The recession must be getting really bad. For the first time in over 35 years, the U.S. Army met all of its enlistment goals, despite the near certainty of recruits seeing combat in one of the two wars we’re fighting at the moment. This hasn’t happened since 1973, just after Congress ended the draft. Recently, Army recruiting has been slow and the army has consistently fallen well below its recruiting goals, but this year the military saw 168,900 new recruits, or 103% of their goal.
This drastic influx of recruits was caused by one thing: the recession. In today’s awful job market, struggling young men and women naturally turned to the armed services, enticed by guaranteed work an around $14,000 in bonuses. This is a pretty sweet deal for someone who has been laid off, maybe supporting a family. It might even be sweet enough to risk losing your life or your sanity to war.
I find this to be somewhat depressing. People are being forced into military service because they cannot support themselves any other way in today’s economy. I think it’s sad that people have to risk their lives in an unpopular war just to feed their families. This influx was not caused by the wars “justness” or popularity or by national pride. It was caused by necessity and poverty. Oh well. During the Great Depression FDR created works programs like the CCC to provide employment for struggling citizens. I guess the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are our equivalent of a New Deal.
