Desperate Military Recruits Addicts and Criminals
by Jeff Davis
The Greek General Pyrrhus fought against the Romans. Pyrrhus actually managed to defeat the legions in several pitched battles, but at a prohibitive cost in casualties. After one battle in which his army was almost wiped out, one of Pyrrhus’s officers congratulated him on his great victory. The king replied “One more such victory and all is lost.” Hence the term “Pyrrhic victory.”
If the Iraq war is turned around and the U.S. “wins” (whatever that means) then it will be a Pyrrhic victory at best, because the Iraq war has virtually destroyed the all-volunteer professional army that took shape after Vietnam and has served the country for over thirty years.
A Yahoo News article reports that “The Army and Marine Corps are letting in more recruits with criminal records, including some with felony convictions, reflecting the increased pressure of five years of war and its mounting casualties. According to data compiled by the Defense Department, the number of Army and Marine recruits needing waivers for felonies and serious misdemeanors, including minor drug offenses, has grown since 2003. The Army granted more than double the number of waivers for felonies and misdemeanors in 2006 than it did in 2003. Some recruits may get more than one waiver,” (i.e. for multiple crimes.) The news article doesn’t get into the predominant race of the soldiers involved in these waivers–but do we really need to ask? And do we really need to be trusting our national defense to criminals and illegal Third World aliens?
The same article continues: “The military routinely grants waivers to admit recruits who have criminal records, medical problems or low aptitude scores that would otherwise disqualify them from service. Overall the majority are moral waivers, which include some felonies, misdemeanors, and traffic and drug offenses. The number of felony waivers granted by the Army grew from 411 in 2003 to 901 in 2006, according to the Pentagon, or about one in 10 of the moral waivers approved that year. Other misdemeanors, which could be petty theft, writing a bad check or some assaults, jumped from about 2,700 to more than 6,000 in 2006. The minor crimes represented more than three-quarters of the moral waivers granted by the Army in 2006, up from more than half in 2003.”
Are these the kind of people that we need to be feeding, clothing, training to kill, and arming to the teeth? What is going to happen when Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2009 and decides to turn the American military machine of criminals and foreign mercenaries against domestic dissent? At the same time that criminals are being allowed into the military in record numbers, conscientious soldiers, who have objected to legality of the Iraq War are being given sham trials by military tribunals, which will naturally rule against them regardless of the evidence. In the case of one officer, Eric Watada, the judge started off the trial by insisting that the legality of the war could not be addressed.
The article also notes: “In recent years, as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have dragged on, the military has also relaxed some other standards in order to meet recruitment demands. The Army, for example, increased its age limit for recruits from 35 to 42, and is accepting more people whose scores on a standardized aptitude test are at the lower end of the acceptable range.”
So desperate is the military for cannon fodder that in addition to hoodlums and drug addicts, they are recruiting middle-aged men. And they are decimating the ranks of the Reserves and the National Guard with repeated, extended call-ups. Military equipment can be worn out after four years of combat especially in the desert sand. For some reason which no one quite seems to be able to explain, much of this equipment is not being replaced. Some units are now on their FOURTH tour of duty in Iraq. Morale has virtually collapsed. More and more soldiers are deserting, refusing to report for deployment or outright defying the military and refusing to go to Iraq.
If Bush starts a new war with Iran and even if he limits that war to air attacks, the relatively peaceful Shiites will join the rebellion and our casualties could double. A war with Iran would open the floodgates for all sorts of sophisticated weapons to be smuggled across the border. Contrary to neocon propaganda, the Iranian government HAS NOT been sending weapons to the Iraqi rebels –at least not yet. The Iranians were supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon with anti-tank rockets that knocked out a large number of Israeli tanks. If our tanks lose their invincibility, then our casualties will skyrocket.
In recent months, we have been losing helicopters to enemy fire at an alarming rate. The roadside bombs in Iraq are becoming more sophisticated using shaped charges and chlorine gas. The British are beginning to withdraw their last 3,000 remaining troops. Virtually all of our other “allies” have pulled out already. On top of all this, we are sending in middle-aged men, criminals and drug addicts to replace the losses.
Make no mistake. If something is not done about the neocons, America is headed for an unmitigated disaster.