Shorter Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan (ret’d) writes in the Christian Science Monitor:
While in Moscow as US Defense attaché from 2001 to 2003, I received several calls from Russians with a remarkable and unexpected request. They wanted to join the United States Army.
I often think of those phone calls now as I consider the efforts our nation makes to find and recruit quality men and women into the service. Is there an opportunity out there beyond our borders that we ought to explore while recruiting the best and brightest to our nation’s defense?
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America could put recruiting shortages in its past, and the country would gain educated, legal, patriotic, new immigrants who, like immigrants before them, would do the work that many Americans won’t – serve their country in its defense.[A] country whose national leadership cannot motivate its healthy, heterosexual men (and some women) 42 and under to volunteer to serve their country in its defense, not even its governing party’s strongest supporters, faces some serious problems that a 21st century version of King George III’s hired Hessians cannot solve.
To be fair, these would not be mercenaries in the usual sense. They would not be soldiers of fortune, willing to fight for whoever pays best, but aspiring patriots.
But can you imagine recruiting and fielding military units of men and women who are drawn from the same parts of the world where our alleged enemies lurk?
And picture these veterans in military housing or after being discharged, trying to find a place to live among the people for whom they have risked their lives, the same people who have been told Asians and Middle Easterners are the enemy. Yeah, that’ll work.
I don’t think the Brigadier General (ret’d) has thought this through.
My letter to the CSM follows:
Brig. Gen. Ryan’s think piece on leveraging the desire for US citizenship to boost recruiting offers an unflattering look at how America sees itself.
The admission that native-born Americans think so little of national service that we must import soldiers from overseas, sometimes from the regions we claim harbor our enemies, suggests the opportunities of America and its associated responsibilites and obligations are more valued overseas than at home.
I don’t think that’s what General Ryan intended, but I don’t see how else it can be interpreted.
Some other good opinions there too.