"The military doesn't start wars. Politicians start wars." - William Childs Westmoreland, US Army Chief of Staff 1968-1972
There have been several recent articles about the difficulties faced by the US military in recruiting enough people to fill their annual quotas. However, filling recruiting quotas has been an ongoing issue for many years.
A few examples of these articles are linked below. The top two may be behind a Paywall.
Since the The Washington Post article is not behind a paywall, and can be read in its entirety, I'm going to pick on it a little bit. The article has several self-confident talking points that are shared in common with the other two articles. None of these talking points are proven or sourced, and many of them I reject out of hand.
Notably, the Washington Post article points out that military veterans are no longer encouraging their children to join the military. The Wall Street Journal article doesn't *quite* go there and blame veterans for not urging their children to enlist.
Before continuing, please note that unlike the linked Washington Post article, this post contains numerous links to provide support for the ideas presented here.
The Washington Post article blithely dismisses criticism that the "woke" military is making potential recruits averse to volunteering for military duty. I'd say that this claim bears more examination than a dismissive shrug. Let's see if that holds up under closer inspection.
Here is a ranking of states by military enlistment per capita
- Georgia
- Florida
- South Carolina
- Virginia
- Nevada
- Arizona
- Colorado
- Hawai'i
- Alaska
- Alabama
- Texas
- Missouri
I don't associate "woke" with the cultures in any of these states, with the possible exception of the metro areas of Colorado. Most of these places are quite hostile towards "woke" ideas and policies.
If you desire to gather young volunteers from conservative regions to risk their lives for you, it would be wise to avoid completely alienating them - and their veteran parents. Bear in mind that the Washington Post itself has a sordid history of editorials calling ordinary rural Americans racists, homophobes, white supremacists, hicks, rednecks, and deplorables, along with many other class-based slurs.
The Bud light debacle obviously hasn't made an impression on the people at the Washington Post (or the Military), although it has most definitely affected leadership at Anheuser Busch and their shareholders. The situations are similar though. In both cases, we have out of touch elites telling people what they should think. Bear in mind that these are people who absolutely loathe the working class - unless a select few can be placed into some sort of "oppressed" bucket and held up as virtuous.
There is no organized "boycott" of either Bud Light or the US military (or Disney), but people are definitely distancing themselves from organizations that unnecessarily step into the minefield of gender politics.
Most people would likely prefer that organizations steer clear of contentious topics, and just stick to their original objectives. In the case of the beer company, I'd humbly suggest the objective should be making beer that people enjoy. In the case of the US military, perhaps the objective should be military preparedness in order to defend the country.
A large number of people, having rightly or wrongly been offended by these bizarre side-show episodes, have made a conscious or unconscious decision to no longer purchase the product (or enlist) - making these events a case of consumer backlash, and not "consumer boycotts".
The Bud Light fiasco should be a *required* class in the First Year of every Business School in the world from now onward. Know your customer, understand them, and don't piss them off. Did nobody learn from Gilette's unnecessary and Toxic SuperBowl Commercial? Business is not entitled to consumer's money, and the military is not entitled to four years of a young adult's life.
Millions of people will never purchase Budweiser again, and millions of people won't be joining the military, either. If I may be so bold, "woke" backlash might have a great deal to do with Bud Light's crisis in selling beer, and with the inability of the military to fill recruiting quotas - although this is but one of several issues for the military these days.
The Washington Post article brushes off public disgust over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as being seen by some as "imperialistic misadventures" - which of course they both were. Afghanistan was a 20 year-long welfare program for military weapons suppliers. At least neither of these low-level conflicts and occupations caused many US casualties. Or did they?
Nobody wants to return to civilian life and become this guy, either - and he's not the only one out there. Maybe *not* volunteering for military service is now the best choice. Working at the drive-up window at Taco Bell is unlikely to give you PTSD for life. The pay and working conditions are certainly better.
Here's an article from the Department of Veteran Affairs ("The VA"). "
Another factor, counterintuitively to many, is the withdrawal of the US from large-scale, active war. Some young people have always been drawn to what they see as the enormous life-test of combat, as well as the adventure of deploying to distant lands."
Back here in the real world, young people who want to "test themselves in combat" are engaged in Mixed Martial Arts. As a plus, they get to sleep in their own bed every night. They are unlikely to bleed out in the sands of the Middle East, as they capture or defend an oilfield owned by ExxonMobil or Conoco.
Finally, the growing sense of political division across the nation is diminishing the young person’s faith in America. This may be the most disturbing factor of all, and the one that ultimately defeats the all-volunteer force."
