-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 26, 2007 4:46:35 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: Fwd: Poor and Uneducated Like We Thought: Debunking The
Military Debunkers
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From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: July 26, 2007 5:47:29 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Poor and Uneducated Like We Thought: Debunking The
Military Debunkers
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/25/2748/
*Poor and Uneducated Like We Thought: Debunking The Military
Debunkers*
By Ted Rall
Published on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
"The typical recruit in the all-volunteer force is wealthier, more
educated and
more rural than the average 18- to 24-year-old citizen is," claimed
the authors
of an oft-cited 2005 "comprehensive study" of the U.S. military
commissioned by
the Heritage Foundation.
Two years later, right-wingers trot out the Heritage troop survey
as evidence
that America is sending its best and brightest, rather than its
down and out, to
win Afghan and Iraqi hearts and minds. The G.O.P. blog Newsbusters
used it to
rebut Rosie O'Donnells statement that most recruits enlist in
the army to get an
education: "Of course, facts don't matter to Rosie O'Donnell." But
are these
"facts" true?
The key word here is "volunteers," which here means new
recruits." A new C.B.O.
study released this July states: "Because black personnel have been
a larger
share of recruits in the past and because they have relatively high
retention
rates, however, they account for a larger share of the active
enlisted force as a
whole: 19 percent, compared with 14 percent of the civilian
population of 17- to
49-year-olds. Black service members make up a smaller percentage
of the active
officer corps: 9 percent."
You're more than 35 percent more likely to be in the military if
you're black
than if you're white. But youre 35 percent less likely to
become an officer.
Ignore the propaganda -- the military is a reflection of, rather
than a cure for,
racism.
With Afghanistan joining Iraq as a war considered an unwinnable
mistake in the
minds of the public, military recruiters are being forced to scrape
the bottom of
the barrel.
In 2005, the Army promoted 97 percent of all eligible captains to
major, an
increase from the pre-war norm of 70-to-80 percent. A Department
official told
The Los Angeles Times: "Basically, if you havent been court-
martialed, you're
going to be promoted to major."
It may be too much to assert that, as Asia Times did recently, that
"U.S. ground
forces are increasingly made up of a motley mix of under-age teens,
old-timers,
foreign fighters, gang-bangers, neo-Nazis, ex-cons, inferior
officers, and a host
of near-mercenary troops, lured in or kept in uniform through big
payouts and
promises." Or is it?
"Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists
to join the
armed forces, and commanders dont remove them from the military
even after we
positively identify them as extremists or gang members," Scott
Barfield, a
Defense Department investigator told the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Citing the "toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-
volunteer army,"
Major General Michael Rochelle, head of army recruitment promises:
"If you have
excessively prominent and vulgar tattoos they will not take you
right now, but
that is about to change."
"824 felons were allowed to sign up in 2004 as opposed to 1,605 in
2006 under the
moral waivers scheme," reports the U.K. Guardian. "Almost 59,000
drug abusers
entered the military in the same period."
There are, of course, intelligent, well-educated children of
wealthy parents
serving in the military. But they are the exception, not the
rule. If
Afghanistan and Iraq are, as the Bush Administration argues,
central fronts in
the war on terror, which is a war for hearts and minds, we ought to
be sending
our best-prepared, most presentable representatives of American
society abroad as
personal ambassadors. Our decision not to pay the higher salaries
and benefits
that would lure those men and women out of the civilian workforce
belies those
claims.
~~~
[Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is
Central Asia the
New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of
Americas next
big foreign policy challenge.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1561634549?tag=commondreams-20/
ref=nosim ]
(C) 2007 Ted Rall
------------------------
"America is a nation founded on the principle that all human life
is sacred
Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not
ethical."-- G.W.
Bush on the occasion of vetoing Congressional bill on stem cell
research
June 20, 2007
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