Free Republic

While enlistment rates in the U.S. military vary by group, they also vary by state. Enlistment ranges from less than 3 per thousand in North Dakota to more than 7 per thousand in Florida and Maine. According to the Defense Department, differences exist at the regional level as well. In 2013, 44% of all military recruits came from the South, despite it having only 36% of the country’s 18-24 year-old civilian population. By contrast, the Northeast was the most underrepresented region of the country; only 14% of new enlistments came from this area, compared to 18% of its 18-24 year-old...

In a stunning display of callousness, the Defense Department has announced that thousands of soldiers — many serving as commanding officers in Afghanistan — will be notified in the coming weeks that their service to the country is no longer needed. Last week, more than 1,100 Army captains — the men and women who know best how to fight this enemy because they have experienced multiple deployments — were told they’ll be retired from the Army. The overall news is not unexpected. The Army has ended its major operations in Iraq and is winding down in Afghanistan. Budget cuts are...

Memorial Day began as a simple observance of our heroes. Declared by Maj. Gen. John A. Logan as Decoration Day in 1868, the unofficial holiday was intended to furnish the graves of soldiers with flowers, flags, and recognition. “We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance,” Logan explained. “Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.” But there is more to today than merely proclaiming that the lives of so many soldiers were not lost in vain....

The soldiers guarding the entrances to the surrounded Ukrainian military base here just south of the capital, Simferopol, had little in common with their predecessors from past Russian military actions. They were lean, fit and sober. Few if any seemed to be conscripts. Their uniforms were crisp and neat, and their new helmets were bedecked with tinted safety goggles. And there was another indicator of an army undergoing an upgrade: compact encrypted radio units distributed at the small-unit level, including for soldiers standing such routine duty as guard shifts beside machine-gun trucks. The radios are a telltale sign of a...

Chief Petty Officer Tori Novo says she finds herself saying "no" to young people who want to ship out to sea with the Navy more often than she used to. A recruiter for seven years, Novo says she has seen the standards for enlisting in the Navy become tougher. And that means more young people who desperately want to join the Navy -- for a career with a steady paycheck, for educational opportunities, for a chance to serve their country -- don't make the cut. Many of those applicants -- the ones "who would beg on their hands and knees...

UK armed forces cuts will limit the country's ability to be a major player on the world stage, ex-US defence secretary Robert Gates has warned. The UK plans to cut 30,000 armed forces personnel by 2020, leaving 147,000. ...On the UK's military cuts, Mr Gates told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "With the fairly substantial reductions in defence spending in Great Britain, what we're finding is that it won't have full spectrum capabilities and the ability to be a full partner as they have been in the past." The spectrum refers to the ability of a country's military to fight...

Liberals in uniform? In another forum, I got into a semi-squabble with a hardcore Liberal regarding the political affiliations of service members. She insists that Conservatives are no longer in the majority, and that most men and women in uniform are either Democrat voters or even Socialists. I told her that based on my Navy experience, and based on conversations with other veterans and active duty friends, she has no idea what she is talking about (actually I expressed it more forcefully than that), but it did get me thinking. Obama has purged, and will continue to purge, the higher...

The U.S. military, struggling after defense cuts of tens of billions of dollars, will be unable to pay for attacks on Syria from current operating funds and must seek additional money from Congress, according to congressional aides.

Peter Robinson at Ricochet directs attention to a study by the Heritage Foundation of military enlistment to population ratios by region. It tells us that, generally speaking, folks from Red States are much more inclined to serve in the military than folks from Blue States.The most over-represented region consists of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The most under-represented region is the Northeast from Pennsylvania upwards. The Mountain West — Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico — is over-represented. So is Southeast. The Pacific West and the Midwest are underrepresented. The Midwest’s short-fall in the military...

President Obama has said the outrage over the federal government’s decision to monitor citizens’ phone activity is all “hype.”

Sen. John McCain, who built a potent political career on his record as a Vietnam veteran and ex-prisoner of war, on Tuesday told the leaders of every military branch he cannot in good conscience advise women to join the service as the military grapples to contain and curb its sexual assault epidemic. "Just last night, a woman came to me and said her daughter wanted to join the military and could I give my unqualified support for her doing so. I could not," McCain, an Arizona Republican, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing examining whether all serious sexual...

c. 1940s: Military donkey ride

STANFORD, Calif. — AFTER fighting two wars in nearly 12 years, the United States military is at a turning point. So are the American people. The armed forces must rethink their mission. Though the nation has entered an era of fiscal constraint, and though President Obama last week effectively declared an end to the “global war on terror” that began on Sept. 11, 2001, the military remains determined to increase the gap between its war-fighting capabilities and those of any potential enemies. But the greatest challenge to our military is not from a foreign enemy — it’s the widening gap...

The U.S. military could have prevented one wave of the deadly attack on American personnel in Benghazi if fighter jets had been promptly deployed, a top diplomatic official who was in Benghazi during the Sept. 11 assault told congressional investigators.

IN 12th grade, my friend Ryan and I were finalists for the Silver State Scholars, a competition to identify the “Top 100” seniors in Nevada. The finalists were flown to Lake Tahoe for two days of interviews. On the plane, Ryan and I met a boy from Las Vegas. Looking to size up the competition, we asked what high school he went to. He said a name we didn’t recognize and added, “It’s a magnet school.” Ryan asked what a magnet school was, and spent the remaining hour incredulously demanding a detailed account of the young man’s educational history: his...

American women have been cleared for combat, but the generals at the Pentagon only think they are the very model of the modern major general. Women have been locked in combat since Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Men and women have been fighting the unending war between the sexes since, giving no quarter, but happily taking each other prisoner. It's a war nobody can win, as Henry Kissinger observed, because there's too much fraternizing with the enemy. But when a helpful Amazonian warrior tries to shorten the odds for her side, someone invariably makes...

Please help us get a Presidential Proclamation.

Before and After D-Day: Rare Color Photos It’s no mystery why images of unremitting violence spring to mind when one hears the deceptively simple term, “D-Day.” We’ve all seen — in photos, movies, old news reels — what happened on the beaches of Normandy (codenamed Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold and Sword) as the Allies unleashed an historic assault against German defenses on June 6, 1944. But in color photos taken before and after the invasion, LIFE’s Frank Scherschel captured countless other, lesser-known scenes from the run-up to the onslaught and the heady weeks after: American troops training in small English...

I recall a few years ago I was engaged in our favorite national pastime – waiting in the drive-thru line at the local Tim Horton’s – when I noticed a Canadian Forces truck pull in behind me, occupied by two of our Finest. Figuring it was the least I could do, I told the girl at the window to put the next order on my tab. After a couple of double-double coffees and a box of Timbits were added, I got my stuff and moved on. A store across the parking lot was my final stop before home. I had...

Remember when that Marine made a YouTube video inviting Mila Kunis to the Marine Corps Ball and she was like "Oh scheduling conflict, can't go" and Justin Timberlake was like, "You should go" so then another marine was like "Well, if you're pressuring Kunis to go to the ball, then you should come with me" and Justin Timberlake was like "Ok"? Anyways, that Marine Corps Ball was this past Saturday and Justin Timberlake was the date of Corporal Kelsey DeSantis. Timberlake says the entire evening was one that he would never forget and wrote on his website: "I didn't know...