Back Up Your Bush Vote, Join the Army
Re “Tough Boots to Fill,” Nov. 21: I do not understand why the recruiters are having problems filling their quotas. Within the millions of young people who voted for President Bush, there must be some who are willing to walk their talk. Within the millions of older adults who voted for Bush there must be some who are willing to put their own lives on the line for Bush’s war.
It is nothing short of hypocrisy for people to expect “others” to fight and die in wars that they support.
Christina Waldeck
Torrance
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As I was reading about the difficulty we’re having in finding new Army recruits, it dawned on me that the Bushes have two able-bodied children now out of school and looking for something meaningful to do.
Bob Stone
Los Angeles
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Why, among the millions of patriotic Americans who believe that we are in the right war and feel that we should be supporting our president and our troops is it so difficult to get volunteers to enlarge the Army to the size it should be.
The Iraqi insurgents, or terrorists, appear to have no difficulty in recruiting members, even for suicide missions. Can it be that they are more dedicated to their cause than we are to ours?
Joseph Grodsky
Los Angeles
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One of the recruiters says, “This job will kill you.” Not as surely as the kids they recruit will be killed. I read the list of the American troops killed in Iraq in the same paper. No wonder Sgt. Ernest Hill needs a long drive home in which he thinks about nothing. He’s rounding up cannon fodder. Who wants to think about that?
Joanne Gonzalez
Claremont
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J.R. Moehringer did a marvelous job explaining the difficulties Army recruiters face in trying to fill the ranks of our all-volunteer Army. However, his comments about a home-schooled teen seeking to volunteer not only convey the personal anti-home-schooling bias of the recruiter but will perpetuate this unfounded bias in the minds of countless readers as well. Moehringer stated that this teen earned a score of 6 on the aptitude test -- 30 was failing, 6 was barely breathing.
The impression was clearly left that home schooling had not prepared this teen for the military or any other aspect of adult life. Nowhere was it stated that many home-schooled young people score high on this test and are serving their country well today in all branches of the military. I personally know three of them.
This article mentioned several other potential recruits who were deemed unfit for military service. However, there was no connection made with the type of schooling they had received.
Penny Ross
Hawthorne
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The large photograph accompanying the article describing the difficulty Army recruiters have in scrounging up their “quotas” each month tells us much more than the mere numerical data can ever relate. If the scrawny, cigarette-smoking, 17-year-old boy sitting next to the fit and sharply dressed recruiter is an example of the prospects available for the new 80,000-man force needed by the Army, our military is indeed in dire straits.
The contrast between the appearance of this kid and the early photos of our fighting men in Iraq is stark. Those troops appeared robust, disciplined and capable of defending themselves and their country.
I doubt this youth could chase the fox out of the henhouse, much less stand up to the ferocious forces of the Iraqi insurgents.
It defies imagination to understand how grown men can seriously “sell” the Army life (and death) to such callow adolescents. Let them grow up a little!
Peggy Staggs
Orange