U.S. Army To Recruit Foreigners

It looks like the United States Army is still having trouble recruiting soldiers for its illegal occupation of Iraq and its poorly run war in Afghanistan. They have already reduced academic standards and even begun accepting felons and gang-bangers that they would not have even considered a few years ago.

But it looks like the radical dropping of standards has not been enough. This year the Army will try to recruit 1,000 foreigners who possess only a temporary visa to be in the United States. In the past, a foreign-born recruit must have had a green card. If the foreign-born recruits with temporary visas do well, they plan to expand the program to the point these recruits will make up over 16% of the Army's soldiers. Next year, the program will probably also be introduced to other branches of our military services.

Those that sign up will be offered an accelerated path to citizenship. They can become citizens in a matter of months. Otherwise, it would take them years, if allowed to become citizens at all.

The Army claims it will allow them to recruit those with needed language and cultural knowledge. I think that is just a cover for getting overall numbers up. The current language and cultural needs are Pakistani and Arabic, but only 3% of immigrants living in America are from the Middle East, and since 9/11, the Bush administration has cut severely the immigration from that area. The excuse for the cut is fear of admitting terrorists.

About 55% of all immigrants are from Latin America, and it only makes sense that most of the recruits will be Spanish-speakers. The point is that Americans are very opposed to the occupation of Iraq, and fewer and fewer qualified Americans are willing to put their lives (or their children's lives) on the line for it.

The answer the Army has come up with is sort of like the French Foreign Legion. Let foreigners fight the wars that citizens want no part of, and award them with citizenship. The only difference is that we do not separate the foreigners in our military (at least not yet). It's bad enough that it has come to this at all, but a separation must not be allowed to happen or those will become our "suicide" forces.

It would not have come to this, if we had limited our fighting to self-defense or prevention of genocide -- wars that can be defended and believed in. We should never have invaded Iraq and tried to force our ways on them militarily. It was wrong to do so. Yes, Saddam was a cruel dictator, but we allow dozens of such dictators to exist without making war against them. We even give economic aid to some of them.

It was wrong for us to invade Iraq, and it's wrong for us to occupy that country. We need to withdraw our troops immediately. I know President Obama has said we will withdraw within months, but that is not soon enough. It has become obvious that we cannot solve Iraq's problems, so we need to leave so they can begin to do so.

Every day we stay in Iraq costs more innocent lives -- many of them Americans.