The U.S. military is facing a recruiting nightmare and Republican lawmakers place the blame on the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandates and radical sex and gender policies. Click here to join Todd’s private Facebook page for conservatives.
Every branch of the U.S. military is struggling to meet its fiscal year 2022 recruiting goals, multiple U.S. military and defense officials told NBC News.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) told The Todd Starnes Radio Show that the administration’s woke policies are simply not sustainable.
“I hear it all the time from parents,” Banks told Starnes. “The trust in our military dropped by 11 percent since Joe Biden became Commander-in-Chief.”
Banks said he’s also heard from veterans who refuse to encourage their children to join the military “because of the nature of the woke leadership at the very top.”
From the New York Post:
The Army’s No. 2 officer told Congress Tuesday that the service has no choice but to reduce total force strength by 10,000 for the fiscal year starting in September, with the next year looking even bleaker: By the end of fiscal 2023, it could be up to 28,000 soldiers short of its 476,000-troop target. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth’s spokeswoman said it’s met only half of its recruiting goal so far this fiscal year — with just 2½ months left.
New York Post
Data shows both a record low percentage of young Americans eligible to serve and an even tinier fraction willing to consider it, the news network reports.
“This is the start of a long drought for military recruiting,” Ret. Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr of the Heritage Foundation told NBC News. He said the military has not had such a hard time signing recruits since 1973, the year the U.S. left Vietnam and the draft officially ended. Spoehr said he does not believe a revival of the draft is imminent, but “2022 is the year we question the sustainability of the all-volunteer force.”
Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29% in recent years.
An internal Defense Department survey obtained by NBC News found that only 9% of those young Americans eligible to serve in the military had any inclination to do so, the lowest number since 2007.
Banks accused the administration of using the “military as a tool to socially re-engineer America.”
But it goes far beyond the wokeness and the critical race theory and the pronoun zealots. There’s also a war on traditional masculinity. And I suspect a good many red-blooded, heterosexual young men from rural communities have no interest in being radicalized by the pajama boy snowflakes who run the Pentagon.
They long for the good old days — when American men joined the military to fight wars, not get in touch with their feelings.
Following is a rush transcript of Todd’s interview with Banks:
STARNES [00:46:35] I’m just going to throw this out there and I’m curious to get your your take on it. Is it possible that some of these 17, 18, 19 year old boys, they see what’s happening with all of the woke stuff, the pronouns and the gender stuff and the CRT? Is it is it remotely possible that a lot of these young fellows from the South and the Midwest say, you know what, I’m not up for that. I don’t want to sign up for something like that.
BANKS: [00:46:59] Todd I hear it all the time. I hear from parents. I hear from others that especially from veterans who have kids who have always hoped that their kids would serve, who would tell me that I’m not sure that I would recommend or I won’t recommend to my to my kids to serve in the military because of the the nature of the the woke leadership at the very top. So I think that is a severe consequence of the Left’s control of the military that we’ve seen. The trust in our military dropped by 11 percent since Joe Biden became the Commander-in-Chief. And confidence has fallen among Republican families, 34 percent among independent families, 28 percent among Democrats, 17 percent since 2018. So we see, as we continue to head in this direction, where the Left uses our military as a tool to socially re-engineer America. You see the consequences of that there. They’re dangerous. We can’t we can’t go out and expect the next generation to raise their right hand, like I did, to serve, protect, defend and potentially give the ultimate sacrifice for our country. At the same time, they were teaching critical race theory and anti-Americanism in our schools and teaching our kids that America is not worth fighting and dying for. So it’s not it’s not sustainable. We’re not the track that we’re on with these leaders in the White House and at the very top of our military, it’s not a sustainable recipe for America.
Todd Starnes Show
CLICK HERE TO LEARN ABOUT PATRIOT MOBILE – AMERICA’S ONLY CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN WIRELESS CARRIER.