(Harpers) Kerry Was Right: bad students are getting stuck in Iraq

[sabra]

http://harpers.org/sb-kerry-was-right-1170945174.html

Kerry Was Right: bad students are getting stuck in Iraq
Posted on Thursday, February 8, 2007. By Ken Silverstein.


When Senator John Kerry said last fall that students who didn’t do well in school were more likely to “get stuck in Iraq,” he was immediately attacked for insulting the intelligence of U.S. troops. Of course, Kerry’s comment was entirely accurate—not because American soldiers in Iraq are dumb, but because the Pentagon, in seeking to overcome serious recruiting shortfalls, has enlisted growing numbers of high school dropouts.

I recently spoke about this with my friend Eli Flyer, a longtime Pentagon consultant on military recruiting, who painted a grim picture of the Army’s current recruiting strategy. In 2005, Flyer noted, the Army fell far short of its goal of attracting 80,000 enlistees. It managed to meet that same target last year by deploying about 1,400 new recruiters, by offering larger enlistment bonuses and other incentives, and by systematically lowering educational standards for new recruits. For example, the portion of non–high school graduates in last year’s enlistee pool was 27.5 percent, up from 17 percent in 2005. In the 1990s, non-grads (most of whom do have a G.E.D.) made up only about 5 percent of new Army recruits.

There has also been an increase in the number of recruits coming in with “moral waivers” for a criminal history (a story covered last year by the Los Angeles Times). Last year, one in ten recruits had a prior misdemeanor or felony conviction. That adds up to 7,500 individuals, up from 4,000 in 2004. Meanwhile, a Hartford Courant series last year found that the military is enlisting (as well as redeploying) a growing number of mentally-troubled soldiers.

Recruits with a criminal history and non–high school grads are far more likely to perform poorly, commit acts of misconduct, and fail to complete their scheduled tours of duty. Judging from past results, about half of the non-grads will not complete their first four years of active duty, versus an expected “attrition” rate of about one-third for high school graduates. The Army is aware of these statistics, Flyer explains, but—having found no other way to meet its recruiting goals—it has looked the other way.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Those big attacks happened because everybody is so defensive

about something they all know is true, but would never have the nerve to say.

[blm]

2. That was the interesting aspect of the dropped pronoun - it was true either way.

I remember a Seattle paper's editorial noticed that right away.

[ProSense]

4. That was a great

editorial.

[libodem]

3. That's right

Kerry was right! I so wish he 'd stood up to them. Kerry has the right instincts but he flounders when the Right counters with lies and inaccuracies. He should have been proud to claim he threw his war medals over the fence and proud to state the truth that the rich and privileged kids are not having to serve, now.

[politicasista]

5. Without media and party support. What can you do?

:shrug:

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Egads!

The tide really has turned.

[Orsino]

7. That's not what Kerry said!

He never used the word "students," and it is obvious to anyone who'd been paying attention that he was talking about Da Prez.

"Kerry was right" might be funny if used ironically, but here it smells like "Gore really did invent the Internet." Let's not buy into the framing, okay?

[Zodiak]

8. The sad truth is....

he was right either way, and that is what made the Repuke attack so effective.

He was right in that the President didn't study Iraq, and because of it, is now stuck there.

He was also right that we take those that have very little future and give them a gun to kill for us as a passport out of their bleak future. Even if the joke wasn't meant that way, it came out that way. And it was true....an ugly truth for Americans to swallow. Americans hate that since they have been conditioned to look the other way at their own inequities for so long. That is why so many piled on to John Kerry...he made them face an ugly truth.

It was the reaction to a child being told "no" when he insists on taking the candy bar from the rack as if mommy is going to buy it for them. Americans, by and large, are spoiled children who will lash out at anyone that takes their candy bar away. And that candy bar is American moral superiority and exceptionalism.

John Kerry's botched joke exposed the exploitation of the poor in our present military..and collectively we didn't like it. DUers and some other Democrats being the exception, of course.

My boss asked me about the Kerry joke the next day...and I told him (and he is REAL liberal) that Kerry was correct either way, but it was a botched joke judging from the transcript. Even the look on my boss's face told me that Americans have a hard time with swallowing the fact that we aren't the "good guys" any more. "Deep politics" is a hard thing to overcome.