George Bush is calling in the marines. Reuters reports, the U.S. Marine Corps will start ordering what could be thousands of inactive service members to return to duty in the coming months to counter a steady decline in the number of such troops who volunteer.” Some fear this could undermine the volunteer military forces:
“What’s really worrisome about involuntary recalls is they put even more of the burden on the handful of people who voluntarily join the military, and thus undermine the long-term viability of the whole volunteer force,” said Lexington Institute defense analyst Loren Thompson.
“In some ways this is worse than a back-door draft because it penalizes the handful of people who had the inclination and the courage to volunteer in the first place,” he said.
If actions such as this continue the trend towards decreased voluntary recruits, this could be yet another way in which George Bush is underming our long term national security.
Update: While the right wing response to this is to charge dishonesty for reporting on the military’s recruitment problems (see comment) The Los Angeles Times has a review showing how, “The Pentagon is scrambling to meet the demands of war.” Of course we know that to the authoritarian right exposing the facts is the worst form of “dishonesty.”
Update II: The blotter asks, Is the Next Step a Draft?
I see the Confederate Yankee is afraid of the truth. The claim this post is dishonest as we link to a CNN article.
This is a blog with the masthead saying “Because liberalism is a persistent vegetative state” and which reeks of a far right authoritarian mindset.
Yes, to them everything which contradicts their viewpoint should be safely down the memory hole and forgotten, so linking to MSNBC (among other sites) is dishonest. Besides, it isn’t Fox News, so to them it is probably biased liberal media anyways.
Orwell would love them. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
To them there is no backdoor draft and people say there is “because they’re idiots.” Their claims is that recruitiment is doing just fine. If so, why is this measure needed?
actually, its in the contract that EVERY service member SIGNS, that you are subject to recall to active duty while you’re in the IRR for national emergencies or y’know.. wars and stuff like that.
Ken,
That totally misses the point. It is not the legality of the measure which anyone is questioning.
Their accepting people at the age of FORTY TWO now. Basic training was the most stressful thing I ever went through in my life – at EIGHTEEN!
Couldn’t imagine going trough it 8 years ago!
So ya think their desperate?
naaaa 😛