I think this idea deserves more exposure. It seems to me that there are two main arguments against the idea of non-citizens joining the US Armed Forces.
Argument one is that non-citizens won't have enough motivation to fight for our country. The first refutation of argument one is that the Army doesn't recruit based on a wish to fight for your country (now days) anyway. Recruitment advertisements tout education, training and awesomeness ("Army of One", Marine climbing cliff face). Those who want to fight for their country (and the ideals which America stands for) will enlist anyway. The rest (who enlist for other reasons) are taught the motivation that they need. Armies have been teaching motivation for a long time, they're rather good at it. The second refutation of argument one is that the non-citizens will have further personal motivation than citizen enlisties. An Army "job" may not pay near as well as a civilian job in America, but compare it to most other countries. In addition, I would expect that the recruit and his/her family would become eligible for base housing. So you get a payrate that you probably couldn't touch otherwise and safety/security for your family. Sounds like pretty good motivation for me.
Argument two is that non-citizen recruitment would make it much easier for enemy agents to infiltrate our Army. I find this argument to be the more persuasive of the two. There would no doubt have to be intense vetting and psychological evaluation of non-citizen recruits. There would have to be limits on what positions can be filled with non-citizens. Conveniently enough, the Army is really good at classifying and distributing its personnel. Maybe all non-citizens get to go through Marine bootcamp. Better yet, double length bootcamp with absolutely no outside contact. That should weed out all but the most dedicated infiltrators and give us plenty of time to evalute them. Do they keep pulling out a picture of their family for motivation? Or do they keep pulling out a picture of Osama? At the end of the day, I would be willing to trust the judgment of our military leadership (and only our military leadership) as to whether they could work out the security issues.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
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2 comments:
I totally agree with the article. I say, anyone who is willing to serve in the U.S. military should be given automatic citizenship upon completion of their tour of duty.
As far as the security risk, there are already many safeguards in place, and I believe it is much more dangerous to put an inexperienced 18 year old kid in a sensitive position than a non-citizen. It seems that more harm can be done through sheer stupidity than actual malevolent intent.
The danger, however, is in the recruitment tactics. It is important that recruits not be forced into the situation. I am afraid of seeing the INS rounding up illegal immigrants, holding them in prision, and telling them that they can either join the military or be deported. There are many states which give minor criminal offenders a choice between military service and prison, so I don't think this is much of a stretch.
As far as the merits of this idea go, the current situation of the Army I think gives this idea a lot more credibility now, and the historical evidence that supports it makes it a slam dunk as far as I'm concerned. There is nothing like close combat to forge a sense of camaraderie and teamwork that can easily be turned into love for one's country. Argument two (I think argument one doesn't have any merit) is not as much more of a risk than we already have, because from what I understand al Qaeda had already had a few infiltrators/sympathizers anyway, plus it seems to me that there's an element of anti-US sympathizers in the citizenry already.
Personally, I like Rumsfeld's approach. Just make our military so technologically advanced that we don't need the manpower. Of course, that costs money. Why don't we cut spending on fluff at home (we can start with the Department of Education) and invest more on making our military less manpower intensive?
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