Army Logic

It wasn’t long ago during another one of my random adventures that I found myself in Klamath Falls OR a small, Bush loving, shot gun toting community just north of the California border. Strolling down the town main street I came across the Army recruiting office and felt compelled to take this picture. Sure, there are several interpretations one could derive from our buddy, like “Man, I just ate the Chili Mac and it gave me some bad gas!” or (and in my opinion the more likely) “Holy shit! An IED has just punctured my lung and I think its collapsing!”

Had they been open you know that I would have gone in there to fuck with them especially now that I know The Pentagon is considering asking Congress to double the enlistment bonus from $20,000 to $40,000 and to raise the age limit for Army active-duty service from 35 to 40. 40… the normal age for military retirement is now an acceptable age for enlistment. Remember when the age limit was 32? Oh yeah, recruitment must be going real well these days.

So I decided to do some investigative reporting and encountered what can only be called Army logic, I checked 3 sites Military.com, the Washington Post, and the Army homepage. Bellow is a brief synopsis of what I found:

June 3, 2005 WASHINGTON - Embroiled in scandal and facing rising death tolls in Iraq, U.S. Army recruiters are facing serious challenges as they attempt to reach their goal of 80,000 new recruits by October (2005).

"What we have is a recruiting problem," said Charles Pena, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute. "The question is whether or not it becomes a recruiting crisis."

Defense Department figures at the end of April showed that 35,926 recruits had signed up this fiscal year, which began last Oct. 1. This gives recruiters four months to sign up another 44,000 to meet their goal. Even worse is the number of reserves. Statistics show that 7,283 reserves have signed up. The goal is for 22,175 by the end of the year.

Steadily rising U.S. casualties in Iraq, the recent allegations of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay and the permanent stain of Abu Ghraib have all taken their toll on recruitment drives. And young men and women are not exactly banging down recruiting-station doors to join the army.

The Army missed its May active-duty recruiting goal of 6,700 by 1,661 recruits, pushing the shortfall for fiscal 2005 to 8,321 -- or more than a month's worth of recruits. The shortfall would have been 37 percent if the Army had not lowered its May goal. Overall, the Army has sent 40,964 enlistees to boot camp, and has four months to nearly double that figure to reach the 80,000 goal for this fiscal year.

The sluggish flow of enlistments means that Army boot camps are less than half full -- training at 46 percent of their capacity this month, compared with 91 percent in May 2004, said Harvey Perritt, spokesman for the Army's Training and Doctrine Command. For example, the Army's infantry the Army's infantry training center at Fort Benning, Ga., had by May trained only 8,700 of its fiscal year goal of 24,500 infantrymen. The Army can meet its goals only with a "massive influx of recruits" to boot camp this summer, Perritt said.

Well thank God for small miracles, because according to the Army:

The active-duty Army gained 8,710 new Soldiers into its ranks in September, exceeding that month’s goal of 8,365 by 345. Fiscal year 2005 active-duty Army recruitment goals stood at 92 percent complete, with 73,373 new Soldiers joining the force. The mission goal was to recruit 80,000.

The Army Reserve accessed 2,208 Soldiers into its ranks during September, exceeding its goal by 190 Soldiers. At the end of fiscal year 2005, the Reserves Army accessed 23,859 Soldiers, 84 percent of its mission goal of 28,485.

The Army National Guard gained 6,048 Soldiers in September, 98 percent of its monthly goal of 6,148. A total of 50,219 Soldiers joined the Guard’s ranks by the end of the fiscal year, 80 percent of its recruitment goal of 63,002.


Now, it’s a little know fact that advanced math produces a psychosomatic reaction in me that causes my balls to itch, however, I can say with certainty that I don’t even feel so much as a tingle when I tell you that this means Army recruiters managed to all but double their results of the last 8 months in just half the time. And while that feat is in itself amazing it does beg the question, where did all these people come from?

Well, we all know the Army and if you need recruits you're not going to let a little thing like standards get in the way. What’s that? The minimal ASVAB requirements are too high and recruitment is down, lets lower it. What require a high school diploma for entry into the service and miss out on our biggest demographic, the uneducated poor? No way, I say a lack of education should be seen as a real plus here and not as a bar to enlistment. SOF PT standards are too tough, let’s lower them as well, hell lets just let Joes off the street enlist as Special Forces, I mean it’s not like it’s an elite unit that requires months to years of training for or anything like that.

It’s ridiculous and sad. Im proud to have served but I am increasing worried about the fate of the Army and those who still serve. Now more than ever Im glad to be just a regular guy.