Iraq Occupation Impacts Military Recruitment in United States

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/30332

Iraq Occupation Impacts Military Recruitment in United States
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2008-01-22 17:56. Activism
http://nationalpriorities.org

Despite aggressive recruitment efforts, the Army failed to meet its own recruitment benchmarks once again in 2007. You can read about NPP's national, state and county-level analysis of 2007 military recruits in an Associated Press article that was released earlier today and has alreaady appeared in over 160 media outlets across the country, including CNN, NPR, CBS Radio, The Washington Post, MSNB and Fox News.

The impact of the Iraq War is evident in the Army's failure to meet its own benchmarks. Only 71 percent of Army recruits in 2007 had a regular high school diploma, missing the Army's benchmark by close to 20 percentage points. Department of Defense (DoD) studies have shown that a high school diploma is the most powerful indicators for recruits' success.

At the same time, the burden of fighting the Iraq War continues to fall disproportionately on recruits coming from low- and middle-income neighborhoods by even greater margins than in 2004. Click here for income breakdowns by neighborhood.

"Once again, we're staring at the painful story of young people with fewer options bearing the greatest burden," NPP executive director Greg Speeter noted. "Instead of spending millions more on new enlistment bonuses, we need to change the terms of where these soldiers are fighting and why they're taking the risk of never coming home."

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No shit!

See, if there weren't so many good-paying jobs out there in the national economy, it would be a snap to meet those military recruiting targets, and, why, everything would be just as right as rain! It's not the Iraq occupation or any of those little wars (which have been over for years anyway), it's the economy!

Just a little smidgen of a downturn, and we'd have plenty of recruits. Maybe if the Fed raised the interest rate ever so slightly?

/

Ow. Thinking like one of the media chuckleheads hurts.