As Enlistment Slides, Nat'l Gd. Recruiters Tailor Message to War Need

[struggle4progress]

By Christian Davenport
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- The pitch was much easier before the roadside bombs and the snipers picking off American soldiers in Iraq. Join the Army National Guard and "get your degree tuition-free" was the recruiter's refrain.

But two years after the invasion of Iraq, the Guard's message is catching up to reality. With so many of its "citizen soldiers" now more soldier than citizen, the Guard is beginning a $38 million marketing campaign heavy on patriotism and battle scenes. The new "American Soldier" ads, showing troops with weapons drawn, helicopters streaking and tanks rolling, are an attempt to remind people what the Guard has been about since the country's Colonial days: fighting wars and protecting the homeland. <snip>

Without the draft, abolished in 1973, military leaders have had to lean heavily on the Guard, which is 36 percent of the total Army force in Iraq, according to the National Guard Bureau. Since Sept. 11, more than 210,000 of the Guard's 330,000 soldiers have been called up, with an average mobilization of 460 days.

That is a significant change for the Guard, which despite widespread mobilizations during the two world wars and Korea was not activated in large numbers to fight in Vietnam. The draft supplied a steady stream of soldiers, and political leaders didn't want the flak that would have come with taking part-time soldiers away from families and civilian jobs, said Renee Hylton, a Guard historian. <snip>

http://www.magicvalley.com/home/search/index.asp?DateID=4/30/2005&StoryID=13081&theDB=world_national_news&theIMG=WORLD_NATIONAL_NEWS&theQry=Ziegler

[The Doctor.]

1. I would never hesitate to give recruiters the dates and times of

Any Right Wing "support our troops" rally or any other freeper gathering.

[kliljedahl]

2. I say let's pass a law

that any time they see someone in the right age range, in one of those gas guzzling behemoths with one of those gawdawful "support our troops" or "gawd bless Murika" ribbons or bumper stickers, they have the right to make them enlist. Bring back conscription for Freepers


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Selatius]

3. The US military is not what the original Founders intended anyway

Their vision was more akin to the present Swiss national militia system. They didn't want a force resembling the British Army, an imperial engine of enforcement.