Holy shit!!! The chutzpah! This is the same newspaper that paid a *$250 million dollar* defamation settlement to this awkward adolescent kid.
This poor kid was absolutely demonized by the press in general, and by this newspaper in particular. What did this kid do wrong, exactly? He unfortunately was male and white. He also wore a nervous smile and a souvenir MAGA hat - as a weirdo approached him, and beat a drum in his face. A quarter of a BILLION dollars - paid by the Washington Post, right before the case went to discovery. Too bad the case never made it to discovery. The Post's internal emails must have been utterly incriminating.
It takes balls for the Washington Post to say *anything* about people's "growing sense of political division". The Post is at the very heart of inciting political division in this country. LMAO!
By the way, Washington Post, these are kids that probably would have volunteered for military duty back in the day - but now they know what you people *really* think of them. Pretty sure they (and their communities) aren't going to defend you now, knowing that. However, I'm certain that you guys at the Post are encouraging your own offspring to enlist in the military, right? Right? Nope - Washington DC was ranked 51st in the per capita recruiting standings.
Many of the people whom the military once were able to successfully recruit no longer feel that they have a stake in America, nor in US society. Young people can't afford a house or an education, so why would they care if such a stingy society lives or dies? The ones who used to volunteer for military service have been called every slur imaginable by the political/media class - nothing racist or homophobic, of course, because *that* sort of slur is just not OK.
Back to the Washington Post article, and the proposed solutions to the recruiting crisis: (bold is mine)
"First, just as any good company knows when it needs to focus on marketing and advertising in the face of falling market share, the military must send its brightest and most impressive personnel to lead recruiting efforts; provide additional resources to generate leads (artificial intelligence can perhaps help); re-tailor marketing campaigns to appeal directly to the most promising and untapped communities."
Ah yes!!! That moment when the light bulb goes on, and you decide that the solution for people's deep (and justified) distrust of you can be corrected with different marketing. Bud Light - which for 20 years was the top-selling beer - is still losing market share, and no longer even among the top 10. This happened in spite of changing their marketing strategy. Better marketing isn't helping Budweiser, and it won't help the US Army.
And also this:
"As for quality-of-life criticisms: Barracks need to be spotless and well run; food in the chow halls must be plentiful and reflective of new trends and appetites; medical treatment has to be first-rate; and pay/benefit packages must more than keep pace with inflation. (Fortunately, Congress just approved a 5% pay raise, the biggest in two decades).
So... with the US military's bloated budget - which mostly goes to Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Lockheed-Martin (but never, ever, to the volunteer enlisted personnel), they are handing out this dinky 5% raise. Five percent atop very little is (checks the math...) still very little. Enlisted personnel are so poorly paid that their families are sometimes reduced to registering for Food Stamps. Makes you wonder how military retention numbers are these days...
The Pentagon could also broaden the recruiting base in innovative ways. During my career, many of the best sailors I encountered were from the Philippines, who had been convinced to join the Navy as a path to citizenship. There were strong historical reasons for that program — including the pre-World War II colonial relationship, not America’s finest hour. It’s time to think about a broader program along those lines, perhaps looking to Central and South America.
Gotta love the suggestion to recruit non-citizens from outside the US. That would be people who haven't yet been belittled, insulted and mocked - while simultaneously dangling the reward of US citizenship in front of them. Great idea, that. Recruit desperately poor people from other countries who are blissfully unaware how badly they will be exploited. Hopefully they survive the unnecessary conflicts, and manage to keep all their limbs.
Below: Happy smiling young people. Why don't you want your child to be like these fellows?
Oddly enough though, adolescent US citizens are now refusing to place their lives into the hands of the Military-Industrial Complex. These kids are pretty well informed about what is really going on. Have a look at this Financial Times article below. These well-connected companies will receive billions of your tax dollars, once the Ukraine conflict grinds to an ugly halt. This of course assumes that the US will still have some influence in the blood-soaked and smoldering heap afterwards.
Underneath one of these stories, there was comment section with a discussion of re-implementing the military draft in the US. Someone mentioned the potential for forced conscription at gunpoint, as they are now doing in Ukraine:
"I'd rather die in my driveway than in some foreign country on behalf of BlackRock."
"My advice to the recruiters is to go die for a bank yourself. I'm not going."
The kids know. Young people who might have enlisted for military service years ago, now have a pretty good idea who they would *really* be really serving - and how much those people hate them. Which brings us full circle, and back to the quote at the very top of this post - do we not trust the deft diplomatic maneuvering of the president to lead us through these uncertain times?
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