Army Raises Enlistment Age for Reservists to 39

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army, stung by recruiting shortfalls caused by the Iraq war, has raised the maximum age for new recruits for the part-time Army Reserve and National Guard by five years to 39, officials said on Monday.

The Army said the move, a three-year experiment, will add about 22 million people to the pool of those eligible to serve, from about 60 million now. Physical standards will not be relaxed for older recruits, who the Army said were valued for their maturity and patriotism.

The Pentagon has relied heavily on part-time Army Reserve and Army National Guard soldiers summoned from civilian life to maintain troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan. Roughly 45 percent of U.S. troops currently deployed for those wars are reservists.

At home, the all-volunteer Army has labored to coax potential recruits to volunteer for the Guard and Reserve as well as for active-duty, and to persuade current soldiers to re-enlist when their volunteer commitment ends. (source)

Now, I ask you... Why would anyone volunteer to serve in the service now when we’ve all heard or know of people who are going back to Iraq for the second or third time, risking their lives for a government who doesn’t care about them?

Sound harsh? How about this... We ask these people to go to Iraq to try to clean up the mess we’ve made. Because of the huge drain on our economy, we decrease the wages and benefits of military personnel, tell them to go back for a second or third tour of duty, and on top of that, tell them that they can’t get out because of a stop-loss order put in place by the President. In other words, we have violated the terms of their contract for military service.

Stop loss gives the President that authority in times of war and when there is grave danger to our country. This doesn’t exist at this time. What does exist is a country that we invaded and gutted. We are there now to keep a worse hell from emerging. People can see this for what it is. We aren’t there to spread democracy. We are there to put our fingers in the cracks of the dam to keep it from completely falling apart.