| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Jez" |
| Date: |
23 Jun 2005 09:16:18 PM |
| Object: |
OT: Final Draft? |
FINAL DRAFT?
High comedy on the army-recruitment front.
By Matt Taibbi
http://www.nypress.com/18/25/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
Remember that brilliant idea Nancy Reagan had for battling the nation's
youth drug problem? Instead of treatment programs, a new wave of after-
school funding, an increased education budget, or anything else
substantive, Nancy's plan was three words whispered to reporters in the
breaks between meetings with her tailors and her pedicurist.
Just Say No was the outstanding comic legacy of the Reagan presidency,
one of the great out-of-touch policy ideas since Marie Antoinette. If you
were old enough to go potty by yourself, you were old enough to laugh at
Just Say No.
Twenty years and a few million teenage crack addicts later, that same
crew that gave us Just Say No is watching the boomerang come back. Twenty
years ago, the yacht-and-Lexus set went to its poor people and asked them
nicely to stop taking those darned drugs. Faced with potentially
calamitous army-recruitment shortages, it is now asking them nicely to
get their balls blown off in Iraq. It's just as funny this time, only
this time, the joke's on them.
The army-recruitment-shortage story is gaining more and more traction in
the mainstream press, but still remains largely underground. As a media
phenomenon it falls under the category of one of those things that
everyone would like to ignore, but simply cannot—like AIDS or global
warming. While the Jessica Simpsons, Michael Jacksons and Terri Schiavos
of the world heroically maintain their tenuous grasp on the front pages,
the inside sections are beginning to pile up with some troubling numbers.
Army recruitment figures for May marked the Pentagon's fourth consecutive
monthly shortfall. Just 5039 new recruits shipped off to basic training,
well below the "target" of 6700. The May shortfall left the Army with
40,965 total recruits for fiscal year 2005, meaning that the Pentagon now
has just four months left to roughly double that figure to meet its goal
for this year (it needs about 39,000). The recruitment figures have been
between 30 and 40 percent short for each of the past five months.
But the numbers only tell part of the story. Far more compelling is the
bureaucratic desperation that one can easily detect between the lines of
the army's recruitment efforts in the last year. For instance, the
recruitment figures for May were technically only short 25 percent, a
significant improvement over recent months. Except for one thing: The
original target number for May was 8000, not 6700. The army changed the
number at the last minute, in a transparent attempt to report an
improving recruitment climate. Minus the change, the recruitment
shortfall was 37 percent.
Statements by army officials in recent months have hinted at an agonizing
struggle within the Pentagon to find someone out there to blame for the
recruiting shortfall. The strategy they have apparently settled on is to
blame what they call "the influencers"—the media, teachers and
parents—for failing to convince young people to go to Iraq. Major General
Michael Rochelle, the Fort Meade–based official in charge of recruitment,
said recently that the "influencers" have effected what amounts to a
blackout of information about the benefits of army service.
"It's getting harder because of the influencers who are discouraging
young people from simply acquiring information" about the Army, he said.
"Influencers not wanting recruiters to call, not wanting recruiters to
sit down and talk."
Yes, it must be tough to get that message across to young
people—especially with just $250 million for your advertising budget,
with federal laws that force all schools participating in No Child Left
Behind to give recruiters access to high school grounds and student
records, and with billions of dollars in cash bonuses to hand out to high
school grads in an economic environment where even a Wal-Mart cashier's
position is considered a good job. Perhaps No Child Left Behind II will
require schools to let recruiters physically sit on the chests of
students at graduation ceremonies; until then, the unfair disadvantage
unfortunately persists.
The army has already tried all the conventional bribes to service, has
already bent every existing plank in its bureaucratic structure to try to
boost recruitment numbers. If you don't want to take your chances with a
two-year commitment, it now offers an 18-month gig, meaning you can go
straight to war from basic training, skipping the traditional unit
training that recruits used to go through before deployment. It is
mulling a change in its policy of only accepting high school grads (the
GED will soon be sufficient) and is reconsidering its traditional
opposition to certain kinds of criminal histories.
Then there are the bonuses. New recruits can now secure up to $90,000 in
cash and college tuition bonuses the moment they sign on the dotted line.
Last year, I walked into a recruitment office in Orlando with a cigarette
between my lips and wearing a Frankie Goes to Hollywood t-shirt; within
10 minutes of hearing that I had a college degree, recruiters had offered
me $20,000 in cash and a fast track to Special Forces. Since then, the
bonuses, especially for college, have vastly increased; and yet the
numbers continue to plummet.
We all know where this is headed. Sooner or later there is going to be a
serious discussion in this country about a draft. I imagine that process
will go something like this: The Republicans will fiercely resist any
talk about it, while the "pragmatic" Democrats, ever on the lookout for
an opportunity to look tough, will drag them kicking and screaming into
dat dere brier patch. Before you know it, the thing will actually be on
the fucking floor. A year ago this only looked like the most extreme
paranoid fantasy of the antiwar crowd, but how does it look now?
That process is already underway. Republicans continue to be quiet about
a draft, but influential Democrats are beginning to talk about it. "We
are going to have to face that question," said Joe Biden two weeks ago,
when asked about the draft on Meet the Press.
In the meantime, responsible parties in government are clinging,
hilariously, to the "If you build it, they will come" theory of war
recruiting. John McCain, on Meet the Press last weekend, told Tim Russert
with a straight face that the recruitment problem was rooted in the fact
that, after 9/11, the American people were "never given a chance" to
serve. According to McCain, we should have expanded the Peace Corps and
Americorps after 9/11, which would have resulted in a by-osmosis increase
in army recruits.
Says McCain: "We should have said... we're going to give you all a chance
to fight as foot soldiers in the war on terror.'"
Biden, meanwhile, says the problem is just that George Bush has not asked
people to serve. "If [Bush] would just level with the American people
about how hard this is going to be... the American people will respond."
But if asking nicely doesn't work, the army is apparently ready to let
loose some new rhetorical weapons. In a Knight-Ridder story last week, an
army recruiter named Timothy Waud in Simi Valley, California, offered a
new argument to the parents of America's young:
"(Parents) say they don't want to send their son or daughter off into
danger," he said. "There's a lot of misconceptions about Iraq. Frankly,
percentage-wise you face more of a risk driving on the freeways out
here."
Military service in Iraq: safer than playing in traffic! *****, I wish
I had teenage children!
--
Jez, MBA.,
Country Dancing and Advanced Astrology, UBS.
'Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable
notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often
led to accept, without much questioning, someone else's version of what
that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be
skeptical of someone else's description of reality.'-
Howard Zinn
.
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| User: "towelie" |
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| Title: Re: Final Draft? |
24 Jun 2005 01:50:21 AM |
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TV's Jez wrote:
Twenty years and a few million teenage crack addicts later, that same
crew that gave us Just Say No is watching the boomerang come back. Twenty
years ago, the yacht-and-Lexus set went to its poor people and asked them
nicely to stop taking those darned drugs.
Impossible. There was no such thing as a Lexus in 1985 (other than
prototypes).
--
Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning.
A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing.
- Maynard James Keenan
The belief in the Christian god... is an appalling nightmare. I reject
the notion that the whole universe was created by this kind of evil
creature who would create such a thing. - Anthony Flew, March 22, 2005
aa #2133
ap #19
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