Animosity toward military service produces desperate US recruiting measures

By James Cogan
10 June 2005

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Disaffection among the American people with the Iraq occupation and general opposition to the militarist trajectory of US foreign policy is producing a sustained decline in military recruitment rates. Thousands of soldiers, marines and National Guard members are leaving the armed forces for the same reasons.

In the Seattle area, for example, the Army has enlisted just 94 people in the past seven months, out of a target of 266 by September 30. Nationally, from October 1, 2004, to the beginning of May, the active or full-time US Army signed up just 35,926 people toward a 12-month target of 80,000. At the current rate of approximately 5,000 recruits per month, the Army will fall 20,000 short—the equivalent of an entire infantry division.

The part-time Army Reserve had signed up just 7,283 recruits, a little over 1,000 per month. To reach its target of 22,175 recruits by September 30, the rate will have to triple. The Army National Guard is languishing at 19,000 soldiers below strength, with 331,000 troops instead of the regulated 350,000. The Marine Corp is struggling to meet its annual recruitment target for the first time in a decade.

Iraq is the primary factor in the recruitment crisis. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll found that three quarters of respondents believed the number of American casualties in Iraq were unacceptable and that close to 60 percent said the war was not worth fighting. Retired colonel Andrew Bacevich, a professor at Boston University, told the Post: “It appears that Americans are coming to the realisation that the war in Iraq is not being won and may well prove unwinnable. That conclusion bleeds over into a conviction that it may not have been necessary in the first place.”

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