Not necessarily enough willing volunteers. We were attacked at the beginning of World War II, and there was still a draft during the war:
One of my grandfathers was almost drafted for the invasion of Japan, but didn’t have to serve when that didn’t happen.
Unfortunately, that’s about 6 months too late to respond to the initial attack. Somehow we have to have a military big enough to buy those six months. How do we do that? We let the Army recruit.
So, you’d rather cut back on the military recruiting budget and institute a draft?
Look, there’s a hell of a lot of people out there who’d rather this war never happened. But face it, we’re there, and until our side gets enough clout to demand that the war end and our troops come home, the choice is between the Army buying advertisements or the Army picking out draft cards. That is a no-brainer in my book. Even if it were a “good war,” I’d still rather have the Army advertising than impressing.
So, what sort of dollars should be used for recruiting, and where would they come from?
Why can’t the military show the positive sides? Og knows there more than enough unanswered negative in the news and in entertainment everyday.
No, I’d rather restrict the presidential power to start wars. The limitation of available resources should be a major factor in which wars to fight. Not enough men, maybe we should think a little more carefully before plunging in. Likewise, not enough money to pay for it and no end in sight? Maybe we shouldn’t start it so recklessly.
Like I said, if the manpower wasn’t needed for offense, the need for recruiting would be lessened or eliminated. The military cannot be described as just another business that needs advertising; no other business can draft employees if they run short and the military cannot go bankrupt if it doesn’t sell enough product.
I didn’t say we shouldn’t have a military, just we shouldn’t be roaming around the whole goddamned planet with a chip on our shoulder, looking for fights and sacrificing our own citizens just to satisfy some presidental asshole’s ego.
There is a difference between showing positive news as part of a balanced presentation and showing only positive news as a propaganda ploy. Or putting a spin on something. This can be quite subjective, of course, and it may be too fine a line to draw for some. Myself, I look at the military-produced “news” videos and I see blatant propaganda. YMMV.
Yeah, and I’d like to be married to a billionaire supermodel. But that’s neither here nor there. You said you’d rather not have the military use money to recruit people. How do you propose that the military get enough people to serve? The only realistic options appear to be recruiting or the draft.
Or am I barking up the wrong tree? Would you rather that the armed forces be short of manpower?
Exactly! Short enough that sending huge amounts of men & money halfway across the globe for some ridiculous personal-vendetta venture would be near impossible. But not short enough to compromise defensive security.
How many men is that? I dunno, but it seems like we have too many available at present. Example: the National Guard, intended to be a homeland-type, last bastion of defense, is now the first to be activated. It’s all too easy for a president to get a wild hair up his ass and throw in a few thousand troops to overthrow the Dictator of the Week.
So, the military should be understaffed and underfunded so that future presidents won’t be tempted to start ill-advised wars? Kinda leaves us out in the wind when a legitimate need for military intervention crops up, doesn’t it? Not to mention that the current military boondoggle was begun with insufficient men and insufficient money already, and that didn’t seem to deter the guy in the White House from invading another country.
Which explains why you never saw military recruitment ads in this country during peace time.
Which has what to do with the topic at hand, exactly?
Yeah, and if wishes were horses, we’d all be eating steak. We’re in a fight now, however ill-advised and ill-equipped we were to start it. There aren’t enough troops in Iraq right now, and unfortunetly, a total pull-out from the country is simply not an option at this point. What do we do to meet the current manpower crisis? Recruit or draft? Which is it going to be?
Cite that they present themselves as un-biased new reporting?
My school used to recruit with pamphlets showing all the recreational activities…tennis courts, swimming pools, they even mentioned cheaper prices at the PX. Why, it’s practically a vacation club! We’re talking about seventeen year old kids here, not adults that are used to seeing through the BS.
How many of you guys know that the GI bill only pays for 36 months of college? That it’s a plan you have to pay in on? That very few people actually end up using it? While it’s great for some people, most people that join the military to “get college paid for” are going to be sadly mistaken and probably will never reach their dreams. Which sucks because there is a fair amount of really good financial aid (although that is decreasing nowdays)
I know they need to recruit, but they also need to be honest. I’ve had people told that their reserve job would “never be called up” only to find out a month later when we invaded Iraq that everyone with that job is a reserve and they are always the first to be called up. I had people told that they would be “sitting in a trailer making flyers” when their job actually called for working behind enemy lines.
