I'm glad your son served in such a fine unit (my wife served in the AF Weather detachment at Wheeler-Sack on Fort Drum) but if you didn't mean to lecture or condemn you shouldn't have slammed the current generation for being too unpatriotic to sign up. Have your cake or eat it.
The draftee served the shorter time, not the volunteer, and the air force and navy did not draft.
I may have been remembering that wrong, but my point still stands: Both groups faced a situation where they could decide when and where they would serve and followed their self-interest. Given a choice between serving two years at Uncle Sam's whim or three years on my terms, I'd take the second option, and I have no shortage of patriotism. The groups I speak of are a significant percentage of the Boomer men who volunteered and all of the Gen Y men who aren't volunteering now. That doesn't mean the Boomers are an unpatriotic generation, but it sure as heck doesn't mean they were the last patriotic generation.
The army and marines have changed their enlistment requirements out of necessity, not because letting 42 year old women in was a publicity stunt.
I didn't mean she was let in as a publicity stunt (though I see there was almost no other way for you to interpret my poorly written post) but was saying that this publicity event is a poor thing to draw conclusions from. There are lots of reasons that recruiting is difficult, and there are a lot of reasons beside difficult recruiting that the Army has decided to allow older people in.
You haven't made the case that X-ers and Gen-Y lack patriotism. You certinly can't make that case based on the current state of the armed forces. You will call that last statement another "straw dog" argument, but if you aren't comparing militaries to militaries, your argument falls apart.
It is a straw dog when somebody is pointing out that when we have 300 million people and the smallest military needs in generations, that we are having trouble filling it, and then you switch it to him complaining about the people that are in, or that are recent veterans.
Yes, I am saying the present generations are not patriotic enough to fill the army and marines with enough young men. Soon you will be hearing that the army and marines are desperate to grow by rather large numbers (the army wants maybe 100,000), and then you will hear more about this issue.
Already there is discussion of setting up recruiting offices in foreign countries, and already the military is 14% female and increasing, and already we are taking single moms and 42 year olds in as fresh recruits.
"I may have been remembering that wrong, but my point still stands: Both groups faced a situation where they could decide when and where they would serve and followed their self-interest. Given a choice between serving two years at Uncle Sam's whim or three years on my terms,"
You just don't know much about the draft, or the military.
When I'm discussing this with a 23 year old Sargent, he seems able to figure out that I mean his generation and others of age such as Matt Damon, not him, or anyone else that is in, or tried to get in, or is a veteran.