December 26, 2004

As an indication of precisely how desperate the Pentagon is to "recruit" bullet-stoppers, last week my wife received an "Army of One" brochure in the mail. She’s old enough to be a grandmother. Of course, the Army is not really interested in convincing my wife to join up. She was spammed, as I am sure millions of people are every day in America.

As retired Col. David H. Hackworth writes, recruiting numbers are way down. "Hack’s talking to the recruiters first-hand and the problem, no surprise, is in all branches of the military—Regular Army, Reserves and Guard. Recruiting is at half of expectations," notes Daily Kos ( http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/8/20440/1036 ). A recruiter told Hackworth that Army and Army Reserve achieved 50.17 percent and 43.48 percent of their recruiting numbers, respectively. "By the end of this recruiting year, the Regular Army, Reserves and Guard could fall short more than 50 percent of its projected requirement, or about 60,000 new soldiers. And according to many recruiters, quality recruits are giving way to mental midgets who have a hard time telling their left foot from their right… Unless a miracle happens and the new Iraqi security force decides to stop running and start fighting, we’ll be in Iraq for a long time. Most likely with a draftee force."

"Although Pentagon puff artists insist they’re making quota, recruiters are already saying it would be easier to find $100 bills on the sidewalk outside a homeless shelter than fill their enlistment quotas, even with the huge bonuses now being paid," Hackworth writes for Military.com ( http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Hackworth_100404,00.html
) "So the draft—which will include both boys and girls this time around—is a no-brainer in '05 and '06."

Even the Bushcons admit the military is too puny for their ambitious agenda of "reshaping" the Middle East in the name of "democracy" (i.e., bombing nations and overthrowing governments at the behest of Greater Israel). "It was apparent to some as long ago as the mid-1990s that the American Army was too small," writes Frederick W. Kagan, a military historian, on the neocon web site, the Weekly Standard ( http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/00
0/005/046pafwt.asp?pg=2 ) . "The urgency of that problem has been clear to many since September 11. The time lost in increasing the Army to proper strength cannot be regained, but we can mitigate the dangerous consequences for an uncertain future if we start now. President Bush should use the election mandate he received to take the next bold step in the war for democracy and against terrorism. He should insist upon an immediate and dramatic increase in the size of our armed forces to allow them to carry out his wise determination to prevail in Iraq and in the war on terror."

But if kids aren’t signing up and the Bushcons are reluctant to call for a draft, how in the heck will the Pentagon recruit enough bullet-stoppers to make a difference?

Dubya should demand fealty.

"If the president called upon the American people to show their support not by flying yellow ribbons but by joining the Army, there is no reason to believe that they would not do so," Kagan explains.

Of course, this will not work, even with the Bush Ministry of Disinformation working overtime to hide the grim reality of Bush’s war against the people of Iraq. As Charley Reese writes, "the Bush administration doesn’t want you to see the bodies—not the bodies of our men and women, and not the bodies of Iraqi men, women and children. The administration wants you to see the war as an electronic game with bright lights in the distance and good sound effects, or close-ups of our brave warriors firing their guns at an invisible enemy. It doesn’t want you to see the torn flesh, blood, intestines, feces, urine. If you did, you might not support the war, and billions of dollars depend on your support." ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese67.html )

Even so, as the dismal numbers of the recruitment "mission" indicate, kids are not signing up because they know the "Army of One" is an army of bullet-stoppers, even if they do not grasp the ideological dimensions or know anything about the Strausscon "generational" plan to destroy Muslim culture.

"The difficulty today," writes historian Michael S. Foley, "is that in the multi-front war on terror, the all-volunteer force is stretched so thin that the Bush administration is now extending the tours of Guard and reserve units in Iraq—sometimes notifying them days before they are to come home that they’ll have to stay another three or six months. Morale, by all accounts, is slipping." ( http://hnn.us/articles/5197.html ). As Foley sees it, there is "no appealing manpower option: either keep using alienated reservists and Guard troops, or institute conscription on a population of draft-age men who, unlike their 1960s counterparts, have not been conditioned for the possibility of military service." Daft-age men as well, it should be noted, who will need to build a draft resistance movement from the ground up, something that will take time and, under the Patriot Act, will be difficult, to say the least.

Frederick W. Kagan is dreaming: even if Bush demands Americans "show their support" by donating themselves or their kids to Bush’s interminable invasions and occupations, the response will be at best lukewarm. Polls now indicate there is "growing public skepticism" over the occupation and the losing prospect of fighting the Iraqi resistance. A few days ago, a Washington Post-ABC News poll discovered Americans believe Bush’s "war against terrorism" in Iraq is "not worth fighting," as the Washington Post notes ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/registra
tion/register&destination=register&nextstep=gather&applicati ... ). Of course, this is not to say the American public is not deluded when it comes to the reality of Iraq: "A strong majority of Americans, 58 percent, support keeping military forces in Iraq until 'civil order is restored,’ even in the face of continued U.S. causalities. By a slight margin, 48 percent to 44 percent, more voters agreed with Bush’s position that the United States is making ’significant progress’ toward its goal of establishing democracy in Iraq. Yet, by a similar margin, the public believes the United States is not making significant progress toward restoring civil order."

Before this "growing public skepticism" rots the political will for the Strausscon master plan—a plan suffused in trite bromides about democracy—the Bush Ministry of Disinformation will start beating the propaganda drums in favor of "shared sacrifice," that is to say a return to the draft. It’s inevitable. "Unless a miracle happens and the new Iraqi security force decides to stop running and start fighting, we’ll be in Iraq for a long time. Most likely with a draftee force," warns Hackworth.

On December 7, the commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East, General John Abizaid, said the Iraqi security forces are "not as mature as they need to be" to ensure security for the country’s January 30 elections, according to VOA News ( http://www.voanews.com/english/2004-12-07-voa29.cfm ). And last week Bush said the performance of Iraqi troops is "unacceptable." Bush said there "have been some cases where, when the heat got on, they left the battlefield." ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6737149/ )

But here’s what Abizaid and Bush didn’t bother to say: American officers have long regarded Iraq’s security forces as susceptible to infiltration. "Last week, defense officials in Washington described Iraq’s security forces as heavily infiltrated by insurgents," the San Francisco Chronicle wrote in October ( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/ar
chive/2004/10/26/MNGFB9G8UK1.DTL ). "The police and military forces all have insurgents in them," Lt. Col. Jeffrey Sinclair of the 1st Infantry Division told the Chronicle.

In a more balanced and sane world, there would be an "exit strategy" in Iraq—or the United States would not have invaded in the first place—but in Bushzarro world, dominated by colluding Strausscons, the "war" must continue, possibly for generations (as warned), and since the current "Army of One" is not up to the task of "reshaping" the Middle East, bullet-stopper conscription is the only logical response. Telling the American people to "show their support not by flying yellow ribbons but by joining the Army" is not only ludicrous, it will never work. It will be universally ignored.

Conscription, on the other hand, cannot be ignored without penalty.