October 19, 2018

Military recruiting soldiers to fight in war that started before they were born

Buzzfeed -Today, for the first time in history, a young American can enlist to fight in a US war that started before he or she was born.

As the war in Afghanistan enters its 18th year and the US Army falls thousands short of its recruiting goals, the Pentagon is recognizing it has to do something different to recruit an age group that does not remember 9/11 and for whom the “war on terror” has been background noise their entire lives. This includes rethinking some of its traditional military PR, which has unintentionally turned the corner from inspiring to morbid by highlighting that some of the young people enlisting today are taking over the same tasks in the very same places their parents fought almost a generation ago.

...The cost of the US “war on terror” is being borne by an increasingly smaller number of families, isolated and unnoticed by the rest of the country. At the same time, the US military footprint across the globe has expanded rapidly since former president George W. Bush ordered US troops into Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom on Oct. 7, 2001. The US still has 15,000 troops in Afghanistan, but last year Americans also died in combat in places like Yemen, Niger, Syria, and Somalia, where most people back home — including some members of Congress — were not even aware the US was fighting.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The best way to solve this "problem" is to bring US troops home, and stop all the military adventures.

Greg Gerritt said...

Brng troops home and have a much smaller military, one useful for defense but not offense. Imperialism must end.