Uncle Sam may not want you

With U.S. casualties rising in wars overseas and more opportunities in the civilian work force from an improved U.S. economy, many young people are shunning a career in the armed forces. But recruiting is still a two-way street - and the military, too, doesn't want most people in this prime recruiting age group of 17 to 24. [Yahoo News]

I have to laugh. The military considers the following grounds for rejecting candidates:

• tattoos and piercing
• having taken Ritalin
• being overweight

Further, of the population that are considered in the prime recruiting age bracket...some 32 million...the Army deems the vast majority too obese, too uneducated, too flawed in some way, according to its estimates for the current budget year.

In one broadside to a great number of accepted institutions, the United States Government has just lambasted themselves. Here is a body of evidence that indicates all of the improvements made to society can be seen as anything but improvements. As schools struggle to cut such luxuries as gym and art to enable more focused teachings on exam preparation, the first generation of kids exposed to this improved education system are too uneducated to be gun toting members of the United States military.

Now, I will be the first to admit that some of the systems in the US arsenal are far to complex for the soldiers that have been trained to use them (heck, most of them are to complex for the people who designed them to use them) and you have to have almost a PhD is various disciplines to use them, but carrying a gun into battle is still a fairly simple duty and at the rate of attrition, the military is either going to have to open their own schools or lower their standards...or both. The US military is still a rare animal in that it is all volunteer. However, if the leaders of the free world continue their march against the oppressors (whoever that is), they are going to have to have a solid military behind them. If the inflow is less than the outflow, then some in power might decide that the all-volunteer experiment has run its course. The question, then, is, what are the options?