U.S. Military Faces Recruitment Crisis

Why are fewer Americans joining the armed forces?
 

Nearly every branch of the United States armed forces will fail to meet its recruitment goals this year. The Army will be at least 7,000 recruits short by September 30, which is the end of the fiscal year for the armed forces. The Army slashed its recruitment goal by 12,000 and is still lagging behind. The Air Force is currently behind by 4,000 recruits. The Navy may barely make its recruitment target, while the Marine Corps is the only major branch to achieve its goals.

Ultimately, these recruiting woes will leave the Army 28,000 troops short by the end of fiscal year 2023. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Joseph Martin confirmed these details in the House Armed Services Committee on July 19. This led to Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr to remark at the Heritage Foundation that we “question the sustainability of the all-volunteer force.”

“The reasons contributing to plunging recruitment are complex, including more detailed medical screenings, a shrinking proportion of Americans eligible to serve, poor marketing practices, low civilian unemployment and more,” states a detailed report at the Army Times. The statistics released by the Army highlight some of these disturbing developments.

“Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23 percent of Americans ages 17 to 24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29 percent in recent years,” reported nbc News. “An internal Defense Department survey obtained by nbc News found that only 9 percent of those young Americans eligible to serve in the military had any inclination to do so, the lowest number since 2007.” Around 24 to 34 million Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 cannot serve because of obesity, poor health, lacking a high school education, or having a criminal record. That leaves around 900,000 Americans eligible for recruitment.

nbc continued: “Among Americans surveyed by the Pentagon who were in the target age range for recruiting, only 13 percent had parents who had served in the military, down from approximately 40 percent in 1995. The military considers parents one of the biggest influencers for service.”

The Army, in particular, is using every means at its disposal to attract recruits, including easing regulations on tattoos, bonuses up to $50,000, establishing a training camp for applicants with low exam scores, and mobilizing more recruiters and doctors to work through backlogs. (However, service chiefs don’t mention the over 5,000 service members forced out because they refused to take the covid vaccine.)

What is driving this plunge in recruitment and Americans’ desire to join the military? The issue goes far beyond physical factors and has everything to do with the radical goal of the current administration.

Jeff Groom at Spectator World proposed two reasons for this problem:

First, our citizens’ feeling of connection to the United States is beginning to wane. … It doesn’t take a genius to understand that the youth won’t sacrifice for something they don’t feel connected to.” Americans who trust the military dropped from 70 percent in 2018 to only 45 percent today. What is eroding the belief, patriotic fervor and love for the United States?

In 2013, 44 percent of all military recruits came from the South. Georgia and Florida take the top spots in terms of enlistment rates while the Northeast lags considerably with the exception of Maine. … This leads to the second reason the Pentagon’s premise of connection is in trouble: the woke culture war.

If the people who are more likely to serve believe they are under attack by their own leaders, why would they defend their country?

“Imagine you are an 18-year-old, white, Christian male in Georgia with a family history of military service,” Groom wrote. “As you progressed through your teen years, you watched Confederate statues being torn down and military bases being renamed, endless media and elitist demonization of your culture as racist and deplorable and backward, and military and civilian leadership that thinks diversity and inclusion (i.e. fewer white men) is best thing since sliced bread. Would you volunteer? Identity politics works both ways. Trash my tribe and I won’t associate with you, let alone risk my life.” The woke policies of the military and the Biden administration are pushing Americans away from serving. However, the military institutions themselves are also being radically transformed.

This woke transformation of the military began under the leadership of Barack Obama. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry identified this in the article “This Isn’t Incompetence. This Is Treason!”:

No matter how powerful or numerous or sophisticated the military, if it lacks strong leadership it can accomplish nothing! The leaders Obama put in office prioritized political correctness, racial and gender equality, and other outrageous causes that gutted America’s defenses. They supported Obama allowing transgenders into the military. They directed resources toward promoting radical-leftist ideas in foreign countries rather than protecting America’s interests and securing the globe. … Their goal was never to train soldiers to love their country and fight and even die to save their country! These leaders often trained soldiers to commit treason against their own country!

Obama placed radical-left generals in the top leadership positions, and they brought the Marxist ideology into the leadership of the military. This Communist thinking emanating from the government and military hates the Constitution and the liberty that America has traditionally embodied. This fundamentally contradicts the mission and purpose of the military, which takes an oath to uphold the Constitution.

“[O]nce Joe Biden took over, he went right back to the Obama-era madness: offering transgender soldiers ‘free’ gender-reassignment surgery, working to purge ‘racism’ and ‘right-wing extremism,’ and so on,” continued Mr. Flurry. “Reading lists for sailors and soldiers feature books that indoctrinate them in anti-American thinking. Earlier this year, when one lieutenant colonel wrote a book revealing how Marxism had infected the military elite, he was immediately fired! Prior generations of soldiers sacrificed their lives to stop the ideology that this generation of soldiers is being taught in our military academies!” Part of the goal of the Communist infiltration is the demoralization of the armed forces. These Marxist policies are leaving America vulnerable to our foreign enemies.

The Biden administration wants to add women to the draft. In 2013, the combat ban on women was lifted, and now the administration is seeking to overturn the 1981 Supreme Court decision in Rostker v. Goldberg, which upheld women’s exclusion from the draft. The radicals view this as a form of gender injustice, but including women in the draft is really another way to weaken American families and overall combat effectiveness.

The recruitment crisis is a consequence of years of radical policies. Mr. Flurry wrote: “These decisions by America’s leaders have deadly consequences! What happens when military commanders are more dedicated to promoting radical ideas than to defending the country? What happens when they don’t even believe in the ideals of the nation they represent?” What happens is, Americans no longer want to serve and defend their country.

America is under attack. The radical left is undermining every cornerstone of American society, plunging the nation into crisis after crisis. Bible prophecy indicates that civil war and military defeat are on the horizon. America may have the weapons and technology, but the most important pillars of a fighting force—leadership and morale—are gone.

Yet before this final calamity, there will be a temporary resurgence. Use this short time to turn to God and understand what is really going on. All these disasters are coming because of America’s collective sin against God’s law, no matter if you are Republican, Democrat, black, white, a Northerner, a Southerner, in the military or not. Only Mr. Flurry’s free book America Under Attack can explain what is really going on and prepare you for the dramatic events that will unfold in the near future.