The notion that the U.S. could possibly help Ukraine directly fight the Russians is a dead letter. Vox ran a long-form, well-sourced story Sunday headlined, “America isn’t ready for another war — because it doesn’t have the troops.” The sub-headline bleakly added, “The US military’s recruiting crisis, explained.”
Of course, the story explained nothing that actually exists in this matrix of reality. To give away the article’s punchline, recruitment figures across all branches of the U.S. military are so bad that Vox floated what it called the “D-word,” meaning the draft.
Vox described what it called “a political horseshoe effect,” meaning that both right-leaning and left-leaning citizens are equally eschewing military service, and “refusing to fight what they call unnecessary, unwinnable wars.” Imagine that. The article then noted, almost in passing, the “especially sharp decline in enlistments by white men and women.” So weird.
You’ll be disappointed if you go looking in this article for any mention of diversity policies, the effect of vaccine mandates, or the military’s new obsession with promoting atypical sexual preferences in the ranks. Too late:
If only they’d considered how the mandates would affect recruitment
The article described a ‘recruiting doom loop.’ With force levels at post-WWII lows, service members are being assigned to more and more frequent overseas missions in combat zones, making life in the military generally miserable, resulting in lower recruitment levels, therefore more onerous combat assignments for active-duty soldiers, and so on, and so forth.
It’s become a race to the bottom.
Vox grudgingly admitted that a well-needed draft would be difficult. Not just politically. Americans of prime draft age are fatter and sicker than ever. Fewer than three out of ten American young adults can pass basic health and physical fitness requirements for military service.
But you know what could stop the doom loop? Fewer combat assignments. You know what could reduce combat assignments? Fewer proxy wars. If only we had a presidential candidate whose platform included fewer proxy wars and healthier Americans.
If you know of such a candidate, let me know.
