The military is losing its battle to recruit soldiers, yet still adheres to its ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once remarked, “You have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want.” The Army he has, however, is stretched thin, cannot meet its recruiting goals and is becoming a less and less qualified fighting force.
As the Pentagon announced in October, the military is doubling the number of so-called Category IV recruits eligible for service. The Category IV troops are those who rank among the lowest in military aptitude tests.
Until now, only 2 percent of any recruiting class could be such low achievers. But with the change in rules, that doubles to 4 percent.
The change in standards is no coincidence.
The Army missed its annual recruiting goal by some 7,000 troops this year, the biggest gap between goal and reality since 1979.
It is now making a concentrated effort to attract someone – anyone – willing to sign up for duty in a war that, by all accounts, isn’t going as swimmingly as Rumsfeld or President Bush had hoped.
But it is difficult to lure young Americans into a military that has lost nearly 2,000 men and women and wounded 14,000 more since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Congress has suggested that as many as 50,000 additional troops may be needed in the next year. Pentagon leaders have raised the maximum age for enlistment, lowered the academic standards needed to enter the services and overlooked criminal convictions for such crimes as drug possession and the like.
In fact, they’ve done just about everything, except the one thing that makes the most sense: repealing the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that bans lesbian, gay and bisexual personnel from service.
The military could attract as many as 41,000 new recruits by lifting the gay ban, according to Gary Gates, a statistician at UCLA.
Like many other Americans, lesbian and gay Americans want to serve and help defend our country. Twelve veterans of the war on terror, all dismissed because of their sexual orientation, are currently fighting in district court to be reinstated.
They are trained, qualified, fit men and women. They do not need academic waivers to serve, and none has been convicted of crimes the Army now finds acceptable. They are exactly the kind of troops our military should be welcoming, not turning away.
American soldiers are already serving alongside openly gay allied troops on the warfront. At last check, the Pentagon could not recall a single American soldier complaining about an inability to serve with gay British troops, according to Tom Oliphant of The Boston Globe. Those troops have not undermined unit cohesion. They have not disrupted the morale of U.S. troops.
What they have done is provide much needed, and much appreciated, military assistance to American men and women serving in less than desirable circumstances.
Keeping the military’s gay ban in place makes no sense. In excess of 10,000 otherwise qualified people have been fired, according to data obtained from the Department of Defense.
As many as 41,000 more want to enlist but cannot because of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ All the while, the military is changing the rules so that less-than-stellar recruits can join.
Rumsfeld, Congress and military leaders need to decide whether to pick among recruits who can’t pass aptitude tests, drug tests or physical fitness tests, or to take gay recruits who are eminently qualified and who are eager to report for duty.
The Army they have depends on the Army they want.(c) 2005, Steve Ralls
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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