24 Nov 2004
Army Guard misses recruiting goal

I'm shocked to hear this: why could folks possibly be passing up this opportunity? Perhaps it has something to do with the way we're using the Guard - not as a reserve or a militia, but as an active combat component. It's one thing to ask a young man (or woman) to join up for a weekend a month and service in the event of a national emergency: it 's quite another to ask them to join up for the regular military. Regular Army recruiting hasn't suffered (yet), but the regular Army doesn't have enough men for the mission the political leadership is requiring of it. Hence we need to use our reserves.

But there's another message here, for those who can read between the lines:

The chief reason for the shortfall is a downturn in recruits with military experience, men and women who leave the active-duty Army but sign up for Guard duty that usually involves a weekend a month and two weeks during the summer. In past years, these "prior service" soldiers accounted for about half of all Guard recruits.

Losing the prior service people does two things. It forces the Guard to run more of it's recruits through basic training, which costs more money and time. And it dramatically decreases the the number of veteran NCO's available. An army may march on it's stomach, but it marchs at all only because it's sergeants tell it to march. This really hurts unit readiness.

Our political leadership has really painted themselves into a corner here: they've foresworn the draft, yet insist on continually projecting power around the world: this leads to shortfalls in troops, and to longer deployments, which leads to recruiting problems ... isn't the circle a wonderful geometry?

There are only two ways out of this: stop playing world policeman, or increase the numbers in the military. Politically and militarily, something's gotta give, eventually.

USATODAY.com - The Army National Guard has fallen significantly behind its recruiting goal one month into the military's new fiscal year, continuing a downward slide that began in 2003 and could make it harder for the Pentagon to find enough troops for the war in Iraq.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

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