Iraq war impacts military recruitment practices

Max Schmookler Opinions Columnist

The phone rings twice before it is picked up by a friendly young man, whose polite formality does not conceal his youthful enthusiasm. He introduces himself as Corporal Houston at the Poughkeepsie Recruiting Station and asks how he can help. I tell him that I’m interested in an interview. He asks for my vital stats (name, age, address) and counts off some dates and times. He’s my man, as flexible as can be, bend-over-backwards with a smile. Thursday morning? Can do. And then, when he least expects it, I do the unforgivable—I explain that I want to interview him.

I don’t know how desperately Corporal Houston needed me to fulfill his quota of two new recruits per month, but I do know that recruiters across the country are feeling the backdraft from the increasingly unpopular Iraq war. With a highly publicized and steadily climbing death count, recently surpassing 2,000 military personnel, many potential recruits are measuring their patriotism—and their $20,000 signing bonus—against their lives. The result has been plummeting recruitment figures. The National Guard and the Army Reserve, who together make up 40 percent of the troops in Iraq, report missing their annual recruitment goals by 22 percent and 19 percent, respectively.

It’s not only the possibility of injury or death that is turning young men and women away from the Army. Reports ranging from inadequate military equipment to prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib to broken contracts have soiled the military’s reputation in patriotic circles. Particularly troubling is the Pentagon’s reliance of multiple redeployments, which means recycling Army and Marine battalions in and out of combat—and even calling up thousands of honorably discharged Marines to serve another tour. This causes immense psychological and emotional stress on the more than 300,000 US soldiers (not to mention their families) who have served more than one tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, at least in part because the likelihood of survival steadily decreases with each return.

Despite upping the sign-on bonus, decreasing the active duty term from 24 to 15 months (with two additional years in the National Guard or Reserves) and aggressively using Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act, which grants the military full access to students names, addresses and telephone numbers, the soldier’s life remains a tough sell. Even experienced recruiters are struggling to convince young people that the military is the right choice, let alone get that message through the thick skulls of “influencers” such as parents, relatives, teachers, friends and community leaders. Recruiters report that when making unsolicited phone calls, or even when promoting the military in schools, malls, job fairs and other places, they are often met with suspicion and hostility.

The most insidious recruitment efforts have taken place in poor urban neighborhoods and sparsely populated rural communities. For instance, in the fall of 2003, the military's "Take It To The Streets" campaign used hip-hop culture to lure black and Latino youth, seen as having few, if any, other options for "upward mobility," into uniform. Teams of recruiters cruised the streets in specially outfitted Hummers, stopping to hold impromptu basketball shoot-outs and push-up contests, serve up personalized dog tags and distribute Army brand jerseys, hats, wristbands and headbands. Yet, even with spotlights at MTV's Spring Break, BET's Spring Bling, various NAACP functions, and dozens of other venues with a high proportion of African Americans, the numbers of black recruits have declined substantially since the beginning of the Iraq war. In 2000, African Americans made up 23.5 percent of Army recruits, while now they comprise less than 14 percent.

The stress declining recruitment rates puts on recruiters is palpable. As the numbers dwindle, the reports of “improprieties” grow. In order to fill their quotas, recruiters are resorting to illegal and duplicitous methods, which include forging high school diplomas, concealing criminal and medical records, lying about the drawbacks of signing up (including where one will be stationed) and using outright threats and coercion. By the Army’s own count, there were 325 closed cases of substantiated improprieties in 2004, up from 199 in 1999. These numbers indicate widespread deceit regarding both the realities of military life and the qualifications of potential recruits.

The military's consistent failure to meet recruiting quotas is not a remedy for the brutal invasion and occupation, but it indicates that across the map, Americans are waking up to the violent realities of the war and recognizing the need to challenge the presumption that the military can simultaneously solve social inequality at home and "build democracy" abroad. This challenge is articulated by a wide sample of society, from conscientious Quakers in rural Pennsylvania to smart, vocal Latino/a community organizers in Southern California. It is reflected in falling recruitment numbers and deserted recruiting stations. But don't worry about Corporal Houston and the 7,500 other recruiters stationed around the United States—according to their own literature, military skills transfer easily to the civilian job market.