Read the section entitled "Economic enlistment for indebted military-age Americans". They're arguing to put over a million US citizens on the ground in Iran and the mechanism they want to do this is by exploiting the average American's debt.
"The average American aged 18 to 34 carries more than $40 thousand in non-mortgage debt across student loans, credit card balances, auto loans, and personal loans, with some estimates go as high as $100 thousand. This is the cohort the Pentagon needs. A federally administered debt-forgiveness enlistment program that fully discharges student loan, credit card, and loan balances after 24 or 36 months of service, and extends the GI Bill, would produce voluntary enlistment at scale."
Never for a moment thought my Subaru would be sending me to die for Israel. How could a patriotic Israeli write deranged dreck like this knowing full well the PR catastrophe the state is experiencing in the United States? It's so beyond the pale that you might even read it as parody.
Meh. A few clicks, and you can read the author's previous JPost editorials on the topic. Briefly put, he knows how to tell JPost's audience what they want to hear. Which starts with "Fixing this hellish quagmire that we (Israel) are in is America's problem, not ours". Then he plays extremely fast and loose with the history of the US and US Army, and generally daydreams all his problems away.
The section on supporting minority communities is probably not going to work. In a "fool me once" kind of way, the US has reliably failed to support such groups over the years, including the Kurds (mentioned in the article) on numerous occasions leading to lots of harm for them and their communities. They should not trust the US again, especially under this administration which is proving even more unreliable on all matters.
> It is the American state doing what the American state has always done when it needed staff it could not otherwise generate. World War II offered the GI Bill. Vietnam offered college deferments. The post 9/11 wars offered signing bonuses and citizenship pathways. The Iran war will need to offer debt relief. The economics of the indebted American 20-and 30-something make this the most efficient conversion mechanism available to the Pentagon and the Trump administration.
This paragraph is weird. It suggests that the GI Bill, enacted towards the end of WWII, was used to incentivize enlistment during the war that was already nearly over when it was enacted. It's a strange world where information flows backward in time. The college deferments of Vietnam were a way of getting a better assignment (and often an officer commission instead of enlisting) than you would have if you were drafted, people took the option because it was a way to survive a terrible situation where the alternative was to go and jump out of a helicopter and hope to live. Signing bonuses have been a thing for ages, predating 9/11, and used for select fields that had a harder time recruiting or retaining (pilots, for instance, weren't hard to recruit, but were hard to retain so various bonuses were used to keep them in the active duty service).
There are also existing student debt forgiveness programs that don't require anyone to go to fight in a war almost no one in the US wants to fight. There are certainly a lot of desperate people who would take them up on an offer like this, but I sincerely doubt it'll cover the necessary staffing gaps in the armed services. Also, if you've got a college degree you will usually try to go in as an officer, not enlisted, and what we'll need with boots on the ground are enlisted soldiers, not a larger officer core. So you're offering people debt forgiveness for shitty pay to get shot at in a war they don't actually support.
For being in combat zones they'd not pay income tax (helpful) and there's combat pay and there are other incentives and subsidies they will receive. But enlisted pay still sucks. Let's say we're generous to these enlisted debtors and drop them in as E-4s and credit them with 10 years of service (for pay calculation purposes), that's about $46k/year for basic pay for them. The debt forgiveness has to be very generous, and we're already blowing up our deficit for this war so it'll only be worse. The US would become, in this article's proposition, the payer for $40-100k in debt per person. It's a terrible economic proposition when ending the damn war would be much, much cheaper.
The article also hints at throwing Taiwan under the bus to get China to withdraw support from Iran:
"The counter-trade is Taiwan. Beijing has wanted a public American recalibration on Taiwan for two decades. "
This assumes the USA should be at war with Iran. I think Trump feels duped, and wants to get things back to some sort of stability as soon as he can.
He really doesn't want a ground war.
Read the section entitled "Economic enlistment for indebted military-age Americans". They're arguing to put over a million US citizens on the ground in Iran and the mechanism they want to do this is by exploiting the average American's debt.
"The average American aged 18 to 34 carries more than $40 thousand in non-mortgage debt across student loans, credit card balances, auto loans, and personal loans, with some estimates go as high as $100 thousand. This is the cohort the Pentagon needs. A federally administered debt-forgiveness enlistment program that fully discharges student loan, credit card, and loan balances after 24 or 36 months of service, and extends the GI Bill, would produce voluntary enlistment at scale."
Never for a moment thought my Subaru would be sending me to die for Israel. How could a patriotic Israeli write deranged dreck like this knowing full well the PR catastrophe the state is experiencing in the United States? It's so beyond the pale that you might even read it as parody.
And how will they pay for that debt? By taking on more national debt.
You know, debt paid for by American citizens.
Sounds like what Russia is doing, promising large payments to go die by drone
Meh. A few clicks, and you can read the author's previous JPost editorials on the topic. Briefly put, he knows how to tell JPost's audience what they want to hear. Which starts with "Fixing this hellish quagmire that we (Israel) are in is America's problem, not ours". Then he plays extremely fast and loose with the history of the US and US Army, and generally daydreams all his problems away.
I'd file this one under Cargo-Cult Fantasies.
The section on supporting minority communities is probably not going to work. In a "fool me once" kind of way, the US has reliably failed to support such groups over the years, including the Kurds (mentioned in the article) on numerous occasions leading to lots of harm for them and their communities. They should not trust the US again, especially under this administration which is proving even more unreliable on all matters.
> It is the American state doing what the American state has always done when it needed staff it could not otherwise generate. World War II offered the GI Bill. Vietnam offered college deferments. The post 9/11 wars offered signing bonuses and citizenship pathways. The Iran war will need to offer debt relief. The economics of the indebted American 20-and 30-something make this the most efficient conversion mechanism available to the Pentagon and the Trump administration.
This paragraph is weird. It suggests that the GI Bill, enacted towards the end of WWII, was used to incentivize enlistment during the war that was already nearly over when it was enacted. It's a strange world where information flows backward in time. The college deferments of Vietnam were a way of getting a better assignment (and often an officer commission instead of enlisting) than you would have if you were drafted, people took the option because it was a way to survive a terrible situation where the alternative was to go and jump out of a helicopter and hope to live. Signing bonuses have been a thing for ages, predating 9/11, and used for select fields that had a harder time recruiting or retaining (pilots, for instance, weren't hard to recruit, but were hard to retain so various bonuses were used to keep them in the active duty service).
There are also existing student debt forgiveness programs that don't require anyone to go to fight in a war almost no one in the US wants to fight. There are certainly a lot of desperate people who would take them up on an offer like this, but I sincerely doubt it'll cover the necessary staffing gaps in the armed services. Also, if you've got a college degree you will usually try to go in as an officer, not enlisted, and what we'll need with boots on the ground are enlisted soldiers, not a larger officer core. So you're offering people debt forgiveness for shitty pay to get shot at in a war they don't actually support.
https://www.dfas.mil/MilitaryMembers/payentitlements/Pay-Tab... - monthly enlisted pay rates
For being in combat zones they'd not pay income tax (helpful) and there's combat pay and there are other incentives and subsidies they will receive. But enlisted pay still sucks. Let's say we're generous to these enlisted debtors and drop them in as E-4s and credit them with 10 years of service (for pay calculation purposes), that's about $46k/year for basic pay for them. The debt forgiveness has to be very generous, and we're already blowing up our deficit for this war so it'll only be worse. The US would become, in this article's proposition, the payer for $40-100k in debt per person. It's a terrible economic proposition when ending the damn war would be much, much cheaper.