A Connection Perhaps?

A few years ago, recruiting was a more thankless job. Young people were catching the drift of what war was really like. But the Great Recession cured all that. Now they have the drift of what unemployment is really like, and the horrors of war fade to gray. They also like the tales of college tuition, job training, or a smoother route to citizenship — sometimes true, sometimes not.

Of course, we don't need so many recruits anymore, what with mercenaries, drones, and foreign troops filling in. But even Ivy League schools are reopening ROTC programs at the request of exuberant young empire builders.
~ from Veterans, the Human Rubble of Our Wars by William A. Collins ~

One question that is on a lot of people's minds these days is: Why won't the president and Congress get serious about this nation's employment crisis? We hear loads of rhetoric about jobs -- President Obama is running around the country now trying to sell a weak Jobs bill -- but we see very little substantive action.

As Collins points out above, lots of people are flocking to the military. Without much fanfare, recruitment is way up. The reason is painfully obvious: It means a job with a steady paycheck.

With both the Obama administration and Congress rattling sabers about the need to get tough with Iran (over a manufactured crisis, no less), I am worried that there is a direct connection between almost no efforts to minimize unemployment and the desire by some to begin a new protracted war.

Iran isn't Iraq or Afghanistan. While the Iranian military apparatus certainly isn't on par with ours -- no one spends anywhere near the money that we do -- they would not be pushovers either. We, of course, would need to soften them up with drones, missiles and bombs, but ground troops -- a whole lot of them -- would be needed at some point.

If our economy was robust OR a massive jobs program was put into place, the military would be hard-pressed to come up with the requisite number of bodies to do the campaign justice. Consequently, a cynic (like me) might suggest that it would appear there is an ulterior motive in keeping the unemployment rolls high. We need a ready pool of desperate souls willing to sign up to fight yet another war of aggression.

I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not.