Military recruiters are facing a dire situation. As Spoehr and Handy tell us, “a manpower shortage in the United States Armed Forces directly compromises national security.” We may have the world’s finest ships, aircraft, and weapons, but we need soldiers, air personnel, Marines, and sailors capable of using them.
In Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays, Joseph Epstein, one of America’s great essayists, includes a piece “How I Learned to Love the Draft” in which he offered his reasons for the restoration of compulsory military service. After reading Epstein’s reasons for bringing back the draft—the exposure of young people to contemporaries from all backgrounds, a greater engagement of the American people in foreign affairs, a hiatus between high school and college that might allow many young people to better determine their futures—I still oppose a peacetime draft, but I can better understand some of its benefits.
There is, however, a problem with military recruitment. A big problem.
Of the 34 million Americans ages 17 to 24, less than one third are fit to serve in the military.
In a report from the Heritage Foundation, “The Looming National Security Crisis: Young Americans Unable To Serve In the Military,” researchers Thomas Spoehr and Bridget Handy provide startling reasons why so many of our young people who wish to volunteer for the services can’t make the cut. Drawing in part from data put together by “Mission: Readiness,” an organization of retired generals and admirals formed in 2009 to address problems with recruitment, Spoehr and Handy explain why so many of these would-be volunteers are ineligible to join our country’s armed forces.
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