- Lauren Reyna Morales
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Gen Z Targeted with Military Recruitment Propaganda
From Draft NOtices, April-June 2023
- Lauren Reyna Morales
Fiscal year 2022 marked a period of record low recruitment levels for the United States Armed Forces. All military branches struggled to reach their benchmarks. The Army alone missed recruiting goals by about 15,000 new soldiers, coming up 25 percent short for the fiscal year. To put the recruitment “crisis” into perspective, the military has not experienced such a problem enrolling new members since 1973, when the draft officially ended. So, why isn’t Generation Z interested in joining the military? The answer to that question depends on whom you ask.
Many conservative officials and veterans have claimed the military going “woke” has turned today’s youth off from enlisting. Proponents of this rationale blame diversity, inclusion, and racial bias trainings adopted by the armed forces as a cause for declining recruitment numbers. According to Military Times, Thomas Spoehr, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation, lamented, “Is anyone surprised that potential recruits -- many of whom come from rural or poor areas of the country -- don’t want to spend their time being lectured about white privilege?” And former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed this viewpoint in an opinion column for Fox News last September. He asked, “How can we ask young men and women who have decided to risk their lives for America, even die for America, to affirm that our country is inherently racist?”
Recently, COMD received a question about warning letters the government sends to young men who are suspected of failing to register with Selective Service. This is a brief explanation of the implications for those who receive such letters. (Note that SS sends mass mailings of postcard registration “reminders” to some lists of males who have not yet reached age 18. Those reminders are not the same as the warning letters discussed here.)
In July of 2022 the New York Times published an explosive exposé on sexual abuse in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corp (JROTC). JROTC is a federal program sponsored by the United States Armed Forces that operates in at least 3,500 high schools with more than 500,000 students enrolled across the country. The U.S. Army JROTC website describes the program as “one of the largest character development and citizenship programs for youth in the world.” The NY Times investigation revealed that since 2017, there had been at least 33 JROTC instructors criminally charged with sexual misconduct against their students, and several other accusations. The report detailed that within the last five years, the Army decertified 24 instructors because of credible sexual abuse allegations. Other military branches also had to decertify several of their JROTC instructors for sexual misconduct: 15 instructors in the Marine Corps JROTC, 10 in the Navy, and seven in the Air Force. Two additional JROTC instructors accused of sexual abuse died by suicide before their cases could be settled. All of the programs’ instructors are retired military officers.
