Military recruiting crisis?

[Ninurta]

Part of the problem is level of maturity. When I was 8 years old, I washed and dressed myself, cleaned up my brother and dressed him. I cooked my breakfast. Fed my brother. Walked him to the lady's house that watched him, then went to school. 

After school I picked up my brother. Made us a snack. Washed, dried, and put away the dishes. Then did my homework. All before my Mom got home from work.

18 year olds can't do that today.

Too many of our youths can't tie their own shoes. And they can't put down their phones.

That is really impressive from an 8 year old!

And yes, the phone thing is really, really bad. Young people seem to really be unable to put down those phones for more than 30 seconds at a time.

That's just the way it was back in the day. Kids did more, because they COULD do more. I could cook at 8 (probably better than I can cook now, since my focus has shifted away from eating over the years), and had 3 younger sisters to look out for. Responsibility jerks one towards adulthood a little faster, and kids don't have many responsibilities in general any more. They don't have to grow up, because mommy and daddy will take care of everything for them, so they don't.

I had a rough patch in life a while back, and my son ended up looking after me for a while, since I was unwilling to look after myself. Really, dead or alive made no difference to me. I think that did him a good turn and jerked him towards adulthood early. He's well on his way now, and didn't freak out when he developed a family of his own to look after. He'd already been there and done that, and already had a sense of responsibility installed that stood him in good stead.

Perhaps that sense of responsibility was a factor, but he shied away from military service, since the military is becoming less and less responsible these days with it's focus towards wokeness and away from fighting ability. The purpose of a military is to kill folks and blow stuff up, not kowtow to little Pat(rick)/Pat(ricia)'s choice of gender for the day. No responsible person wants to surround themselves with blue haired kiddies who can't figure out which set of genitals they are packing today. it's a losing proposition.

Add to that the military intentionally hobbling itself by booting out it's best and brightest because they didn't want to be guinea pigs for an experimental vaccine, and the draw towards a military career diminishes even further. There are better choices for career in the private sector. I'm not sure the military can ever offer enough incentives to overcome that deficiency without first eliminating the drawbacks of an all pansy volunteer force.

So now they are playing it off like it was a plan, done on purpose to buy more technology in lieu of a boots-on-the-ground capability. That will not turn out well, I think, but I'm well known for being a Luddite who fails to see the advantage of tech that will break just exactly when you need it the most, in accordance with Murphy's Law. That's why I won't even buy an AR without sights - even though it is more expensive, and therefore clearly super-duper advantageous to own an expensive gun that you can't even aim. Last time I was in the market for one and shopping around, a guy tried to sell me one for 125% of what I finally settled on, and it had no sights. So I said "where's the sights?" and he explained that it was "optics-ready". So I said, "yeah, that's fuckin' great, but WHERE ARE THE SIGHTS?", to which he only shrugged like I was some kind of idiot and repeated that "it's optics-ready, don't need any sights". As gently as I could, I informed him that a gun without sights is not ready for ANYTHING - it's just a goddamned expensive paperweight.

And that is what the US military is galloping towards - being "optics ready" and in need of batteries that die at the most inopportune time, while at the same time getting rid of the iron sights that it used to be effective with.

Why would anyone with half a brain and a love of country volunteer to get himself into a losing proposition like that? Especially if he knew ahead of time that he's just be volunteering to babysit a bunch of pink-haired idjits who had no sense of responsibility themselves?

Losing propositions - the best and the brightest run away from them.

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