The difference is that McDonalds and Coke don’t call me every few weeks. They don’t get to bring big guys doing pull ups and heavy cool equiptment to school to show everyone how cool they’ll be. And you don’t sign a contract with Coke for eight years (how many people even know that a four year active commitment comes with four more years that you can be called up?) You don’t give up any of your freedoms McDonalds, like the right to a trial by jury.
Recruiters need to be frank about the job and honest about the terms. They need to quit the outright lies. They need to appeal to people making a very adult decision that they can’t easily back out of.
What kind of idiot sevventeen year olds did you know who hadn’t yet figured out not to trust authority figures?
Yes.
I certainly hope so. How many legitimate military interventions have cropped up on the other side of the globe in the last 59 years?
Which would not have been possible if Congress didn’t go along with the Bush lies about nonexistent weapons and keep feeding him toys to play with. Exactly my point, Miller, just keep making it for me.
The OP mentioned someone upset by military recruitment material in a new location like a DVD box. I agree with that person and don’t think recruitment advertising should be done with tax dollars, and such recruitment only fuels the ambition to go to war at the drop of a tin-hat Dictator. Does that tie it together?
It’s not a manpower crisis if we’re not in Iraq. And a lot of people would be alive today if we had left sooner. Crisis over. The problem isn’t “There aren’t enough troops in Iraq” but there are too many. Bring 'em home, downsize the military to just what is needed for defense, not offense.
This isn’t GD or GQ, and I said YMMV when referring to the military videos. I don’t know if they really think they are unbiased or not. Nevertheless, the U.S. Government, using taxpayer’s funds, is distributing to TV stations hungry for material what looks an awful lot like propaganda to some.
Here are the names of the programs and links to the parent web sites. Note that the word “news” is in each and every one of them, and the word “propaganda”, “entertainment” or even “recruit” is in none. That strongly hints to me that they intend to be taken as a news source:
Air Force Television News
Navy/Marine Corps News
Army Newswatch
Berlin 1948. Afghanistan 9/12/01. To name two.
Given the complex nature of modern military gear, you simply cannot have an understaffed military. Period. Paragraph. Bootcamp takes six weeks minimum (or is it nine weeks now), then soldiers are sent for training in their specific area. So, a grunt that comes out of bootcamp, can’t go straight to the field. He/she has to be sent somewhere else for additional training, and that can anywhere from a couple of weeks to a year. If hordes of back bacon wielding Canadians were to start pouring over the border tomorrow, we’d need an army capable of pushing their hockey loving, Molsen swilling asses[sup]*[/sup] back across the border before we all started wearing funny hats and ending our sentences with “Eh.” To do that, we’d need an army that was fully trained and staffed, not one six months to a year later, made up of a bunch of pissed off draftees.
*Note to our Canadian friends: I’m just kidding about you guys pouring over the border and exuding stereotypical behaviour. We all know you wouldn’t do that.
Just confirm for me Musicat, are you saying the US military should be a “Home Guard” type of outfit, with enough power to defend the continental US but not to do anything else?
You don’t think the US should be in Iraq. Fine. Do you think there is NOTHING worth fighting for except a desperate defence of the homeland?
Oh, and the military news reporting? We have services newspapers in Australia and I don’t think *anyone * would assume they were supposed to be “objective news reporting” and be outraged by examples of bias in their reporting.
I assume you read the papers. We ARE there. Congress DID authorize war. There are fewer Americans every day who support the war, but right now, it’s pretty goddamn clear that the American people don’t want to cut and run from Iraq.
So, the choices are, allow the Army to recruit, start a draft, or let military manpower wither on the vine. The only possible outcome of the “wither on the vine” strategy is even more Americans killed because our troops are too tired, too overworked, too stretched, and inadequately reinforced for the shit they’re in right now. To me, that is absolutely unconscionable. I have disagreed with this war from day one, and I am hoping for the day that the majority of Americans will realize that it is a mistake to continue our presence there, but to use the lives of even more troops (who may or may not support the war, either) to drive this point home is pretty disgusting.
Now, I don’t think for one second that you are actually advocating that more US troops should die. Your motives, as you’ve stated them, are much more principled than that. But we have to deal with reality here, not simply deny the situation in which we now find ourselves. For so long as the American people will tolerate our troops being in Iraq, I say those military units should be trained, staffed and equipped so that they are most effective at defending themselves from the growing number of Iraqis who want to attack them. Cut off the supply of soldiers and the situation will only get worse for those who are there.
Tuckerfan, you might include Iraq in 1991, as we were asked to intervene. NATO also asked for our existence in Yugoslavia in 1993. We send troops to every disaster worldwide to aid with recovery efforts. We’ve helped train countless underfunded and undertrained militaries who turn out not to be Contras, so that they can protect themselves (i.e. the Phillipine Army versus Abu Sayyef).
