You don’t fight for your country, you fight for your government. Lately, what the government thinks is worth fighting for is not being met with enthusiasm by those who would be doing the fighting. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:
Good news: the Pentagon is having trouble meeting recruiting goals, and an increasingly small portion of the American public is interested in fighting wars for the regime.
It’s been apparent for several years now that the Pentagon is having serious trouble with recruitment. In September, the New York Post reported that “Much of the military will fall short of recruitment goals by as much as 25% this year.” 2023 is the first time the Air Force has missed its recruiting goals since 1999.
Moreover, a Gallup poll in June found confidence in the military declined for a sixth consecutive year, to 60 percent.
It doesn’t look like a major war will induce most Americans to sign up either. For example, Newsweek reports today:
A poll by the research institute Echelon Insights of 1,029 likely voters, conducted between October 23-26, found that 72 percent of those asked would not be willing to volunteer to serve in the armed forces were America to enter a major conflict, compared with 21 percent who would. The remainder were unsure. The poll was conducted after Hamas led an unprecedented militant attack on Israel on October 7.
Note how the question is phrased. It’s not asking people if they would fight to defend their communities. Rather, the question is whether or not one would be willing to volunteer to fight in “a major conflict.” Few are apparently interested, and why should they be? It has become abundantly clear over the past 25 years that the elective wars fought by the US regime have nothing to do with the defense of Americans or their communities. The US bombing of Libya and Syria has had nothing to do with keeping Americans safe. The multi-decade wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with keeping Americans safe. After all, the US lost the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, with no invasion of the United States imminent as a result. In fact, those wars likely increased the danger to Americans by destabilizing the region—the US invasion made ISIS possible—and making more enemies for the US around the world.
