Dave Weigel has a bit more on this.
« You And What Recruiting Pool? | Main | Walls Cracking »
Rudy's Army
08 May 2007 04:29 pm
Comments (5)
Two of my friends from high school joined the army, and one joined the air force. Two of my friends from college joined the air force, too. Also, a friend from my old neighborhood, who is a bit younger than me, signed up last year. From this sample set:
- Four belonged to ROTC in college and were planning on entering the military even before 9/11.
- One specifically entered a track that kept him off the front - medicine.
- None of them volunteered for the infantry because they wanted to see action.
I really think if you're going to argue that there are enough youngsters raring to join the army and fight in Iraq or a similar clusterfuck, the burden is on you to prove it.
Disconcerting as it is to find myself down here under the bridge with Al, I have to say that when I was growing up during Vietnam, at the height of the war's unpopularity and clusterfuckedness, I knew a number of young men who volunteered for the military in order to test themselves in combat. As I recall, that was more-or-less John Kerry's reasoning as well, to give you a well-known example.
So, I'm at least as entitled as Dave Weigel to assert that my anecdotes establish a prima facie case, and the burden is on those who hold contrary views to prove them.
rea writes: "Disconcerting as it is to find myself down here under the bridge with Al, I have to say that when I was growing up during Vietnam, at the height of the war's unpopularity and clusterfuckedness, I knew a number of young men who volunteered for the military in order to test themselves in combat."
There was also a draft then, however, which makes it a vastly different calculation. If you might get drafted, enlisting would look a lot better than it does now, especially if enlisting gives you any more say over what you'll be doing (and thus your chances of survival).
Comments closed May 22, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Where, BTW, is the evidence that being at war makes recruiting more difficult? Sure, it may deter some people that don't want to go to war. OTOH, it may encourage some people who do want to go to war - who believe that joining the military during a war is a patriotic thing. Where's the evidence that the former outnumber the latter?
I think that a lot of people, perhaps even Dave Weigel, assume that the former outnumber the latter simply because they personally wouldn't want to go to war and they don't know anyone who would - call it the Pauline Kael effect.
Posted by Al | May 8, 2007 4:44 PM