With the Pentagon facing persistent shortages of new recruits, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida this week called for new tactics to get Americans interested in serving their country again.
In an opinion article published Monday in The National Interest, the Florida Republican noted, “The so-called ‘peace dividend’ is not looking good for America.”
Rubio outlined how the world has caught fire since Joe Biden became president.
- Communist China is now more powerful than the Soviet Union ever was.
- “Savage terrorists” have declared war on Israel since Oct. 7 and slaughtered more than 30 American citizens.
- Iran and its proxy groups — Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and more — “threaten to sow chaos across the entire Middle East and disrupt international shipping lanes.”
- Finally, we’re a month away from the second anniversary of Europe’s largest land war since World War II.
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Meanwhile, every branch of the U.S. military missed recruitment goals two years ago, and in 2023, came up 41,000 recruits short of their collective target.
“If we want our nation to stay safe and strong, we need to increase military recruitment,” Rubio wrote. “First and foremost, we need to wrestle with the reasons why Americans have stopped signing up to serve.”
The senator first recalled the patriotism evident after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. More than 250,000 Americans enlisted for the active military of the reserves during the first year after 9/11.
The problem, however, was that the public became disillusioned by “nation-building” schemes in both Iraq and Afghanistan. As those efforts unraveled and failed, “The impact on our national morale has inevitably been negative,” Rubio argued.
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That has played out in several ways, he said.
People have turned from the military as 9/11 becomes a more distant memory, as people believe the services offer a subpar quality of life, and as people see veterans disregarded or mistreated by corporate employers and even the Veterans Administration.
But, Rubio added, patriotism has sunk to new lows because liberals undermined it.
“The political Left, the corporate media, many public schools, and the vast majority of colleges have spent the past six years peddling the narrative that the United States is an irredeemably oppressive and racist nation,” Rubio noted.
“While no one should be surprised, everyone should be concerned. When both our education system and our military go woke, Americans from all sides of the political spectrum are turned off from service.”
“Wokeness tells progressives that their country is evil and not worth defending. It tells conservatives that their leaders and public institutions do not share their values,” he continued.
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“It distracts everyone from one of the military’s greatest gifts, which is the chance to be part of a cause greater than one’s self, to feel the camaraderie that only comes from working as a community to achieve a common goal –– in this case, the protection and defense of the greatest country that has ever existed.”
He cited Biden’s COVID-19 mandate as a “perfect example” of the wokeness torpedoing the military. More than 8,400 troops were booted simply because of the “vindictive, partisan fanaticism” that declared them unfit for objecting to taking an experimental vaccine.
Rubio noted Congress should do three things to reverse the slide of recruitment.
First, he said, “take better care of active-duty service members and veterans to rebuild people’s trust that if they sign up, they will be taken care of by their government.”
That means passing legislation that addresses “poor base housing, inadequate childcare options, and sub-par enlistee pay,” said Rubio.
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“The second requirement for policymakers is to keep woke politics out of the armed forces,” he added.
“These institutions exist to stand united against common enemies. Tying them to divisive cultural flashpoints would be a bad idea in the best of times—at this precarious moment, it is downright dangerous,” continued Rubio.
“If progressives cannot bring themselves to put the common good above the good of their party and its interest groups, they must rethink their calling to public service.”
Finally, he maintained, the federal government “must do a better job of explaining the importance of the military.”
“Policymakers cannot erase the legacies of Iraq and Afghanistan. On the contrary, we must accept them, for better and for worse,” Rubio wrote. “But we must also remind Americans that defending our country is a noble calling – and that our country is very much in need of defense.”
China, Iran, and other adversaries are taking note of the Pentagon’s problems and how the failure to address them is undermining the mission and national security,” Rubio argued.
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“Feeble leadership, internal divisions, inability to take decisive action, and low troop numbers signal weakness and invite aggression from America’s rivals,” he concluded.
“Those of us who understand these stakes have an urgent duty to make them known and inspire the next generation of American heroes. If we fail to do so, or if we fail to restore people’s trust in the institutions we represent, America’s global decline—and the corresponding rise of terrorists and totalitarians who seek our destruction—is all but certain.”
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