Monday, March 13, 2006
Recruitment and the war
When was the last time you read such a story? It must have been a while ago, because the problem has gone away. Recruitment is way up, even in the face of a strong economy and rising private sector wages. Even the much-maligned National Guard is recruiting record numbers of new soldiers. How so? James Joyner noticed that they are using soldiers having just returned from that quagmire of defeat, Iraq. The WaPo:
Today, the Guard is surpassing its goals and growing in strength -- a welcome boost for an all-volunteer Army stretched thin by unprecedented deployments. In recent months, the Guard enlisted nearly as many troops as the active-duty Army, even though it is a much smaller force. Indeed, the Army Guard, present in about 3,500 U.S. communities, will launch pilot programs this year to recruit for the entire Army.
"We're seeing quantum leaps," said Lt. Gen. Clyde A. Vaughn, director of the Army National Guard. "We should probably be America's recruiter for the Army."
A driving force in this year's early success, Guard leaders say, is that thousands of Guard members have now returned from Iraq and are reaching out to friends, old classmates and co-workers -- widening the face-to-face contacts that officials say are critical to recruiting. Guard members "are staying with us and want to fill up units with their neighbors and friends," Blum said in an interview. "Now that they're back -- watch out."
While the mainstream media has dutifully reported this outstanding news, we haven't heard a peep from all those editorialists and other Democrats who were proclaiming that we needed a draft -- that Iraq was going so badly we had to force people into the Army. We aren't likely to hear from them, either. Why? Perhaps they do not want to explain why soldiers who weren't signing up last spring because Iraq was an unwinnable quagmire are signing up now on the say-so of returning vets. You didn't see that happening during the Vietnam war. And because they do not want to remind people that recruitment started turning around last summer, almost precisely when George Bush personally stepped in and asked for more volunteers.
CWCID for various links: Instapundit.
10 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Mar 13, 09:58:00 AM:
I would imagine a big part of the recruitment spike is the new $2,000 bonus current Guard members are getting to sign up their friends. Once they run out of friends to sign up, though, I would expect the well to run dry again. It's a lot like an Amway business: once you go through your friends and family, your business pretty puch dies once you have to resort to cold contacts.
By 
TigerHawk, at
Mon Mar 13, 10:31:00 AM:
I found it surprising that the Guard had only recently given recruitment bonuses. I don't know of a successful business that does not pay them.
I don't think, though, that the "well" will run dry any time soon. Most people don't have a static pool of friends and acquaintances. More to the point, the new recruits will have their own friends and so forth. I honestly don't think the dynamic is the least bit like an Amway business.
By Gordon Smith, at
Mon Mar 13, 08:05:00 PM:
It's good news that recruitment for the Guard is going up. I wonder how that'll look once Iran gets hotter.
And, before we get too freaking rosy around here, CS Monitor: ""Stop-loss," a policy used by the Army to keep US soldiers and reservists in the military beyond the date when their service was supposed to end, has been used on more than 50,000 members of the armed forces since the war in Iraq began. Currently stop-loss is being used to extend the duty of 12,500 troops."
By Gordon Smith, at
Mon Mar 13, 08:07:00 PM:
Stop-loss is another term for "We're Keeping Your Ass in the Service For As Long As We Want No Matter What You Thought You Were Signing Up For, Bitches!"
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Mar 13, 08:24:00 PM:
Stop loss is used on critically short MOS's to prevent them from falling to such an understrength that it damages the ability of the Army to complete its missions. It is mostly used on high-training, highly-marketable jobs. (i.e. it takes a long time and a lot of money to train a soldier to do the job, and the soldier will get paid a crapload of money in the private sector which acts as an incentive to leave the Service ASAP) I've got a buddy whose MOS was (is?) stoplossed. He's not a bulletcatcher, treadhead, cannoncocker, intelligence agent, or any other dangerous MOS; he's a respiratory therapist.
Point being, it has virtually nothing to do with recruitment and everything to do with mission tempo, training requirements, and retention.
By Gordon Smith, at
Tue Mar 14, 08:18:00 AM:
So you're saying that 50,000 soldiers have had the great opportunity to be held in the armed services. How fortunate for all 50,000 of those specialists to get to keep their jobs and maintain that groovy tempo.
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Mar 14, 10:27:00 AM:
The new recruits are presumably signing up with the expectation that they may in fact be extended on any tour (given the track record of "holds" in Iraq). Perhaps that means we are now getting Guard recruits with a more appropriate set of expectations. After all, there is nothing morally wrong with "holds" -- it is just that they upset the expectations of the longstanding "weekend warriors" who did not necessarily expect that they would be subject to them.
By Cassandra, at
Wed Mar 15, 12:25:00 PM:
Screwy:
You are being ridiculous.
When they sign on the dotted line, troops are aware they can be stop-lossed. The are also well aware they can be recalled, John Kerry's lying bull to the contrary. It is not a 'back-door draft" to hold someone to a contract they voluntarily sign.
Waaaaaaaahhhhh!!! You mean that piece of paper I signed MEANT SOMETHING????
You actually EXPECT SOMETHING from me for all that MONEY YOU PAY ME? WHERE'S MY LAWYER?
Give me a break.
By Cassandra, at
Wed Mar 15, 12:28:00 PM:
Screwy is shocked and appalled that the military, that draconian institution, does not consider mentally competent adults to be helpless children, signed contracts to be unilaterally rescindable at will, oaths to be honored, and orders to be polite requests.
Why, oh why am I not surprised :)
By Cassandra, at
Wed Mar 15, 12:38:00 PM:
Apparently somehow all these idjuts must be signing up because they've been seduced by those sinister DOD psy-ops recruiting videos (specially designed to surgically remove all knowledge of US history, current events, and NY Times counterprogramming from their minds so they won't realize the BusHitler is really sending them off to die for the greater glory of Halliburton).
You see, they don't stand a chance: just a few minutes with an evil recruiter and somehow they all get the idea they are haring off to play ping-pong with Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Greenjeans instead of joining the US Military to slaughter innocent Iraqis on the taxpayer's nickel.
I suppose it never occurs to them that they can't just, like... quit whenever they want to. What is the world coming to?
