Is the Army fixing recruitment goal numbers to justify SURGE in Afghanistan?

Amid charges from former Vice-President Dick Cheney and other Republicans that the Obama administration is taking too long to make a decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan, Correspondent Fred Kaplan of Slate says that the Army’s claims to have exceeded its 2009 recruiting goals have been exaggerated. The numbers are very fishy, and it is what the Pentagon IS NOT telling the American people, Congress, and their Commander-In-Chief that is highly irregular.

Some Pentagon officials claim success was due to high unemployment, while others to a spurt in civic-mindedness in response to President Obama’s call for national service. However, scrutiny shows that fewer people joined the Army this year than last year and the Army lowered its recruitment goals.

Robert L. Hanafin
Major, U.S. Air Force-Retired
GS-14, U.S. Civil Service-Retired
Editorial Board Member
Veterans Today News Network &
Our Troops New Ladder

At a time when the administration is faced with dwindling public support for the 8-year-old war, Obama’s national security team is weighing whether the United States should send more troops to the region. His team is considering as few as 10,000 and as many as 80,000 more Americans in the region, as well as whether to order more forces to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan or to focus more narrowly on al-Qaida terrorists believed to be hiding in Pakistan. The U.S. already has about 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, and NATO nations have supplied 36,000 more.

Kaplan’s investigative report is timely and raises many questions about the Pentagon’s anxiety to send more troops to Afghanistan. Even if troops were not being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan the shifting of military recruitment numbers to make a case for escalation of war warrants a Congressional and administration investigation to prove Kaplan mistaken. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr need to explain to their Commander-In-Chief, Congress, and the American people why Army planners saw fit to decrease military recruitment quotas for the first time in a decade while simultaneously begging for MORE TROOPS IN COMBAT.

He notes that the Army is the service that has been having the hardest time finding new recruits in recent years, because it [along with the Marine Corps] has borne the heaviest burden, and suffered by far the most casualties-in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The Pentagon’s report states that the Army’s goal for 2009 was to sign 65,000 new recruits. It actually signed 70,045. But the claim is not as credible as it appears on paper. Bean counters at DoD may consider this number crunching an technical increase and meeting recruitment goals, but lowering that goal by 15,000 recruits does nothing for the credibility of the Army’s claim that it has met or exceeded recruiting goals. In fact, regardless if one supports the proposed surge by the Pentagon or not the time to cut military recruitment quota in our ground forces is not when Army generals are asking for more troops in the field.

What the Pentagon fails to mention to both Congress, the President, and the American public is that in each of the previous two years of the Bush administration, the Army’s recruitment goal was 80,000-much higher than this year’s. The Pentagon traditionally does planning in five year cycles, and during wartime it is essential to have an accurate assessment of how many troops you need in the pipeline before asking for additional troops in a combat zone. This is even more essential given we do not have a National draft.

Contact your Senators and Congressional Representatives and demand that the Defense Department be upfront with the American people, the Congress, the Commander-In-Chief, and especially our boots on the ground. Cutting military recruitment goals at the same time the Pentagon has been planning an escalation of war in SW. Asia not only sets up their Commander-In-Chief for failure but it sets up our ground troops to pay the ultimate price with their lives.

Yes the Army can thump its chest and cry they’ve met and surpassed recruitment goals and claim they have the additional manpower needed to not only continue the occupation of Iraq and surge in Afghanistan but to also grant our battle exhausted troops adequate dwell time at home. How can the Pentagon, Congress, or the President guarantee humane rest time for our troops as the Army cuts recruitment goals?

Yes, the Army met those goals this year, but only by drastically lowering its standards, accepting more applicants who’d dropped out of high school or flunked the military’s aptitude test. Cutting enlistment goals at the same time initiating a Program made famous by infamous Robert McNamara Project 100,000 is not helping our exhausted troops nor sending a quality, trained force to Afghanistan.

This year, recruiters restored the old standards after public outcry, which is a very good thing for troops’ morale and military effectiveness, but they signed up 10,000 fewer new soldiers than in any past year.

It is, in other words, Kaplan notes that high unemployment or a new public spirit not the case leading more young men and women into the Army. It’s not the case that more young men and women are going into the Army at all.

Why would the Army lower recruitment goals during wartime while planning a Surge?

Kaplan notes two realistic scenarios under which the Army logically and with good intent might lower its recruitment goal for 2009 besides a new in-coming Commander-In-Chief.

1. The Air Force, Navy, and Marines kept their goals about the same, and met them; even in recent years, those services haven’t had much problem keeping the ranks filled. Congress or Secretary of Defense Gates might have authorized a lower "end-strength"-that is, a smaller Army overall. If fewer troops were needed, then fewer recruits would be needed as well. In fact, however, Secretary Robert Gates ordered an increase in the size of the Army, and Congress went along. Why cut enlistment quotas while the administration calls for overall troop increases.

2. The Army might be doing better at the retention of troops [reenlistments]. If more active-duty soldiers were re-enlisting when their tours of duty run out, then the Army could sustain a surge and escalation of combat and still recruit fewer new soldiers. When Kaplan asked several Army officials why the recruitment goal was reduced, better retention was the answer they gave me. The retention goal for FY 2009, they told me, was 55,000-and actual re-enlistments totaled more than 68,000.

