March 23, 2005


Jonah Goldberg, call your recruiter

In what has to be a blast of great news for Jonah Goldberg and a chance to lose the moniker of "Doughy Pantload", the Army is considering raising the age of enlistment from 34 to 39 for reservists!

The Army is tapping into a new pool of potential recruits for the National Guard and the Army Reserve by raising the maximum enlistment age from 34 to 39, officials said yesterday.
Woo Hoo! Jonah, you GO, boy!! And to make the whining little pantloads life easier (remember he was so "concerned" about the financial hardships)?
The Army also has increased the number of recruiters on the street by 33 percent and is offering bigger signup bonuses. Last week the Army announced that the National Guard and Reserve were raising the maximum age for recruits from 34 to 39 in order to expand the pool of potential enlistees. The regular Army could not raise the maximum age without congressional approval.
See? A nice fat juicy sign-up bonus to help Mrs. Jonah and the Offspring while you're off cleaning shitters and walking a post in Fallujah! Awesome!! And as a reservist, you're automatically a second class citizen, or so it's been reported. You get the same opportunity to die or be maimed and less benefits as a reservist when you're released! Woo Hoo! Something to commiserate with the Brides of Jesus about if you get back to Clownhall!

On a more serious note, it's interesting that this latest push, precipitated by the declining numbers of enlistments in the Army has induced their Chickenhawk Secretary, Francis J. Harvey, to decide to start targeting parents and appeal to their patriotism to send their kids off to foreign wars aka The Mess in Mesopotamia:

``The `D' word is the farthest thing from my mind,'' the former defense company executive told a Pentagon news conference, his first since becoming the Army's top civilian official last November.
...
``I'm clearly not going to give up,'' Harvey said. ``At this stage we still have six months to go'' before the recruiting year ends Sept. 30. ``I've challenged our human resource people to get as innovative as they can. And even as we speak we've got a number of new ideas.''

One of those new approaches is designed to persuade more parents to steer their children to the Army.

``We're going to appeal to patriotism,'' he said.

That might be done through a new advertising campaign, he said. He also is encouraging more members of Congress as well as senior Army leaders and Army boosters to spend time in local communities touting the benefits of military service.

An interesting idea, that Chickenhawk Harvey has, but generally to encourage parents, it helps to have a base of parents who are, ummm, veterans to draw from. It's one thing to drive around neighborhoods and pick out all the Lexus/Mercedes/Suburbans with magnetic "Support Our Troops" ribbons on them, it's quite another to convince these folks to let a recruiter talk to their kid about becoming the occupant of a coffin "transfer tube" on the ramp at Dover AFB. Trying to convince boomer parents whose most major life decision was to go to a private or state school, fuck the military-as-an-option bullshit, in their younger years is going to prove a formidible challenge. I suspect that recruiters who walk up to cars with "W04" stickers on them who have enlistment-age kids getting out, will get an earful better than 8 out of 10 times from parents, and probably have said irate parents calling their CO (who won't actually give a rats ass, they're under pressure to make quotas too) to complain about SGT So-and-So who's been harrassing my little Johhny/Susie who's not going to any FT Benning, THEY'RE going to YALE so stay the hell away!

Well, it'll be interesing to see how many parents respond to that Patriotic Fervor Secretary Chickenhawk is trying to whip up. I notice that no one is suggesting that Beloved Leader do any Public Service Announcements for the virtues of National Guard and Reserve service...

Just sayin'.

posted by Jo Fish on 03.23.05 at 08:16 PM





Comments:

Well said!!!

posted by: james on 03.23.05 at 08:33 PM [permalink]



The "D" word cometh.

posted by: Mando on 03.23.05 at 08:34 PM [permalink]



I can't wait to see Jonah trying to do a pull-up. I'd pay good money to see that!!

Think he could break an hour in the three mile run?

posted by: Admiral on 03.24.05 at 08:31 AM [permalink]



As a Viet Nam Vet (SeaBee) and 20 year retiree, when the recruiters called looking for MY son, I told them I'd call them back from Toronto, after I'd moved my son there, if they called again.
They haven't.

posted by: PC on 03.24.05 at 12:56 PM [permalink]



SpongeBerg Doughpants--

Absorbent and YELLOW!

posted by: Sour Kraut on 03.28.05 at 05:25 PM [permalink]






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