Posted on 04/10/2019 3:55:46 PM PDT by GuavaCheesePuff
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
This is not the UK Guardian, but an American blog.
Just the possibility of having a Muslim commander in chief like Obama is disincentive enough...FOR EIGHT YEARS.
Would you want your kid to enlist so he or she can fight in Afghanistan or Syria? Why?
The Coast Guard actually protects American borders - not the frontiers of far-off lands. If my kids want to serve in the armed forces, I’d suggest the Coast Guard - so they’re protecting America, not dying in a neocon nation-building project on the other side of the globe
I think that the draft would do a lot of millennials a lot of good! But Mr. Trump does need to order the discharge of open homosexuals, transsexuals, etc.
Low unemployment,lower enlistment rates.Raise the pay and benefits.
Why would someone want to put their life at risk for endless NeoCon wars? That’s what our military is being used for, not for defending our nation.
Agreed, young women should be drafted — unless they are mothers, I am not in favor of traumatizing young children by taking their mothers from them.
‘About Us’ says this is indeed the publication that started as the Manchester Guardian. Why do you believe this is a blog only?
I don’t blame kids for not wanting to serve in nation-building wars tens of thousands of miles away. Like Bolton, who skipped Vietnam (but favors new wars)In these days of a neocon foreign policy, the only branch of the services that can be guaranteed missions to protect America is the Coast Guard
We’re still not willing to call it what it is. It’s the War on Terror.
< spits>
They’re not very explicit about it, but, yeah, you’re right. It looks very bloggy. Thanks for the correction.
Cut off the welfare and tighten up the easy college loan money and the recruits will be lining up.
I don’t think I would encourage a son, or grandson, or nephew of mine to sign up for the War That Never Ends Because We Never Win, where you have to check with the rear echelon JAG lawyer before pulling the trigger lest you do something too beastly to the enemy.
Well, the Guardian is less reliable than the average blog anyway...
This is targeted at the US. They know gullibility when then see it!
That’s a good point. We haven’t felt existentially threatened since at least the Cold War. The younger generations think history began with them and the world will always be this way.
I served under Reagan. I would have hated serving under Clinton or Obama.
Indeed. Times have changed. I served under JFK and Johnson.
We were mostly unpolitical but proud of JFK.
That is true.
The NeoCons destroyed America’s military over the past two decades.
In 1962 when I went to boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Base, 2 nights after we started our training they caught 2 queers doing their queer stuff in the middle of the night. The guys threw them outside (February) and we never saw them again.
Develop robots.
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