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When even the recruiters see the problems:
“As someone who is currently on recruiting duty for a branch of the Armed Forces, I agree with the author. The sales pitch is increasingly based on tangible benefits. But even the money, bonuses, etc are not enough to entice a lot of young people.
The historical “bread and butter” of recruits (young, conservative, patriotic) has dried up because they increasingly see the military as a politicized institution that falls to the whims of the current party in power. The military is used as a political pawn, a place to institute policies and hold it up as an example to the rest of the nation that your politics work.
These people aren’t idiots, and they see the shameful things we did to those who refused the COVID vaccine. We were extremely aggressive and sought Other Than Honorable discharges in the beginning and gave them RE-4 enlistment codes (not eligible for reenlistment). We softened up a little bit later, but the damage had already been done.
And when politicians finally forced the reversal of this policy, and allowed those forcibly separated to come back in, they didn’t offer anything other than the removal of negative paperwork. No back pay after being forcibly removed from your livelihood over something that we are now admitting never made sense in the first place. These people have families to feed and we showed a complete disregard for them.
We offered “religious exemptions” to those who did not want the vaccine on moral grounds, but the responses were rubber stamped “No” without any real consideration. It required a General Officer’s approval or disapproval, and in all of my experience, I’ve never seen a General Officer sign anything in less than 48 hours. But very automatically and swiftly the responses came back without any real consideration. Everyone knew it was just a convenient way to give the appearance of fairness, even though they had already concluded in their mind was the conclusion was going to be.
People see the lack of interest in having an honest debate about current or prospective service members with gender dysphoria and whether a condition that is highly correlative with other mental health conditions like anxiety, suicidality, and depression is truly suitable for military service in a war zone. It requires constant and routine medication in order to maintain.
We take a hard stance on all other mental health conditions and any recent medication use for ADHD, depression, anxiety is immediately disqualifying. I sincerely want people with gender dysphoria to get better, but a lot of people can’t square a condition like that with military service and our leaders show zero interest in having that conversation without the Democrat/Republican hyperbole.
I also remember the SECDEF mandated “extremist training” that softly accused service members of being extremists and white supremacists after January 6th. The implication was that an extremist could be among us, lurking around any corner, and we had to report suspicious behavior.
I find myself often wondering if the military is still the place for me in today’s climate. I’ve dedicated the last 10 years of my life to it, but the military I joined is no longer the same. I just want to defend my country if called upon, but I’m not interested in being someone’s political prop or pawn in the culture war.”
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