Reply #15: None of the Services are making quota [View All]

[MADem]

Generally speaking, you sign up for EIGHT YEARS. On average, an enlistee does four active, the remainder in the Individual Ready Reserve. There are other contract options, many of which require more active time in exchange for advanced training. There are also a couple of shorter active options, too. But one way or another, they own your ass for eight years, if they want to keep you.

They've increased the CAT IV acceptance ratio (those are the dummies that cut a 24 on the ASVAB), they've increased the number of non-HS grads accepted, and they've made waivers for criminal misconduct or juvenile offenses much easier to obtain....and they STILL aren't making goal. They've cut USAF and USN end strength to transfer these numbers to the USMC and USA, they've initiated targeted stop-losses, so people with critical skills can't leave even if they are retirement-eligible or at the end of their enlistment contract, and they have also initiated a massive recall of IRR personnel in targeted specialties (fuel truck drivers, specified helo and fixed wing pilots, medical personnel, etc.) and even at that, they STILL aren't cutting goal.

They play with the numbers, they go back and reduce the goals after the fact to make it appear that all is well, and then they hold people hostage so that they can lie to Congress that they made the end-strength numbers, but the truth of the matter is that the kids who are going in are the Lynndie Englands of the world, living in the middle of nowhere, or in the middle of an economically depressed urban center, with NO job opportunity, no prospects for college, no money, no nothing. You always have the odd kid who is following the family tradition, or wants to emulate a brother or sister, or who thinks it will be like a video game, but for the most part, these kids going in have no prospects in their communities. If the unemployment rate is around nine or ten percent in an area, recruiting is easy. If it is as high as fifteen or twenty percent, you only have to open the office a couple of days a week.

The kids (term used loosely) who are over there do include a bunch of the post-9/11 patriots, but a good measure are also experienced Guardsmen and reservists who have been doing the "drill" thing for ten, twenty or more years. They're showing up, fat, dumb and happy, doing what weecowboy didn't do, doing their two weeks a year, every other weekend, and BLAM!!! Next thing you know, their lives are turned upsidedown, and they find themselves in the sandbox. They're in the middle of an enlistment contract, they can't quit--they have to serve out their contract, so they are shipped off to Iraq...and then, they are held over by popular demand! The back door draft!

It's hard, especially when you are close to qualifying for retirement, to ask someone to toss that investment in time and sweat to the side. The benefits are considerable, not just for the servicemember, but for the family members as well. A lot of these guys are halfway or closer to that point, and they are just HOPING, hoping that they don't catch a bullet, and they make it home....

I want them home. All of them. Not one more killed for oil.