Usually, when there is a crisis (whether perceived or real) in America, the mainstream media will jump right on it, filing umpteen evening news reports and newspaper articles in hopes of ensuring that at some point, their readers and viewers will eventually come around to caring and getting outraged enough to Do Something™.
But in the case of the very real military recruitment crisis that is currently underway in this country, we see very little from Big Media outside of the obligatory pieces noting how 2022 recruiting goals across all military branches are way down, with NBC News recently reporting on how the numbers “show both a record low percentage of young Americans eligible to serve and an even tinier fraction willing to consider it.”
Per the Army Times, the hardest hit among the branches is the U.S. Army, where standards are being relaxed/lowered in hopes of enticing new recruits to join:
Defense Department officials have been sounding the alarm for months: the military is going to miss its enlisted recruiting goals this year, and the Army may be in the worst spot of any of the services.As of late June, according to an Army spokesperson, the Army had only hit 40% of its recruiting goal of 55,400 new soldiers for fiscal year 2022. The reasons contributing to plunging recruitment are complex, including more detailed medical screenings, a shrinking proportion of Americans eligible to serve, poor marketing practices, low civilian unemployment and more. In the face of the challenge, the service is pulling out nearly all the stops to ensure the ranks are filled.
Among the “stops” being pulled out:
As to what’s causing the recruitment crisis, the Army Times primarily cited economic and medical factors, including fitness issues and the military’s COVID vaccine mandate, which was put in place by President Biden.
Heritage noted earlier this year that “Since 2014, the military has been reporting that because of obesity, adverse criminal history, physical problems, drug use, or lack of a high school degree, only 29% of Americans qualify to join the military without a waiver.”
Professor Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, writing in the New York Post, suggested other factors as a serious cause for concern as well, including the growing emphasis on wokeness and political correctness:
One is that the new “woke” Army isn’t all that appealing to the kinds of people who traditionally join the military.As Jeff Groom writes in Spectator World, the Army has waged a culture war, and it’s a quagmire: “Imagine you are an eighteen-year-old, white, Christian male in Georgia with a family history of military service. As you progressed through your teen years, you watched Confederate statues being torn down and military bases being renamed, endless media and elitist demonization of your culture as racist and deplorable and backwards, and military and civilian leadership that thinks diversity and inclusion (i.e. fewer white men) is best thing since sliced bread. Would you volunteer? Identity politics works both ways.”Traditional masculinity is something today’s woke military seems hostile to, but it’s always been the driving force in encouraging people to enlist. A volunteer army needs volunteers, and why exactly would a traditional white male want to volunteer anymore? Note that combat soldiers disproportionately come from the South and face the greatest degree of demonization.
Remember, too, the demoralization of the U.S. military after Biden’s disastrous and deadly Afghanistan withdrawal debacle:
The worst part is this: The military leadership has broken faith with the troops.[…]Thousands of Americans, along with Afghan allies, were left behind while US troops were ordered to engage in an overnight skedaddle from Bagram Air Base and a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan.Reports at the time revealed outright rage among the troops at how they were used. A group of retired senior military officers called for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to resign. Service members openly mocked Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.
Add to all of this the belief among a majority of active-duty service members that the military has become overly politicized, and it’s no wonder that not only is recruitment down but that civilian confidence in the military is way down.
In a piece on the erosion of the “World’s Greatest Military,” Victor Davis Hanson summed things up accordingly:
Fairly or not, the perception among the public and our enemies is that the U.S. military has become a political entity with an agenda that transcends defending the U.S. and its interests.Its perceived main agenda by half the country is progressive social justice, administered top-down from a cadre of elites who can implement controversial policies through the chain of command without the messy work of the Congress—to the delight of the Pentagon’s newfound sunshine friends on the woke Left.Such military social engineers unfortunately appear to share contempt for a large group of Americans who voted for a president they despised. And this is a fact warmly welcomed by our worst enemies abroad.
How can the American people fight it? One way is by continuing to raise awareness of how woke ideology seeps its way into American institutions, which is why you should bookmark Legal Insurrection’s Military Service Academies database. It tracks “military service academies [that] have taught or introduced some form of critical race theory or ‘anti-racism’ training on future military leaders.”
Fox News Digital did a nice write-up earlier this week on the site’s rollout, complete with an interview with Professor Jacobson. You can check it out here.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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