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| Fifth Column | |
| Guam Youth Continue to Enlist in Declining Military | |
| 2008-01-27 | |
| Following the lead of the NY Slimes "Killer-Vet' story, the WaPo explains why some folks STILL enlist. BARRIGADA, Guam -- As a recruiter for the Guam Army National Guard, Staff Sgt. Gonzalo Fernandez has oodles of time for golf. In the past two years, he has taken 18 strokes off his handicap. Slipping away to the links, however, has done nothing to dull his rising star at the office. Thanks to the eagerness of young Americans on this remote Pacific island to join the military, Fernandez is a two-time winner of the Guard's recruiter of the year award for a seven-state western region that includes Colorado, Utah and California. On the U.S. mainland, long-running wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made life miserable for military recruiters. The armed forces have repeatedly missed enlistment targets, and standards have been lowered in response. More recruits with criminal records and histories of drug abuse have been allowed to enlist. And recruiters, pressured to meet quotas, have increasingly been accused of unethical and criminal misconduct.
Part of the reason is economic. Poverty rates and unemployment on Guam -- a U.S. territory located more than 7,500 miles west of Los Angeles -- are historically much higher than on the mainland, and wages are low. Schools are poor, and technical training is hard to find. There is not much for young people to do. But those are not the most important reasons, according to enlistees and recruiters, families of soldiers killed in action and veterans of the Iraq war. The key factor, they agree, is the island's unique status in American history. People here grow up with war ringing in their ears -- as described by their grandparents. Guam, a U.S. possession since it was taken in 1898 from the Spanish, is the only American soil with a sizable population to have been occupied by a foreign military power. During World War II, the Japanese held the island for almost three years and brutalized nearly everyone on it. They created concentration camps, forcing the indigenous Chamorro people to provide slave labor and sex. And if Harry and Nancy have their way, history will repeat itself, and more of America will be occupied. There is, of course, more at the link. | |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #7 And it's all my fault, as usual. I will be good, from now on, I'll vote for Great Cthulhu in 2008. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2008-01-27 14:07 |
| #6 Boys, boys ... AoS |
| Posted by: Steve White 2008-01-27 13:56 |
| #5 Fuck off jerkwater, |
| Posted by: Thomas Woof 2008-01-27 10:01 |
| #4 don't get that idiot started |
| Posted by: sinse 2008-01-27 09:03 |
| #3 JOE! 2008 For the Children and Mars. |
| Posted by: Thomas Woof 2008-01-27 08:54 |
| #2 Could that be the byproduct of some sort of weird, yet-to-be explained radiation emitted by Joe Mendiola's brain patterns?? I think that might be worth investigating. Joe M 2008! |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2008-01-27 07:56 |
| #1 Thank you, Guam, for producing such sons and daughters. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-01-27 07:31 |