Musicat’s knee is jerking the same way as Becky, the writer of the letter, in the OP. Bush is bad, Iraq is bad (I’m certainly not disagreeing here), therefore attempts to sustain military manpower are bad.
Newsflash
You could find those “propaganda”-ish military newsreels and advertising throughout former-President Clinton’s eight years in office. If Gore or Kerry were elected and we did not go to war in Iraq, there would still be military advertising. The difference - you notice it now, during an active occupation that you vehemently oppose.
Won’t happen, but one can dream.
I’ll give you Berlin 1948. No, wait, I won’t – it made no sense militaristically and can hardly be justified as “defense” of the U.S. It was really a leftover from WWII, anyway.
As far as Afghanistan 2001, good example. Of something we had no business doing. The 9/11 attack served as an excuse; a president was forced to show the public he was doing something, even if it didn’t relate to the problem at hand. Which is exactly my point. If the resources hadn’t been so readily available, Afghanistan wouldn’t have been invaded. Was the U.S. made safer because of it? Have all the terrorists been liquidated? Exactly my point.
Ravenman: Congress did not DECLARE war. It seems the style nowdays to just let the president wage war without declaring it formally, which gives him more power than ever. It’s just boys with toys, but they are pretty big toys. The victims don’t go home with just a black eye, they go home very dead. And so do the bullies sometimes.
It seems clear that the U.S. Constitution intended for the serious decision of making war be put in the hands of Congress, not the president. They didn’t forsee the loophole that is now being used of waging war without declaring it. Personally, I can only justify that in emergencies when time is a factor; the enemy is at the gates and action is needed without lengthy deliberation. This is not the kind of situation we have yet been faced with.
But we wouldn’t be in this mess if the pres didn’t have the resources to invade in the first place. Give boys their toys and they will find excuses to use them.
Nothing? Maybe that’s too all-encompasing. A “desperate defense”? Depends on your definitions. Should the U.S. military be primarily a defense outfit? Absolutely. What constitutes “defense”? Ah, there’s the rub. In the 1960’s, invading Vietnam was justified by the domino theory – if we didn’t, the dirty Commies would be in Washington the next morning. Was this theory correct? Well, we lost the war, and the commies didn’t invade. Somalia? Bosnia? Grenada? Korea? Were we defending our country or just flexing imperialist muscles?
If you can show that Somalia, etc. was necessary to prevent the Somalians, etc. from invading New York, then I will agree that a large military is required. If you can’t, then our military is too big, too costly, and provides too many incentives for a president to play schoolyard bully.
It seems like the U.S. refuses to learn from history, and unlike the supposed moral stance of “we only do what is right,” cannot see that this point of view is one shared by many, even our enemies. God cannot be on all sides at once.
I was pretty much with you up to…
I think the way we’ve handled Afghanistan is atrocious. Karzai controls about 3 blocks of Kabul, and whole place will go down the crapper once we leave. I don’t have any problems with us originally going in though.
Mine was. He was very upfront about the pros and cons about a tour in the Navy. The military recruiting community has been making great strides in getting rid of their image as a bunch of liars. Individual quotas are gone, and there are stricter guidelines and controls on what can and can’t be told to potential recruits.
That’s just one college option. Most shore commands have an extensive range of on-base college classes, and the military pays, the last time I checked, up to 75% of tuition right there - without dipping into the GI Bill (by the way, the GI Bill was for WWII era vets. The name of the current program is the Montgomery GI Bill - not the same thing.) Ships on deployment offer some classes - true, it depends on the size of the ship and the length of the deployment, but it’s the norm instead of the exception. And most colleges will offer credit for the training you get in your field. CLEP exams are provided at no or ridiculously reduced costs. With a little bit of planning and drive, a person on a four year tour can be a semester away from a Bachelor’s degree in any course of study before they use one dollar from the Montgomery GI Bill.
And yes, you do pay into the fund. But in the same way you pay into a 401k at work (which McDonalds doesn’t offer their fry cooks, I believe. The military has one now.) Your “employer” matches what you contribute.
And I know this is The Pit, but can you back up your “very few people end up using it” statment. I don’t have any numbers, but anecdotally, I would say that the figure is more than 50% of the folks I worked with used it. And I ran the education program for enlisted at a major Navy shore command for two years, and while on ships, as a chief I made sure that all my gumbies took advantage of all the free education they could get.