COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Personnel Crunch
Recruiting Takes A Fistful Of Dollars
Courrant
September 12, 2007
Those familiar old Army recruiting posters showing Uncle Sam pointinghis finger and saying he "needs you" need repainting - to show him
holding up a fistful of dollars as an inducement.
With the war in Iraq taking its toll on recruitment of new enlistees
for the all-volunteer Army, he is now anteing up bonuses of as much
as $15,000 for a two-year signup and $25,000 for three years.
The bonuses are being offered to meet the fiscal-year target for the
end of this year of 80,000 new troops. It is part of Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates' goal of increasing Army strength by 65,000, to
547,000, in five years, according to the Associated Press.
The latest wrinkle in bonus lure to young Americans is the "quick
ship" inducement - a $20,000 payout to enlistees who agree to drop
whatever they're doing and ship out for basic training within 30
days. It's a commentary on the urgency with which the Army is
addressing its challenge to meet the annual target at a time when an
unpopular war is being waged by a severely stretched military establishment.
While this circumstance is not entirely tied to the U.S. involvement
in Iraq and Afghanistan, no less an authority than Gen. David
Petraeus, the architect of the Bush administration' s troop surge, is
talking openly of the stress it is placing on the U.S. military.
In the days leading up to his much-anticipated progress report on the
surge, Petraeus has acknowledged that the 30,000-troop buildup cannot
be continued indefinitely, and that it has taxed the endurance of
soldiers and National Guardsmen and their families at home.
A particular problem in this uncommon war that has fallen heavily on
reservists is the disruptive aspect of their service not only on
their own lives, but also on those left behind, often new children.
Unlike World War II, for example, when participants were called for
the duration of the war, no matter how long it lasted, the Army
volunteers, including the Guardsmen and reservists, have limits on
their tours in the combat zone. On one hand they cling to this
civilian existence, but on the other they are subject to repeated
callbacks that inject constant uncertainty for themselves and their
disrupted families.
A measure of the challenge for the Army in meeting the annual
manpower target is the fact that its staff of trained recruiters is
being raised from 8,000 to as many as 10,000 in the effort to spur
enlistment, at a time when many parents are trying to talk their
loved ones out of signing up, with the Iraq war again a factor.
The obvious solution would be a reinstatement of the military draft,
which met the nation's manpower needs in World Wars I and II, and the
Korean and Vietnam wars. Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York
has long advocated a draft as a more equitable way of sharing the
burden in wartime. But so far there has been little support for it in Congress.
In a war in which most Americans other than those in uniform and
their families are not being asked to make much of a sacrifice, a
draft would be out of step with the business-as- usual atmosphere that prevails.
Believers in the all-volunteer Army argue that it has produced a
higher quality of soldier. But as the war has dragged on, the Army
has lowered certain educational and medical standards for enlistment.
The absence of a draft has been one way of dampening down public
protest against the war. Its existence during the Vietnam War
probably did as much as or more than any other factor to set off the
antiwar protests of the time, drawing millions of draft-age youth
into the streets calling for an end of the American participation.
More than 30 years later, Uncle Sam, instead of relying on the stick
of conscription, holds out the carrot of bonuses of up to $25,000 to
buy the military service of his sons and daughters in a war most of
America today does not believe in.
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of
articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed
publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen
material relevant to the work of