Top Ten Eight List

Swopa found this comment up at a post about a RAND study on recent problems in military retention of recruits. It's worth reprinting in its entirety:

RAND is unclear as to why the soldiers in the combat arms have higher attrition and lower reenlistment rates? Maybe I can help them out.

Reasons why combat soldiers might not re-enlist:

1. He is dead - after being blown up in an unarmored Humvee. This generally results in a ruling by the military that he is not eligible for re-enlistment.

2. He is severely disabled, having lost arms, legs, or eyes. This too causes queries about capacity to be raised if he tries to re-enlist. It is also difficult to sign the form when his arms end at his elbows.

3. He decides that scraping a friend’s brains off his face once in a lifetime is enough.

4. He is lucky enough to make it home in one piece, glad to be getting out and on with his life, but angry when he finds that he has been “stop-lossed, and ordered to re-deploy.

5. He is angry because he reads that soldiers in Iraq are getting calls from the spouses that their home mortgage is being foreclosed, by banks that don’t give a rat’s ass about federal law.

6. He is angry because folks at home think supporting the troops means spending $2 for a magnetic yellow ribbon, and that anybody who speaks of real support, like getting them out of there, is labeled a traitor.

7. He is angry because he reads that Congress has disapproved supplemental health care funding for the VA, on the basis that it is “not an emergency” while at the same time, the Army has the funds to buy the naming rights for a baseball stadium

8. He is angry because he has to spend $500 out of his own pocket to buy body armor, since he is uncertain whether there will be any for him when he gets there.

Let me know if RAND needs any more assistance.

(Sorry for the sarcasm in response to what is a very thoughtful article, Mother, but as I think you can tell, I am just a little bit pissed off at the news lately.)

Submitted by Tom Leckinger on April 15, 2005 - 3:04am.

Recently, I'm not sure where (apologies to those who noted this), I saw that any number of new recruits to this country's military are hardly "the best," unless you include under that title avowed white supremicists and/or high school dropouts, etc. Again, I'll note for the record that something we should be VERY worried about isn't JUST a terrorist attack by Islamic nutcases, but the real possibility that US soldiers could either go postal, or worse, go McVeigh.