–Remort

http://www.boingboing.net/2006....._gott.html

It seems that Zarqawi could have been killed long before now however the current administration in America found him to be more useful as an excuse to prosecute their work in Iraq.

Is that info true? The Army raised their enlistement bonuses and the enlistement age from 35 to 40 at the beginning of the year due to missing enlistment and re-enlistment targets, as far as I know.

Yes. Re-enlistments are at an all-time high. Retention rates for all the services are significantly over the plan. New entries are depressed. Soldiers and Marines return from Afghanistan and Iraq and re-enlist, sometimes en masse, because they know the score and believe in what they’re doing. People who only get their information from the teevee have another view: They don’t join.

The reason the enlistment bonuses and enlistment ages have been raised is that without a steady influx of privates, the force structure gets skewed.

I wasn’t lecturing you, man. I felt, that you were telling me, that I know shit about the US and that I was dead wrong. Should have put that sentence in quotation marks, but that would have been misleading too, cause you never typed the sentence in your comment before.

Stars & Stripes is a military-funded independent newspaper for the military community, the reporters for which are almost always former servicemembers. Brendon

How could be a military-funded newspaper independent? Are you kidding? And in my personal opinion the NYT has more independence and expertise in objective coverage than Stars & Stripes. Your personal experiences in puncto sociological backround of volunteers in the armed forces are countered by experiences of other ex-military guys (see the comment section of my blog-link above).

(Interestingly, re-enlistments are at an all-time high. If these guys joined out of desperation, but now have a chance to flee at the end of their enlistments, why re-enlist?) Brendon

Is that info true? The Army raised their enlistement bonuses and the enlistement age from 35 to 40 at the beginning of the year due to missing enlistment and re-enlistment targets, as far as I know.

I never quite understand why they want to fight the Americans at Iraq. I mean, just look at Iraq today a democracy. Democracy is what allows parties like Hamas to control Palestine and Iran to pursue nuclear weapons. Isn’t democracy great? Now that Iraq is a democracy, it is just a matter of time for a Iraq Hamas to come into power. Taliban-clone will make a comeback in Afganistan. I think this will happen and the beauty of it all is it will happen legally. In Malaysia, one of our Eastern state have been controled by a Islamic political party that requires men/female to queue up on different lanes at supermarket for the past 16 years. This is what the people want and they got in power legally. If Malaysia was not a democracy, this extremist party will never have a chance.

Many people mistakenly believe that democracy will create submissive governments like those in Japan or Korea. This is quite wrong. The reason is that in Islamic nations, there is a strong social cohesion through the Friday prayer mosque meetings. No matter what propaganda you try to feed the people through the national TVs or newspapers, they will get the real scoop during their weekly Friday prayers sermon. Then they will go to the polling booths and vote. This is different from Korea/Japan that lacks a weekly forum for the people to gather together and so they are easier to brainwash through the mass media.
”

–This may be true for the first few elections, but will people really listen to their imams and clerics, when they realize that they can vote out people whom are telling them outrageous things? Lining up male and female separately is one thing. But what about economic matters, social matters, rights of minority groups and such? You won’t find such a generous 100% backing by these people for whatever they say at the mosques. Not when they know they have collective power to overrule the religious “leaders”. And, when they start to question why with their religion they support dictators to tell them what to do and curb their freedoms. No system of government is better than a democracy. I think that has been proven since August 15, 1945.

By the way, please let me and the rest of the world know, what form of government is better than a democracy.

–Remort

I read your Indymedia report on how more enlistees are entering with “waivers” and how that’s supposedly a sign of the Army’s desperation. The thesis that a “waiver” means lowered standards, however, is wrong. What a waiver means is after an evaluation of all the facts, some condition which appeared to be disqualifying was eventually determined not to be disqualifying. Is it surprising that in a time when active combat is all-but-certain, the Army has to look harder for recruits?

Some — I’d bet most — waivers are in fact for medical reasons. I myself entered the Navy on a waiver — apparently I have a heart condition which disqualified me for entry, but after a year and a half of campaigning and additional testing (and complaints to my Congressman, etc.) the Navy agreed to take me. Strangely I didn’t drop dead during service and still haven’t. Still ticking.

As for me, I came from a fairly privileged suburb of St. Louis and chose to enlist in the Navy after dropping out of college (from boredom, mostly). The people I served with were predominately — although by no means exclusively (one guy was a Michigan grad) — from a slightly lower socio-economic background than I was. But one of my closest friends in the enlisted ranks was a trust-fund baby. We were the only ones who had the experience of other people coming over to pick up our homes when we were growing up.

My roommate for a time in the NCO barracks was an Air Force sergeant from the East St. Louis “ghetto blocks” whom I never would have chosen to live with except by random assignment; he was a good guy, though, and I am glad to have known him. He was so handsome and suave — a jet-black Billy Dee Williams type — that there were an awful lot of girls coming around looking for him who ended up spending some time with me (a poor substitute). His leftovers were something else. Let’s hear it for integration!

Of my contemporaries, one is now a high-ranking Embassy official in Sarajevo, another a mechanical engineer at Lockheed Martin in D.C., a third a prosecutor in Columbus, Ohio, and one more ended up a dot-com millionaire in San Francisco. A buddy of mine just retired from the Air Force and he’s teaching high school in Connecticut. And I’m a lawyer entering my tenth year of private practice here in Seoul. It doesn’t seem like we were all dead-enders.

What’s galling about the New York Times thesis of the poor, oppressed enlistee left with no choices other than the Army is its arrogance. The left is positively dripping with condescension for those dumb, poor bastards. Let’s assume Sugar Shin is right (he’s not) and the choices are staying the ghetto block, ending up in jail, or joining the Army. How is that tragic? Someone who climbs out of the gutter is not your inferior and you shouldn’t imagine you can “fix” his “problem”. (Interestingly, re-enlistments are at an all-time high. If these guys joined out of desperation, but now have a chance to flee at the end of their enlistments, why re-enlist?)

And I find it amusing that a Korean living in Germany lectures me about my knowledge of America.

Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. `What a funny watch!’ she remarked. `It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!’

`Why should it?’ muttered the Hatter. `Does your watch tell you what year it is?’

`Of course not,’ Alice replied very readily: `but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.’

`Which is just the case with mine,’ said the Hatter.

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter’s remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. `I don’t quite understand you,’ she said, as politely as she could.

I trust the NYT more than the Stars & Stripes. Guess there’re also Americans out there who share my opinion about the recruitment and enlistment system in the US: http://rncwatch.typepad.com/co.....l_int.html

And by “ghetto block” I guess he means the military is disproportionately black. It’s not.Brendon Carr

“Ghetto block” was a metaphor for the quite high share of unerprivileged recruits in the volunteer army. I could have also typed “trailer park” or some place like that. Blacks, Latinos and Whites all belonging to the lower blue collar class. Not them nice suburban middle class members’ kids, who have the real choice to go to college, start a career in real life than on a battle field in the middle of nowhere and to show the recruiters the middle finger.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02.....wanted=all

Typical reaction from guys like you, Brendon: You know shit about America, so you’re dead wrong.