MCViewPoint

Why do think? The thought of endless war, dying in some nowheresville African village or killing poor, peasant families in poor, peasant filled Yemen?

Or the realization that none of the above have anything to do with defending US?

I have often wondered if today’s volunteer recruits have any idea at all of what they are getting into.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/10/fewer-americans-serve-military-pentagon-panic

William M Arkin

Declining interest in service has reached levels that should alarm – or delight – those who care about the nation’s health

Donald Trump’s three-quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar defense budget request submitted to Congress last month contains a dirty secret, one that should make us all think twice about perpetual war and public support for it.

The youth of America don’t want to serve in the military any more.

The situation has become so dire that just to maintain America’s ground forces – the army and Marine Corps – the two services are resorting to unprecedented pay raises, bonuses and socialist trappings.

And things are going to get worse. This year, for the first time ever, Americans born after 11 September 2001 will be able to enlist in the armed forces. It’s a sobering reminder both of how long we’ve been at war but also how distant those very wars have become from America’s youth. And yet official military polling shows that fewer and fewer young Americans consider the military as a career or as a transitional step – only some 12.5% – the lowest number in a decade.

The 12.5% is bracing, but based on a complex math that balances losses from deaths and injuries, retirements, attrition and discharges, the army and Marine Corps only needs about 100,000 recruits to maintain current force levels. That’s just 2.4% of the 4.2 million Americans who will celebrate their 18th birthday this year. And yet the military is looking at its third or fourth year in a row where it will struggle to even find these numbers…

Be seeing you

Dying for nothing in the middle of nowhere. How is this defending the USA?