Senator Decries Air Force Academy Curriculum

“Young kids don't join the military to learn how to use the right pronouns. They join the military to learn how to kill the bad guys and defend this country. And if the Biden administration wants to know why recruiting numbers have collapsed, why we have a recruiting crisis, they just need to look at their own policies.”

The preceding words were spoken by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican allegedly in tune with the deplorable state of U.S. military recruiting.

With only three-months remaining in the fiscal year, the U.S. Army has met only forty-percent of its FY22 recruitment goal. The U.S. Space Force stands to recruit only five-hundred personnel in FY22; and the U.S. Air Force—consistently the highest drawing of the U.S.’s military services—will, in 2022, fail to meet its recruitment goal for the first time in 23-years.

From mandates forcing a vaccine on U.S. military personnel—mandates declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court—to a recent DoD communique urging rank-and-file servicemembers to apply for food-stamps in the wake of record inflation, the federal government has repeatedly demonstrated apparent indifference to the wellbeing of America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines.

Senator Cotton continues: “The recruiting crisis is very dangerous for our country, and it will be dangerous for many years to come if we don't turn it around quickly. We need to turn the page at the Pentagon and make it clear to America's young men and women that we want them to join the military because we want them to defend this country, not go to social justice training seminars.”

The Senator’s reference to social justice training seminars derives in part of a new military training curriculum that instructs cadets to refrain from using gendered language, including terms like "mom" and "dad."

Every branch of the U.S. military is struggling to meet its 2022 recruitment goals. Record low numbers of young Americans are enlisting, and Pentagon officials are scrambling to fill out the ranks of the U.S.’s all-volunteer forces.

Retired Lt. General Thomas Spoehr asserts America’s armed forces have not had such recruitment shortfalls since 1973—the year the U.S. left Vietnam and the draft officially ended. General Spoehr states he does not believe a revival of the draft is imminent, but remarks, “2022 is the year we question the sustainability of the all-volunteer force.”

General Spohr’s assertions are substantiated by an internal Department of Defense survey that concluded only nine-percent of those young Americans eligible to serve in the military had any inclination to do so.

In addition to short-sighted policies, the acute and worsening disparity of eager and able recruits has been attributed to a marked and endemic decrease in American citizens’ confidence in the U.S. military. In 2021 the annual Reagan National Defense Survey, conducted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, found that despite three-quarters of Americans being in favor of increased military spending, a staggering 55% of U.S. citizens lacked both trust and confidence in America’s military leadership—a decrease of 25-points from 2018.

FMI: www.defense.gov