THE PENTAGON’S ANSWER TO THE RECRUITING CRISIS? RECRUIT FOREIGNERS
originally written by an Army Officer and posted on National Interest. This is a serious conversation, folks. Late stage empire. -NCS
The Pentagon’s rosters are tens of thousands of troops short, as the department battles the worst recruiting crisis since the draft ended in 1973. Criminal records, drug use, and poor health bar three out of four Americans from serving without a waiver, while a booming civilian jobs market entices many of the rest. In response, the Pentagon ought to tap the largest pool of available talent: foreigners.
No self-respecting country should rely entirely on foreign troops. But enlisting some quickly fills the ranks with quality personnel. The British Army has long turned to Gurkhas, Fijians, and others from the Commonwealth, in part to make up for recruiting shortfalls. The Spanish Legion recruits from Hispanic countries and the French Foreign Legion from the world over.
Washington once grasped the sense of recruiting abroad. The Navy enlisted tens of thousands of Filipinos from 1900 to 1992, well past Philippine independence. They viewed the service as a way out of poverty and competed fiercely to join it. In the program’s last decade, as many as 100,000 Filipinos applied yearly for the 400 slots available—an acceptance rate ten times lower than Harvard’s.
Successful candidates were more educated and fitter than the average sailor, eleven times less likely to ditch the uniform after their first enlistment, and more quickly promoted. Some served at the White House. One, who earned the Medal of Honor in 1915, will give his name to the future destroyer USS Telesforo Trinidad.
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GUNS N GEAR
The pieces are really starting to come together.
Why pay for recruits when you can just call in peacekeepers?
If you aren’t training, you’re wrong. If you are offended by that, good. You should be. Now go and train. No more excuses, no more days off, no more of this “but I’m just going to share links and vote GOP.” That’s over.
Get moving and stay moving.
Quote of the year right there..
American experience with foreign legions is limited compared to the French example or the Brits with the long serving Gurkha regiments. There were the Apache Scouts, the colonial Filipino troops, many tribal groups levied into service by Special Forces since WW2, and of course the KATUSA program in the 2ID in Korea. This last example may be the longest running and most likely to be copied in the future. Putting foreigners into US uniforms among other American troops and officers is the least conspicuous for larger sized conventional units. You could “launder” lots of undocumented types immediately into US citizenship that way and it was done to some extent already in Iraq/A-Stan. If they wanted to go large, they could scale back recruiting Americans at all except for the minority salad they swoon after. American Spanish speakers would probably become a recruiting priority as some key personnel in the command, support, and fire support functions would need to be bilingual.
I cannot think of a nation that would loan us whole units of trained troops in the manner of the North Korean formations Kim is sending to Ukraine. Lets hope I’m right on that one.
Now that I think of it, spanish is still widely spoken in the Philippines along with english, and Filipinos have a long track record of loyal and competent service to the US as the author pointed out.
Actually, the Progressives have been allowing for building a foreign force right here in country. Consider this; With the Millions of Southern Invaders beholden to the Welfare State, what shift would occur to have those same persons turn against the population for food and housing? Obama tried to give them citizenship for service, so it’s not so far fetched.
This.
Over 2 million invaders just walked over the “border” in the last year. How many are fit military aged males? I’d wager they are already being quietly recruited, and/or already being trained for the next phase…
I think they should let some level of obese people come in. Put them on an effective weight control program and they will loose weight mostly from the lifestyle change.
These foreign troops will have no pesky oath to the constitution to keep them from thinking twice about kicking in your door. A big benefit over the heritage Americans that joined the military.
Didn’t ISIS intentionally use foreign fighters to kick in doors in Iraq to prevent the Iraqi ISIS members from having second thoughts about killing their own neighbors?