Army recruits shortfall blamed on Iraq war critics

[BarTopDancer]

Families are discouraging young men and women from enlisting "because of all the negative media that's out there," Sen. James Inhofe (news, bio, voting record), an Oklahoma Republican, said at a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Inhofe also said that other senators' criticism of the war contributed to the propaganda of U.S. enemies. He did not name the senators.



Uh huh. It's all due to those nasty liberals and the consipricy against Bush. Never mind the lies, the lack of WMDs, no time table to pull out... Yup. This war has been nothing but positive. :rolleyes:

Link (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050630/pl_nm/iraq_congress_dc_1)

[Ghoulish Delight]

Well, actually, I'd have to agree. Yes, the truth of the questionable justification for the war has made people less willing to participate. This administration made it's own bed, the media is just in the room with a live feed of them lying (pun most definitely intended) in it.

[BarTopDancer]

I agree with you GD. It is the questionable justification and the medias broadcast of it.

Yet if this war didn't have such a questional justification the media wouldn't have as much to run with and they government couldn't blame the media for what is actually their own doing.

The impression I got from this article was anyone who had a negative opnion of the war was spreading enemy propaganda because well... there is plenty of negative publicity about this war within the US and it's citizens.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I was being a little tongue in cheek with my response. I find the comment irresponsible, the kind of fear tactic that's meant to implicitly supress freedom of the press by implying that to do anything but support a war effort is tantamount to treason. I was just trying to point the finger back at who is actually responsible for what's going on.

Of course, undermining freedom of the [url=http://www.loungeoftomorrow.com/LoT/showthread.php?t=1511]press (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8417075/) seems to be all the rage these days.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

I think the lack of people willing to enlist has less to do with the justification behind the war and more to do with the open-ended nature of it. We have already seen numerous soldiers have their tours extended well beyond what they were told. Each extra day they are there is one more day that they may get blown up. Would you sign up for that sort of thing?

As an aside, I look at musician job listings on the net quite frequently. Recently, ads have been popping up all over them stating that the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, are desperately seeking musicians. All ya gotta do is join up! Something tells me that the only instrument these guys will be playing is an M16.

[scaeagles]

I don't necessarily blame the media. Like is true with all news, bad news is the best to report.

Whether the war was justified or not is a matter of opinion. The majority of the press does have the opinion that it was not. I happen to think it was, for reasons previously (and over and over) stated, most recently in the Dick Durbin thread.

Which brings me to....Dick Durbin. Frankly, most youth don't know their history. They don't know specifically what the Nazi death camps and Pol Pot and the gulags of the Soviet Union were really like. They just know that they were bad. Really bad. So, when they hear things like Durbin comparing our military and procedures therein to those really bad guys, who wants to participate with that? That's just one example - and I fully admit it was so recent it could not have had an effect on the poor recruiting of the recent past.

Also, since the end of Vietnam and the end of the end of the draft, we have had relative peace. I know many people I went to highschool with that enlisted in the military because they wanted the educational incentives involved. I really doubt if many would have enlisted should the cold war have been a hot one. After the fervor surrounding 9/11 died down, so did enlistment.

It is irresponsible to blame the media. However, it is not irresponsible to blame those who have been calling this a Vietnam. Again, most youths are completely clueless as to what Vietnam was - only that it was really bad and many bad things happened there. When Kennedy and Shumer and Reid and whomever keep calling this a Vietnam, of course that will hurt recruitment.

Edited to add: MBC makes a great point about lengthening of tours, and I agree with it completely.

[BarTopDancer]

Edited to add: MBC makes a great point about lengthening of tours, and I agree with it completely.

To expand on that a little...

You have a Stop Loss which means you can't get out if you have a job that they need people in. Then you have the people who are being told re-up for another x years for little to no bonus or we'll extend you for x years period.

And the newest phenomen is people coming back from deployment, thinking their next tour isn't for a year due to the deployment schedule and a month later they find out they have to go back in 2 months.

People aren't just being extended in Iraq and Afghanastan (Yup, still lots of troops there though you only hear about them when they die or find someone... Where's OBL??). They are being extended on WestPacs, Oki tours (for the MC) and other non combat deployments.

[SacTown Chronic]

I'm gonna have to agree with the hawk from Oklahoma. Would it kill the media to put a positive spin on things?


I mean, it wouldn't be hard to turn this depressing story:

Suicide bomber in crowded Baghdad market kills 42.


Into this uplifing tale of hope for the future:

Good news on the desperate drinking water situation in Baghdad! 42 water consuming Iraqis killed by suicide bomber.



C'mon, you dope smoking communist media types, stop hating freedom and get your act together.

[Prudence]

I think it might have something to do with people actually dying.

Every recruit and former recruit I've ever met has a bait-and-switch story to go along with their recruitment. And this includes my husband and in-laws, who are about as rah-rah military as it gets for people now out of uniform.

And in peace-time, it's an "oh-well" situation. So they show you brochures of happy people in a resort-like setting, assure you that they can get you the most sought-after assignments, promise you money for whatever it is you want money for, whatever it takes. And the recruit figures they're young, it's only a couple of years, and why not? They're not ready for college, or they can't afford college, or they don't know what they want to be, or they have a uniform fetish. Regardless, they figure they can make it through boot camp and n years of marching in formation and eating mess hall food in exchange for the promises.

And when they don't get what they're promised (or in most cases, they DIDN'T READ THE DAMN CONTRACT BEFORE SIGNING IT) they usually don't complain because hey, it's free room and board (unless you're National Guard, in which case get ready to bend over).

But now, the game's different. Now people ACTUALLY TRY TO BLOW YOU UP. And it's on the news EVERY DAY! And it doesn't matter what your job classification is, you're a target!

Now, you'll still get people signing up who want to be in the military, because that's the career they are deliberately choosing. What you WON'T get is the recruits who say "gee I don't what I want to do. I guess I'll join the military for a few years and see how that goes." The risk of death or injury is now too high to balance a wishy-washy intent.

[DisneyFan25863]

I like to think of it like this:


I can join the military and work for years thousands of miles away from my home hoping every day not to get blown up, eating prepackaged worse-than-airline food and living in tents, or I can get a nice office job earning twice as much and coming home every day and sleeping in my own bed. Not much of a contest there.

[wendybeth]

It would appear that Cannon Fodder is not a very marketable job option these days.

[€uroMeinke]

I think the current war lacks the emotional appeal to make one want to take up arms. The other side gets to call this a Holy War, be martyres, and slay infidels. We're building a new democracy - how ho hum. As ideal as that sounds, not sure I'd be willing to sacrifice my own life and liberty over that one.