A recent Senate hearing addressed a big problem facing America’s All-Volunteer Force (AVF): recruitment.
The Army fell 25 percent short of its 2022 goal; the Air Force is 10 percent below; the Navy met its target for enlisted folks but not officers; and the Marines hit their mark but said “never before” has it been so challenging.
“The Pentagon has attributed its difficulties to a variety of factors,” reports The Washington Post, “including the nation’s low unemployment rate, school closings during the coronavirus pandemic that limited recruiters’ access to high school students and faculty, and a shifting culture in which more teens gravitate to jobs with work-life balance.”
As The Post paraphrased Army Undersecretary Gabe O. Camarillo, “the most significant barriers to service [include] fears of death or injury, suffering psychological harm, and leaving behind friends and family.”
Indeed, what with possibility of overseas deployment and combat, the job of soldier certainly does not score well in the “work-life balance” category. While a sense of mission — and the country’s need — has helped spark interest in the past, that need has been blurred by a long string of misguided military adventures in recent decades.
Sure, President Joe has repeatedly promised American military force in defense of Taiwan against repeated Chinese threats to invade.* But do young Americans perceive this as anything to them? Has the wokeness mission, stressed by the administration and the Pentagon and interrogated during the Senate hearings, occluded the more traditional sense of mission upon which the AVF has relied?
It’s time for Mr. Biden to speak to the people on the military’s core mission — including his promises, and those of other politicians. Asking them to keep his word.
Plus, a personal presidential request might add an element of responsibility and accountability from the commander-in-chief to the soldiers recruited.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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19 replies on “Why We Fight”
I disagree that it’s time for President Biden to speak to the people on anything. It’s time for him to shut-up, except as is necessary to aid in the cataloguing of his crimes.
More generally, though, the agents of our Federal government indeed need to adopt and articulate a coherent and morally defensible mission of foreign policy and of an intersecting, coherent, and morally defensible military policy.
We have seen that, at present, our military does not act in service of our nation, but of a functionally sociopathic ruling class. A mission of conquest attracts fewer young men and women than does a mission of defense.
Maybe you shouldn’t speak about anything with your biased opinion. You are still a Trump lover or a Trump apologist. Trump, the only president with a hundred word vocabulary and 33,000+ documented lies!
Covfefe!!!!!
Pam, I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 nor on 2020, and I won’t vote for him in 2024. My dog in the fight is truth. Yours is something else.
A military that believes Drag Shows are necessary to “morale and readiness” (as an Air Force missive recently stated) is a military rapidly losing its purpose and effectiveness.
BS! The first time I saw a drag queen show was in the Bahamas and I had no idea what it was until the end. It was a lot of fun and the show was sold out. Not everyone is a prude like you. You only speak for yourself. Quit trying to speak for others!
When were you dropped on your head? Did you see a medic?
I think that far too many young people see the administration realistically, AKA corrupt, to want to commit to defending anything he says.
No mention of the COVID vaccine mandates and how they might have discouraged young men from joining the military. The mandates were just rescinded earlier this year. See if that changes the outlook for young people considering joining the military.
That was one of my thoughts on the subject. Even though the mandates are *gone*, many of the other injections required now include mRNA.
I know of a few peole who resigned from the military whan Clinton was elected, and several others who refused to join at the time.
I think the same thoughts are in play at this time.
You should change your name to “Not So Smart”. You bank the draft dodger Donald Dumb Shit! Dumber than dirt comes to mind!
Say what you will. Call me a “draft dodger” even though I met the draft head-on. But if you start spraying four-letter words, we will remove them.
Very good point. That vaccine mandates had a negative effect. Wasn’t mentioned in the media discussion and I failed to note it. Thanks for the catch.
Paul, I thought you chose not to fight! So how would you know “why we fight”?
I’m not a pacifist. But I make war only when I believe it is just.
Pam, rather than choosing not to fight, Paul refused to have the choice of whether to fight taken from him.
You would have to look-up where Paul might have fought had he joined the military or allowed himself to be dragged into it. You and most people like you don’t remember where the US military fought at that time, because those fights weren’t in defense of our nationally shared interests, but instead for other reasons.
You don’t have a clue as usual. You have no idea what I know or where I was at the time.
If everyone did as Paul did, this country would be under a regime!
Buzz off!
Well, Pam, why not list the cases in which the US military fought during the span in which Paul might have ben drafted? You could pretend that you recalled each one. Except, even if you did, that list is still of fights that “weren’t in defense of our nationally shared interests, but instead for other reasons.”
It seems that you don’t know what “regime” means; a regime prevails in every nation. I won’t guess what you were trying to say.
Poor Paul! No one has been drafted since 1973!
The sky is falling! Poor Paul might have been drafted. Boo, boo.
Pam, you’re trying to have things in two, mutually exclusive ways. EIther registration for the draft carries with it the possibility of being drafted, or it doesn’t.
Indeed, though, Paul’s chances of being drafted were small. Still, the principles involved meant so very much to him that he chose openly to resist. (No one who quietly failed to register was prosecuted.)