Army Standards Inversely Proportional to American Economy (Apparently)

[babylonsister]

http://www.vetvoice.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2678

Army Standards Inversely Proportional to American Economy (Apparently)
by: Brandon Friedman
Mon Apr 20, 2009 at 12:26:52 PM EDT


So I guess this means the Army should hope the economy stays down?

The Army last month stopped accepting felons and recent drug abusers into its ranks as the nation's economic downturn helped its recruiting, allowing it to reverse a decline in recruiting standards that had alarmed some officers.

While shunning those with criminal backgrounds, the Army is also attracting better-educated recruits. It is on track this year to meet, for the first time since 2004, the Pentagon's goal of ensuring that 90 percent of recruits have high school diplomas.

I'll just say this: A country's national security apparatus is in a bad way when an article in a major paper starts off by saying, "The Army last month stopped accepting felons and recent drug abusers into its ranks as the nation's economic downturn helped its recruiting." This implies that unless America is in a dire financial meltdown, that we're not able to provide an Army of the highest quality. And that, without a doubt, is disturbing.

This decline in recruitment is something that I've written about before, and I'm glad to see that we're shifting back in the right direction. Nevertheless, the tone here is not so encouraging in terms of what the future may hold.

[RainDog]

1. we need the draft

we need the comfortably middle-class to have to sacrifice significant numbers of sons and daughters in wars, not just the poor and working class.

this is the only way we will not do another Iraq - because starting a war is very useful for a politician - Bush used it as an election tool, as he understood he could before he ever took office.

the sad thing is that the upper middle class is, seemingly, so selfish, they don't care if it's a poor woman's child who gets killed for some politicians' gain or a cheaper tank of gas. I don't want this to be true, but we saw it was true with Iraq.

[Riceburningluva]

2. I was in the army, there were some bad folkes there

Being a petite girl I was scared sometimes because i knew some guys wanted to do the naughty with me. I could tell just by the look in their eyes that they did not fear the law.

[Captain Hilts]

3. That would be more fair than the economic draft we have now. nt