Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came

U.S. military recruitment far short of needs

My title comes from a saying of 1960s antiwar hippy protesters, as Bill and Hillary Clinton were before they started all their wars. Or as Steven King, Rob “Meathead” Reiner and so many other multi-millionaire pop-cult figures were before they started supporting Obama’s wars and, now, Biden’s wars, in particular U.S. involvement in Ukraine.

Personally, although I’ve been anti-war since the Cold War ended, I was pro-war during the Cold War itself, including for the Vietnam War from the time it started with LBJ’s 1965 “escalation,” when I was 10, until it ended a long decade of that national nightmare later. I still hate communism with a passion.

Today, young people just aren’t enlisting in enough numbers for all the unneeded wars Biden might launch. According to NBC News, “Every branch of the U.S. military is struggling to meet its fiscal year 2022 recruiting goals, say multiple U.S. military and defense officials, and numbers obtained by NBC News show both a record low percentage of young Americans eligible to serve and an even tinier fraction willing to consider it.”

Can you blame them? Less than a year ago, Biden, following Trump’s correct negotiation to end the war, totally botched the withdrawal. 13 brave Americans died pointlessly. The total was 2,448 Americans who died in the war itself. And we left behind $80 billion in guns, bullets and equipment. $80 billion!

What in the name of Gen. Douglas MacArthur is going on?

Add to that the disaster of the Iraq war, with U.S. troops still over there, 4,431 of them killed so far. And the Syria War disaster. And Obama’s hideous bombing of Libya in 2011, which actually restored black slavery. I’m still shaking my head over the first black president advancing slavery.

Then there’s the whole woke offensive by the military against itself. Remember Gen. Milley attacking “white rage”? Who’s going to join after hearing that?

I was in the military myself, 1978-82, and never saw anything like that. Just guys, and some gals, eager to defend America and fight communism. Today, I know several young folks now in the service, and none of them showed “white rage.”

Milley is just punching the clock until he retires and gets a multi-million-dollar consulting job with Lockheed or Raytheon. The Military-Industrial Complex will welcome him with open arms — and wallets. He’s mouthing the “woke” platitudes that now infest the higher echelons of corporate America, including the “defense” companies.

NBC: “The pool of those eligible to join the military continues to shrink, with more young men and women than ever disqualified for obesity, drug use or criminal records. Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29% in recent years.”

Have you ever tasted the pasty garbage they serve kids in the public schools? I have and no wonder it’s made the kids fat and dumb. And in California, Gov. Newsom just announced the state will completely fund two meals a day for all public-school kids. Fatter and dumber.

What will be done?

Do you feel a draft? I don’t. The kids obviously will reject it. And 18 year olds have been able to vote since 1971, just before the last draft ended in 1973. Those anti-war hippies still are out there, their Hell No We Won’t Go! marching signs stuck, dusty, in a corner in the garage, ready to be wielded, assuming they can find their way to the demonstration after five decades smoking J’s.

Not all of them have become pro-war like the Clintons, King and the Meathead.

I’ve never used such substances myself, even after some of them became legal, seriously, just the one legal since 1933. But in preparation, I’ve been thinking of letting my hair grow out like a hippy, even though there’s not much left of it.