to the press. From now on, DoD itself will release all military recruiting information directly to the media.

Is there indeed a recruiting "crisis" in America today?

Well, I will let you be the judge of that. In my opinion, there is not. No, what I see is actually a much deeper problem with our current American culture. There is no longer any shred of a feeling of commitment to country in the U.S. today by the vast majority of Americans of all ages.

Very few people feel that they owe anything at all to society at large for the right and privilege of being an American. In fact, when I mentioned that very concept on a radio talk show a few days ago, I was called a "dinosaur." The caller may have been right, because I see all around me aging "dinosaurs" like myself, veterans of current and past conflicts, growing old and dying out in large numbers, without the need for a cataclysmic meteor strike.

In fact, ask any military recruiter who was serving in the days and weeks following 9/11 and they will tell you that the majority of candidates knocking on their door wanting to enlist were not the 18-to-21-year-old crowd. No, it was older veterans like me who wanted to do whatever we could for our country after it had just been attacked.

I thought then, and I still feel today, that was the telltale sign to me of what this current younger generation is made of. If you are an able-bodied young person and you can't muster up enough motivation to raise your right hand when your country is literally under the gun, then you have no right to call yourself an American. I may take some flack for saying that, but I stand by it 100 percent.

I wrote an article in DefenseWatch in March 2004 headlined, "The Military-Civilian Divide Wider Than Ever," which talked about the disconnect between the average American and the troops fighting the War on Terrorism – or any service member, actually. My thesis then and now, is that nine out of 10 people whom you meet on the street have never served in the military and do not know anyone who has ever served in the military.

We are being protected by an ever-dwindling pool of patriots willing to put their lives on the line to insure that the rest of us can shop till we drop.

Add to that mix the current generation of parents (my generation) of military-age young people, many of who lived through and protested against the Vietnam War and who are against any military action, ever, and you have a recipe for a failed All-Volunteer Army. Some of these parents also harbor a deeply rooted hatred of the military in general, so any attempt at a rational discussion about military service is fruitless. I know. I've tried many times without success. Woodstock Nation is alive and well in more communities than you might believe.

Parents have now formed several new anti-war, anti-military associations. The focus of many of these groups is to prevent recruiters from entering schools or other places where their children congregate in order to stop the recruiters from speaking to them about military service. Some of the miscreants have even gone so far as to physically assault recruiters in recent weeks and, in a few instances, have firebombed recruiting stations. Fortunately, no recruiter has been seriously injured to my knowledge, but it is probably just a matter of time before that occurs.

I have to admit that when I saw a photo of an Army recruiter being jeered and taunted as he was being escorted out of a mall by security in the Seattle area a few weeks ago, my blood boiled. How dare they!

Especially in that area, the home to Microsoft and several other mega-corporations that have flourished in this country because of the many selfless acts throughout our history by "war-mongers" like the recruiter they were trying to pummel. It was quite a spectacle: parents yelling and screaming at him, shaking a fist with one hand while they held onto their $4.00 Starbucks latte with the other.

These parents who refuse to speak with their children about service to their country or even let their children consider a military career, all the while complain about a feeling of "always being afraid" of another terrorist attack and that the government is not doing more to protect them. These are the people who believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and pull out of Iraq as fast as possible, regardless of the consequences to Iraqi or American national security. These same parents have no clue as to what we have accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan, have never bothered to learn who or what we are fighting against, and have spent every free moment over the past six months watching news of the Michael Jackson trial.

When I wrote that piece about the divide in this country between the military and everyone else a little over a year ago, I thought the situation was pretty bad. It was, but now, it's worse. Much worse.

What we are seeing now, I believe, is the beginning of a profound change in the U.S. Army from an American all-volunteer force to a publicly financed mercenary Army, very similar to what the Roman Empire used.

That Roman army consisted of a very small percentage of citizens trained to be warriors who were sent out to fight for the empire in far-flung corners of the world, sometimes in unpopular wars, while the rest of the population stayed home and carried on with their rapidly deteriorating culture as if they were on another planet. No doubt, had they had TV back then, they would have watched their legions battle the barbarians on prime time. Only their lower classes filled the fighting ranks of the Army. Officers came from the upper classes and expected and received special privileges from their government. Lower enlisted routinely paid for the mistakes of their generals and civilian leaders.

This now sounds like an all-too-familiar story.

And we all know what happened to the Roman Empire

Ellie