Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Another myth about the Army shattered

This report comes out the same time as the latest Hollywood antiwar propaganda piece Stop Loss is hitting the theaters.
According to Army statistics obtained exclusively by FOX News, 70 percent of soldiers eligible to re-enlist in 2006 did so — a re-enlistment rate higher than before Sept. 11, 2001. For the past 10 years, the enlisted retention rates of the Army have exceeded 100 percent. As of last Nov. 13, Army re-enlistment was 137 percent of its stated goal.
Let me make a distinction for you. There is enlistment which is new folks signing up and then there is reenlistment, which is the folks currently serving who decide to stay in. Well instead of giving up all of their obscene ammenities, it appears that they are stying in, in record numbers.

So multiple deployments, family separations, and all of the other things that cause stress on military members does not seem to be deterring them from reenlisting. While the experts cite a "Band of Brothers" mentality for this, the need to stay with those with whom you have served, there is another equally powerful and opposite force that keeps folks in uniform.

It is the belief, no, knowledge, that adjusting back to a civilian world whose members have not a clue what being a soldier is all about is more frightening then running a patrol outside of a FOB in Iraq. Those who serve have come to appreciate that they are unique among the citizens of this country, and they relish that uniqueness and have neither the time nor patience to try and explain it to an unbelieving and uncomprehending society at large.

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