How would you like a job with a company that offers bad wages, puts your life in danger, lies about why your life is in danger and lies about the period of time during which your life will be in danger?
Let me one-up that. How would you like a job as one of the people trying to convince other people to take that job?
Welcome to the world of military recruiters.
\[Recruiting] is not a goal or a target,"" said Lt. Col. William Adams. ""It is a mission. If you don't do it, you're a failure."" These harsh words, from a West Point psychologist and counselor of Army recruiters, are typical of the sort of pressure responsible for a rash of extreme stress, depression, nervous breakdowns and even attempted suicides among recruiters. A New York recruiter who declined to be identified for a New York Times article said he was ""chewed out every day"" for not meeting his quotas. A Texas recruiter said he'd ""rather be getting shot at."" Staff Sgt. Spurgeon M. Shelley of Lexington Park, Md. said, ""If I had hair, I'd pull it out.""
It's quite a pickle these recruiters are in. They have one of the hardest jobs in the world, and they're under some of the heaviest pressure.
It's not their fault, of course. It's not even the fault of seemingly hard-hearted superiors like Lt. Col. Adams and Sgt. Maj. Frank Norris of a recruiting station in Houston, who sent an e-mail to the recruiters under his command saying, ""There are no excuses and I am tired of entertaining such lack of discipline and focus.""
What are they supposed to do? They can't very well be tolerant of recruiters who don't meet their goals, or else even fewer will meet them than meet them now. Adams and Norris are undoubtedly being pressured by their superiors, who are being pressured by their superiors, who are being pressured by the Department of Defense, which is being pressured by Congress and President Bush to meet the heavy troop burdens imposed by the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
But understanding the causes is no consolation to recruiters, many of whom, as detailed previously in this column, are forced to use misleading and unethical tactics to sign up the required number of recruits. When they don't get caught telling recruits to lie about their medical histories or falsely assuring them that they won't be sent to Iraq, honest recruiters fall behind.
When the guilty are caught, which is rare, their superiors are still incensed. A report from Norris' station, as reported in The New York Times, complained about unfit recruits saying: ""We are processing crap ... double and triple waivers, waivers which get approved and the applicant refuses to enlist (two this month), waivers on people with more than 20 charges, etc. We are putting these people in our Army!"" Evidently, not only are the recruiters for ""their"" Army charged with the fundamentally dishonest duty of making one of the worst jobs in the country seem like one of the best, but they are expected to do it honestly. There are solutions to this conundrum, but none appears realistic given the current political climate.
A new national draft could be instituted. This would remove the need for recruitment but would also jump-start nationwide anti-war sentiment.
The United States could pull out of Iraq. This would temporarily solve the demand side of the equation by decreasing the need for additional troops but would not answer the long-term question of how the country would get more troops if they were needed.
Finally, least likely of all, Congress could sweeten the deal for recruits by passing massive, across-the-board increases in salary, benefits and enlistment bonuses. Army Reserve bonuses have recently jumped to $15,000, but yearly pay for recruiters is only $30,000. If every one of the 150,000 troops in Iraq were paid $100,000 a year for their service in harm's way, it would cost an additional $15 billion a year, not an insignificant chunk of change but certainly not out of the question for a Pentagon whose budget is around $425 billion and increasing exponentially.
None of this, though, is likely to happen. What's more likely is that some recruiters will take up that old baseball adage ""if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'"" while others will labor honestly and fruitlessly. All will continue their sisyphean task with high pressure and low support from above.
