The logical implications of Bush's Invade the World / Invite the World strategy continue to unfold:
Military considers recruiting foreigners
Expedited citizenship would be an incentive
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | December 26, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks -- including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer -- according to Pentagon officials. ...
The idea of signing up foreigners who are seeking US citizenship is gaining traction as a way to address a critical need for the Pentagon, while fully absorbing some of the roughly one million immigrants that enter the United States legally each year.
The proposal to induct more noncitizens, which is still largely on the drawing board, has to clear a number of hurdles. So far, the Pentagon has been quiet about specifics -- including who would be eligible to join, where the recruiting stations would be, and what the minimum standards might involve, including English proficiency.
In the meantime, the Pentagon and immigration authorities have expanded a program that accelerates citizenship for legal residents who volunteer for the military. And since Sept. 11, 2001, the number of immigrants in uniform who have become US citizens has increased from 750 in 2001 to almost 4,600 last year, according to military statistics.
With severe manpower strains because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and a mandate to expand the overall size of the military -- the Pentagon is under pressure to consider a variety of proposals involving foreign recruits, according to a military affairs analyst.
"It works as a military idea and it works in the context of American immigration," said Thomas Donnelly , a military scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a leading proponent of recruiting more foreigners to serve in the military.
Hey, it worked out great for the Roman Empire in the Fifth Century. Or we could buy slave soldiers like the Egyptians did with the Central Asian mamelukes. Of course, the mamelukes eventually overthrew the government and ruled for centuries, but that would be a small price to pay for continuing our neocon foreign policy adventures.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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15 comments:
Because the army uses an IQ test to qualify recruits, using this method of immigration instead of what we currently have would halt the dumbing of America.
Hardly halt. Conceivably slow down a teensy bit. Unless you count all the relatives who would automatically become citizens without having to pass any tests.
Odoacer for Emperor!
Would we not end up getting too many males if we persisted with this via immigration.
I would think that a society made up of a sexual imbalance of too many males (especially those trained in the arts of war) might be headed for a little discontinuity down the line?
Sailer bringing up Rome's expeirence with this is the first thing I thought about when months ago I had seen neo-con-par-excellance Max Boot call for bringing in immigrants to join the army/earn citizenship. I immediately thought of Rome using the Germans to fight their Imperial wars for them, when all the citizenry wanted to do was live in peace (like all cizenry's usually do). When the republic's citizens are no longer willing to enlist for wars, a prudent government would re-examine the wars it has elected to fight. That ain't gonna happen with the headstrong man in the White House currently.
I hope we all learned a lesson about the importance of voting in primaries from the Bush presidency and how to not allow the MSM to "name your candidate" but vote instead. I cannot believe we have the amount of men under arms on the other side of the earth to fight a war against an "enemy" who had no plans to attack us and no means to do so while allowing the Taliban to regain a foothold in Afganistan when we could have eviscerated that threat had we kept our eye on the prize.
C students should not ever get to be president.
I think this is a good idea. Nobody in this country is going to want to sign up for a perpetual War on Terror. It is amazing that they are even able to get people to sign up now.
Immigrants will be willing to fight for four years if it means they get citizenship.
Added bonus: Foreign mercenaries won't flinch if told to fire on/torture Americans.
Recruiting foreign 'mercenaries' into an army is neither new or disreputable. Some of the finest units in the British Army are formed in this way: e.g. the Irish Guards (recruited mainly from the Republic of Ireland) and the Brigade of Gurkhas. The Gurkhas have won more medals for bravery, per head, than any other unit. Mainstream units of the British Army also recruit heavily in some foreign countries, such as Fiji. Of course, those recruited in this way do not automatically become British citizens. I suggest the US Army should look at these examples. And maybe at the French Foreign Legion, though that might be more equivocal...
Filipinos have been serving in the U.S. Navy for years.
They want to invade countries Americans won't? Why not cut out the middle man and let Mexico invade Iraq?
Uh, right now we have too many females.
Which leads to girls gone wild
anon 12/27/2006 4:21 PM,
Has the idea that all wars are optional.
Some wars are matters of survival.
i.e. it is not always possible to choose your enemy.
It is possible to choose how to fight the enemy. Boots vs. bombs. However, boots can discriminate targets better than bombs can.
Then you have the question of punitive expeditions vs transformative expeditions. i.e. Time spent in the field.
And lots of similar questions.
All of this is complicated by the need to keep the oil flowing so civilization doesn't collapse.
Which is what makes the whole question a wicked problem. You can't easily isolate the factors the way you can do in a physics problem.
Guerilla wars in mountainous country (Afghanistan) are long and difficult.
In any case Iraq is very close to Iran. Which is useful indeed.
I see this as unwise, especially when they won't say what locations the recruitment stations might be in.
Do they have reason to fear public reaction if Mexico were mentioned?
We've had hints already of the administration being interested in merging our military with that of drug-dealers' Mexico.
In the last six years or so, the administration has more than doubled the Hispanic percentage entering our service academies.
This has occurred, while that group's percentage of the high school graduate cohorts, and of the military in general, has remained relatively stable.
Massive anti-merit manipulations, pure quota-finagling, has to be traitorously used to force up the percentages in the above way.
I see this as one of the dire threats to our security in the future; adding mercenary immigrant families would worsen the threat.
Considering the degree to which our society is becoming feminized, I don't think adding a (relative) few martially oriented new citizens to the mix is such a bad idea. Of course, political correctness would make it impossible to make an explicit choice of countries whose males we want and those we don't want.
Even if there were no national security threat from foreigners being recruited into the military, there is certain to be a bad deal for the net taxpayer from any such cohorts.
Recall that new citizens and even green-card holders get to sponsor their entire extended families, and it is easy to see how one soldier would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The malice of one-worlders is such that they would delight in doing this to their fellow citizens, the selfish bourgeoisie. Why didn't the class war happen, said the first spawnings of neocon deception; then it became how to make some wars happen.
There is no shortage of teenagers, if one wanted to spend a couple of thousand dollars on accutane or similar treatment, give them something like that on their 18th birthday or even earlier, and take their promise to enlist a year or so later.
In any case don't spend tens of thousands, and especially do not commit to the hundreds of thousands that the typical immigrant mercenray with relatives would cost,to those who must not be mentioned as having any rights, the net taxpayers.
"Of course, political correctness would make it impossible to make an explicit choice of countries whose males we want and those we don't want."
Important point there. There are plenty of poor Scots, Welsh, North English and Ulstermen here in the UK who'd far prefer a career in the relatively cushy, well-supplied & well-paid US military to the threadbare British army (although the restrictions on alcohol would grate), but I expect Bush and co are looking exclusively for third-world recruitees, especially Mexican.
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