WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army expects to miss its recruiting goals this month and next and is working on a revised sales pitch appealing to the patriotism of parents, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said Wednesday.
Whether that boosts enlistment numbers or not, Harvey said he sees no chance of a military draft.
"The `D' word is the farthest thing from my mind," the former defense company executive told a Pentagon news conference, his first since becoming the Army's top civilian official last November.
Because of the military manpower strains caused by simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some in Congress have raised the possibility of re-instituting the draft, although there is a strong consensus against it among Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the military chiefs.
This is the first time the United States has been in a sustained period of combat since the all-volunteer force was introduced in 1973. The Air Force and Navy, which have relatively smaller roles in Iraq and Afghanistan, have no recruiting problems, but the Army and Marines are hard pressed.
The Army missed its recruiting goal for February by 27 percent, and that was the first time it had missed a monthly goal since May 2000. The last time it missed its full-year goal was 1999.
What is the real reason behind this "push" for more soldiers, and not instituting the draft?
What is the real reason behind this "push" for more soldiers, and not instituting the draft?
Uh, so we can kick everyone else's a$$? We've got Iran, Syria, North Korea and others to deal with in the near future. If we start drafting our forces, not only will we have a relatively unmotivated (read: ineffective) military, but the PR nightmare following mass casualties in a major conflict (those three I just mentioned won't give up easily) would politicize everything as badly the Vietnam War.
Well, it seems to me that most young men are not willing to go fight in political wars. Polls show now that most Americans are not in favor of the Iraq invasion....remember WMD. If you kill your neighbor and claim self defense ....you better find his weapon he was going to use on you.
The rest of the world now sees how weak we are in sustained military campaigns. Since we went to Iraq and not places where real terrorists were training and operating...we now find ourselves with depleted treasure and force of arms to deal with these threats
Nato countries supported us in the Afghan campaign, which we used the Northern Alliance to do most of the fighting...but did not support our invasion of Iraq.
Once you are in military service, who deserve all of our support by the way, you are just a political pawn, you have no choice in your mission....but....now young guys are not joining up to be part of this fiasco.
The article talks about the Army's failure to meet recruiting goals to sustain the current force, not to expand it. I don't know what the Army's target manpower is, but the Marine Corps' is 174,000 active duty Marines and has been since I was in before Afganistan and Iraq. In order to keep the number at 174,000 the Marine Corps must recruit enough people to make up for losses due to retirement, discharges and casualties. If these goals aren't met, the total force size shrinks and causes staffing problems all the way down to the unit level. I fail to see any ulterior motive to the Army's efforts to increase incentives to achieve recruiting goals. It's something all branches do on a fairly regular basis, both on an MOS specific level and on a branch wide level when necessary. In order to increase the total number of service members in any branch it required authorization from congress, which hasn't happened.
Let's test your political aquity ...
