The Pentagon's 12-Step Program to Create a Misfit Military

Military recruiting in 2006 has been marked by upbeat pronouncements from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claims of success by the White House, propaganda releases by the Pentagon, and a spate of recent press reports touting the way the military has made its wo/manpower goals.

But the armed forces have only met with success through a fundamental "transformation," and not the transformation of the military -- that "co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology" -- Rumsfeld is always talking about either.

While the Secretary of Defense's longstanding goal of transforming the planet's most powerful military into its highest tech, most agile, most futuristic fighting force has, in the words of the Washington Post's David Von Drehle, "melted away," the very makeup of the Armed Forces has been mutating before our collective eyes under the pressure of the war in Iraq. This actual transformation has been reported, but only in scattered articles on the new recruitment landscape in America.

Last year, despite NASCAR, professional bull-riding, and Arena Football sponsorships; popular video games that doubled as recruiting tools; TV commercials dripping with seductive scenes of military glory; a "joint marketing communications and market research and studies" program actively engaged in measures to target for military service Hispanics, drop outs, and those with criminal records; and at least $16,000 in promotional costs for each soldier it managed to sign up, the U.S. military failed to meet its recruiting goals. This year those methods have been pumped up and taken over the top in twelve critical areas of recruitment that make the old Army ad-line, "Be All That You Can Be," into material for late night TV punch lines of the future.

1. Hard Sell

When not trolling for potential soldiers via video games, websites, or most recently the social networking site MySpace.com and text messaging, the Armed Forces employ recruiters who use old-fashioned hard-sell tactics to cajole impressionable teens into enlisting. Recently, one New Jersey mother told her local newspaper about the Army's persistence in targeting her 17-year old daughter. When the mother finally asked the Army to stop calling her child, the recruiter argued vigorously against it. The mother, who otherwise praised the military, was nonetheless aghast at the recruiter's tactics. "That's what frightened and enraged me. This military person telling me that I have no rights over my child," she said.

Teens are also subject to military advertising and high-pressure tactics at school. The Boston Globe recently wrote that recruiters were now setting up booths in "cafeterias in high schools across the nation." While the State Journal-Register of Springfield, Illinois reported that local recruiters were "visiting each school about every three to four weeks." At one school, administrators were forced to "clam[p] down on aggressive recruiters" and bar at least one from ever returning to campus.

2. Green to Gray

The military has always filled its rolls primarily by targeting the young, but these days the "old" are in its sights, too. In 2005, the Army Reserves increased their maximum enlistment age from 35 to 40; then, later that year, to 42. This year, regular Army green went grayer as well with a similar two-step increase that boosted active duty enlistment eligibility to 42 years.

3. Back-Door Draft

Another group of old-timers has recently been targeted by the military: the Marine Corps Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) -- troops who have left active-duty status and transitioned back into civilian life. In August, the Marines announced that they would begin making up for a shortage of volunteers by "dipping into [this] rarely used pool of troops to fill growing personnel gaps in units scheduled to deploy in coming months." As the Boston Globe noted, it was "the first time since the invasion of Iraq three years ago that Marine commanders have taken the extraordinary step of drafting back into uniform those who have left the ranks."