"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."
— Groucho Marx
Be back this evening with the next installment of Left Behind and a bit more on empathy, but allow me to quickly draw your attention to this strange article by Pauline Jelinek of the Associated Press.
This ran in the paper today — and in at least 140 others according to Google News — despite failing the sniff test:
Uncle Sam wants YOU, that famous Army recruiting poster says. But does he really?
Not if you're a Ritalin-taking, overweight, Generation Y couch potato — or some combination of the above.
As for that fashionable "body art" that the military still calls a tattoo, having one can be grounds for rejection, too.
With U.S. casualties rising in wars overseas and more opportunities in the civilian work force from an improved U.S. economy, many young people are shunning a career in the armed forces. But recruiting is still a two-way street — and the military doesn't want most people in this prime recruiting age group of 17 to 24.
Of about 32 million Americans now in this group, the Army deems the vast majority too fat, too uneducated, too flawed in some way, according to its estimates for the current budget year.
"As you look at overall population and you start factoring out people, many are not eligible in the first place to apply," said Doug Smith, spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command.
The rest of the piece goes on to explain that morbidly obese high-school dropouts and those with multiple felonies may not be Grade A Army material, although in some cases waivers may be available and exceptions may be made.
But the overall tone is set by that lead sentence and that "the military doesn't want most people" motif. This is a bravura piece of spinning by Mr. Smith of the Army Recruiting Command, and a deplorable example of gettin' spun by Ms. Jelinek and the AP.
For Smith this spin has a double benefit. Feigned exclusivity is probably a more hopeful recruiting strategy than admitting to a de facto standard of "anybody with a pulse." Plus this highlighting of the millions of unqualified provides a bit more cover when poor Smith fails, yet again, to meet his recruiting targets for the month/quarter/year.
I don't envy the guy his job. He's trying to enlist recruits during a war that none of his bosses — military or civilian — can explain the reason for, or what victory might look like, or how such a victory might come about, or if it will ever end.
If America were engaged in a legitimate war — legitimately declared in legitimate defense of our nation and its freedoms — recruiters wouldn't have to do much more than sit there and take down names as fast as they could. But America's military is not engaged in that kind of war.
And the war our civilian leaders have chosen instead is being lost, in part because neither they nor their military commanders were smart enough to realize that Other People in Other Countries share that basic human impulse to rally to the defense of their nation when it is under attack or occupation.
An unnecessary war conducted by foolish and incompetent leaders — even a "Ritalin-taking, overweight, Generation Y couch potato" can recognize that's a lousy deal.
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