Less Recruits and Officers: Bush's Failed Foreign Policy
" Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of our country but to its character...". That was an excerpt from President Bush's 2005 Inaugural Address.
" We can target the guilty and protect the innocent". That was an excerpt from President Bush's address to the graduating class of the Naval Academy at Annapolis on June 11, 2005.
The response to our commander in chief's call to arms has been a 62% drop in Army recruits. Standards have been lowered in Army testing to accept previously denied personnel who scored in the lowest percentiles of the Vocational Aptitude Battery. Applicants to the service academies are down: West Point, 9%;Naval Academy,20%; Air Force Academy, 27%.
As a leader Bush is a failure. His inugural address referral to " .. you will add not just to the wealth of your country..." smacks of wars on behalf of the military-industrial complex. The Naval Academy speech mentions"... we can target the guilty[regime] and protect the innocent[civilians]..". What about the 100,000 plus collateral deaths in Iraq and the infrastructure that disappeared in explosions?
Bush, Cheney,Rumsfeld etc. are trying to sell " a no boots on the ground" preemptive war strategy known antiseptically as CONPLAN 8022. This grew out of the 2002 White House " National Security Strategy of the United States of America". But the prospective armed services personnel are not falling for the CON GAME or CONPLAN.
In the end of all wars the margin of victory is provided by the killing of people in house to house combat. Our soldiers would need a self preservation reason greater than the owner of the house who he is killing to win.
Bush and his dyspeptic advisors have only made a case for their own banishment rather than some cooked up enemy in Iraq or Afghanistan.
" We can target the guilty and protect the innocent". That was an excerpt from President Bush's address to the graduating class of the Naval Academy at Annapolis on June 11, 2005.
The response to our commander in chief's call to arms has been a 62% drop in Army recruits. Standards have been lowered in Army testing to accept previously denied personnel who scored in the lowest percentiles of the Vocational Aptitude Battery. Applicants to the service academies are down: West Point, 9%;Naval Academy,20%; Air Force Academy, 27%.
As a leader Bush is a failure. His inugural address referral to " .. you will add not just to the wealth of your country..." smacks of wars on behalf of the military-industrial complex. The Naval Academy speech mentions"... we can target the guilty[regime] and protect the innocent[civilians]..". What about the 100,000 plus collateral deaths in Iraq and the infrastructure that disappeared in explosions?
Bush, Cheney,Rumsfeld etc. are trying to sell " a no boots on the ground" preemptive war strategy known antiseptically as CONPLAN 8022. This grew out of the 2002 White House " National Security Strategy of the United States of America". But the prospective armed services personnel are not falling for the CON GAME or CONPLAN.
In the end of all wars the margin of victory is provided by the killing of people in house to house combat. Our soldiers would need a self preservation reason greater than the owner of the house who he is killing to win.
Bush and his dyspeptic advisors have only made a case for their own banishment rather than some cooked up enemy in Iraq or Afghanistan.
posted by Barry Leonardini at 12:43 PM
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