Initially, this seemed to explain everything, the Army was able to hang on to 13,000 more soldiers than it had expected. So it made sense to lower recruitment goals by 15,000 (well really 13,000).

However under closer scrutiny and accountability, this logic fell apart. A look through old manpower reports revealed that the Army’s FY 2008 retention goal was 65,000-and 72,000 soldiers actually re-enlisted. The year before that, the goal was 62,000-and 69,000 soldiers signed up for another term. How come the Army did not lower recruitment goals during the final years of the Bush administration?

In other words, the Army not only lowered the recruitment goal but the retention goal too for 2009, from 65,000 in 2008 to 55,000 in 2009. And in reality, it actually held on to fewer soldiers than it did in either of the last two years (68,000 in 2009, compared with 72,000 in 2008 and 69,000 in 2007).

So here is the rest of the fairy tale. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates ordered, and Congress authorized, an expansion in the size of the Army. President Obama ran on a campaign platform promising to expand the size of our ground forces in order to be able to grant adequate dwell time and give our exhausted troops and military families much needed rest. But the Army reduced its recruitment and reduced the retention goal at the same time. THIS MAKES NO SENSE!

The size of the Army is in fact shrinking.

It may look as if it’s growing ON PAPER; the Pentagon report paints a rosy picture by leaving out certain facts and criteria like lowering overall recruitment quotas to make number crunching fit their claims of success. Yes, the Army is growing but only in comparison with the official Pentagon set goals that are guaranteed not to achieve a larger force than past years, but also will impact how many continuous back to back tours will continue for our ground troops.

What the report leaves out is that those goals have been lowered, in some cases dramatically. Is the Army engaging in deliberate deception? Did someone lower the goals so that it looked like the Army was doing much better, when it was really doing a little worse? Regardless the motivation, yes the Commander-In-Chief, even Congress will look bad but it is our ground troops being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan who will pay the ultimate price for this shameful number crunching with their lives, maimed bodies, and minds. Their military families will suffer the cost of the games being played by the Pentagon, Congress, and the President of the United States most of whom never served in uniform nor sent their own in harm’s way to defend our freedoms. Even if our readers don’t believe our troops are really defending our freedoms by securing foreign nations.

An Army spokesman tap danced in an e-mail to Mr. Kaplan this morning that added gas to the fire of confusion by stating that the retention goal was lowered because of Pentagon budget limitations at a time when the Defense budget is as huge as any past President’s.

What really makes no sense is that the Army did not have any budgetary limitations when it fielded a Military Recruitment Disney Land near Philadelphia, PA called The Army Experience Center. PBS Frontline aired an expose on this 21st century recruiting tool to entice teenagers to enlist as if war were a video game.

Teenager plays with computerize weapon
designed to KILL at Army Experience Center.

The Army is rebranding itself for a new generation–and being picketed for enticing kids to join the Army with violent video games. THIS TOO MAKES NO SENSE, even the Pentagon bean counters admit that the economic meltdown the nation experience after the Bush administration provides enough desperate recruits. It doesn’t take a military recruitment expert with a PhD to figure out that economic enticement attracts far more recruits than video games, but the Army has a one two punch with a poor economy plus video games. If anything, given the atmosphere and environment even if we do not support our civilian government’s wars, now is the time to be seriously increasing recruitment goals not decreasing them. The time is ripe to rebuild our ground forces for the day a real threat, a real conventional enemy challenges the United States.

See the video The Army Experience Center and decide for yourself if you want your teenager exploited by violent video games into the real deal, you just might get them killed. Seriously, I myself am a hard core war gamer, and I see nothing wrong with violent and bloody war games. Yes strategy games are more intellectual than a lust for blood, and my favorites are Shogun Total War, Rome Total War, and Medieval Total War where I can even wage a crusade or two.

However, I’m mature enough to know the difference between a strategy game that takes brains and a fantasy land intended as a pre-school for our ground forces. Our boots on the ground who wage the real deal have enough heart aches to endure they certainly don’t need to straighten out kids entering the ranks sold on enlisting because of some video game. The games I play kill many warriors, sack cities, conquer territory and so on, but it is not real. The video games that the Army is brainwashing children with is nonsense because when they get into the real thing the image on the other side of the computer screen shoots back, blows you up, and you cannot delete the game and start your life over.

Lastly, if the Army sees fit to decrease enlistment quotas be it for budgetary constraints at a time when the Army and Marine corps should be getting the lion’s share of the budget, the answer is simple. Secretary Gates only has to order the Air Force and Navy to shift funding from their services to increase ground troop recruitment. Now, there are SES and flag officer thinkers and bean counters who should have come to that logic if they really cared about the lower ranking boots on the ground.

Kaplan consulted with a former official in the Army’s recruitment command, who still works in the Defense Department, and reminded him that this was not the first time the Pentagon has done this. However the last time was not wartime. Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, actually did this. The military fell short of the recruitment goal one year, so Weinberger (or perhaps an assistant secretary) simply lowered the goal and declared success.

Something odd is going on, it is wartime, and the powers that be in the administration, Pentagon and Congress might want to start asking questions.

Fred Kaplan is Slate’s "War Stories" columnist and author of 1959: The Year Everything Changed. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.

Posted by Major Hanafin