I said that patriotic, conservative men should try to enlist in the military, how can you find fault with that, regardless of the pool of manpower that you think we need.
The fact that we are accepting females, and moms in huge numbers as we shoot for 50% and even grandmothers, is evidence that we could improve our enlistment quality and that we are short of quality enlistment material.
Even that has little to do with my point, patriotic, conservative men, should try to enlist to serve their nation.
My concern is that I think you and Occupied Ga are, at least to some extent, talking past each other.
Is the modern military accepting older people? Absolutely. I have no problem with people in their 30s enlisting and I think if they can do the job they should be encouraged. I've seen 42-year-old PFCs and E4s, though the age limits have been dialed back a bit for people without prior service since due to our current economic situation we now have an abundance of younger people talking to recruiters. It's also quite possible that a person in his 30s, 40s, or even 50s who has a useful military-related skill is going to be able to work as a civilian DOD employee or as a contractor if that person can't qualify to wear the uniform, and that's a good thing, too.
The modern military is very, very different from the military in which my father served. There was a day that the United States needed large numbers of people to combat or to deter traditional battlefield operations against such enemies as the Germans, the Japanese, and the Soviet Union. Even as late as Korea and Vietnam, we were dealing with fairly large unit operations in proxy wars, knowing full well that a proxy war could spill over and erupt in full-scale combat in Europe if things went seriously wrong, and that would lead to a nuclear option if it couldn't be quickly contained. We needed to not only fight the North Koreans and North Vietnamese but also be prepared to fight in Europe against the Soviets and in the Pacific against a full-scale Chinese assault.
By contrast, today's military, even at the “point-of-the-spear” level, is largely dealing with groups with names like “brigade combat teams” and is heavily involved in counterinsurgency work. The company or battalion level is the main place at which key combat decisions get made today, and commanders need forces numbered in the dozens, hundreds, or thousands to carry out their commands, not huge World War II-era armies of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
Furthermore, many positions that once required uniformed servicemembers can now be filled with civilian employees or by contractors, often (NOT ALWAYS!) resulting in better quality at lower cost. Who would you rather have as an instructor in the Military Police School? A young 23-year-old E5 or a retired master sergeant who did 20 years in uniform and now that he's retired, wants to do the same thing as a civilian employee that he did as a uniformed MP, and at the same time he's working off-post as a reserve officer in a local police department having obtained his civilian law enforcement certification? Both bring benefits; the value of recent combat experience in a young instructor can never be minimized. But we also need to remember that time in the chair counts, and older experienced personnel who are beyond the age that they can serve effectively overseas can be a tremendous force multiplier when used in training or garrison environments.
I'm not going to go down the road of debating women in the military. I know too many female colonels and senior NCOs to think women can't serve effectively, and if things go well, I will shortly have a woman in my family report for basic training who hopes to be career military as an Army officer following initial service as an enlisted Army medic. But that's an issue on which people have strongly held convictions and I very much respect the convictions of those who believe, often on religious grounds, that there's no role for women in the military other than nurses. I don't agree, and neither does the Department of Defense, but I'm not going to argue against people who have sincere convictions on this issue.