Time for 101st Fighting Keyboardists to enlist

(Bumped to the top. More recent content below this post.)

We know the recruitment situation is dire.

he Army missed its goals for signing up recruits in April and expects to do so again in May, and the Marines also fell short, officials said today, as the Iraq war further strained the all-volunteer U.S. military.

The Army and Marines provide the ground forces fighting rebels in the two-year-old Iraq war that has killed nearly 1,600 U.S. troops. At least 51 American troops died in April.

The active-duty Army missed its April recruiting goal and was 15 percent behind its year-to-date target, officials said. An internal forecast indicated the active-duty Army and part-time Army Reserve and Army National Guard also will miss their May goals.

The active-duty Army, striving to attract 80,000 recruits in the 2005 fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, has now missed its recruiting targets for three straight months.

The Marines also missed their goal for signing up new recruits in April for the fourth straight month, said Marine Corps Recruiting Command spokesman Maj. David Griesmer. He said 2,711 recruits signed contracts in April to begin serving within a year, but the Marines now trailed their year-to-date goal by 2 percent.

Enlistment is down because of the War in Iraq -- a war that people like Jonah Goldberg and the rest of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists continue to support and defend. Yet while they continue to pimp a war that has cost us over 1,600 US dead, they themselves refuse to put their words into action and join our heroic (yet undermanned and underequipped) Armed Forces.

Yet the Jonah Goldbergs don't feel the cause is worthy enough to justify their well-being.

As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.

Well, the maximum enlistment age is now 38, so great news for Jonah and those in similar dire straits. His family can't afford lost income? Well, half of reservists have experience a loss of income due to enlistment. They must make the sacrifice for this war, but Jonah and his ilk are above that. And as for baby daughters...

[Sgt. Anthony J. Davis Jr.], the 22-year-old Long Beach resident was killed Saturday in the restive city of Mosul when a passenger car filled with explosives rammed into the 19-ton, eight-wheel Stryker troop transport vehicle he was riding in [...]

Michell said the news of Anthony's death hasn't quite sunk in, and she's drawing upon her close- knit family to keep herself together. One of the toughest aspects of his death is the fact that he didn't get to meet his youngest daughter, Aniya, born two weeks after his deployment in October.

And there's this, and this, and this, and many more where those came from.

So others should sacrifice for this folly of a war while the 101st Fighting Keyboardists remain safe from harm, cheering from the sidelines?

Lucky for Jonah, and the rest of his crew, it's getting exceedingly easier to sign up and turn words into action.

Two hundred miles away, in northern Ohio, another recruiter said the incident hardly surprised him. He has been bending or breaking enlistment rules for months, he said, hiding police records and medical histories of potential recruits. His commanders have encouraged such deception, he said, because they know there is no other way to meet the Army's stiff recruitment quotas.

"The problem is that no one wants to join," the recruiter said. "We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by."

So why don't they enlist? Is it that they think they're too good to serve with the good men and women in the armed forces? Too middle-to-upper class? Too intelligent? Do they think the nation will suffer from their blogging and punditry absence? That they're doing more for the war effort than they could ever do so with a rifle in their hands?

Or is it merely cowardice?

Except that "cowardice" is too light a word for those who claim to believe in a just cause, but would rather send others to die in the service of that cause.

After Pearl Harbor was bombed, Americans lined up at military recruitment offices to give themselves to their nation in its time of need. That was the true definition of patriotism, those men spoke truth to our national anthem's "home of the brave".

The cowards in the 101st Fighting Keyboardists are the polar opposite. They lay shame to our nation.