Latest updates take bite out of (enlistment) bonuses

[Robb]

Source: Army Times

Enlistment bonuses for the active component were hit with widespread reductions Tuesday, including the elimination of bonuses in five specialties.

(snip)

As a result of the changes, there are 99 entry-level specialties eligible for basic bonuses of up to $20,000. During the last enlistment bonus update in October, there were 104 MOSs on the eligibility list.

Other accession incentives can drive up total bonus amounts to $25,000 for a three-year enlistment, $30,000 for five years and $40,000 for six years.

Seasonal bonuses of $2,000 to $10,000 remain available to service applicants in selected specialties who agree to ship to basic training in 30 days.

Read more: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/12/army_bonus_cuts_120509w/

[fasttense]

1. Instead, we pay more to mercenaries and contractors. But we get the real

patriotic soldier on the cheap.

[L0oniX]

4. patriotic ???

What does bonus pay have to do with patriotic?

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them! – Albert Einstein

Never was a patriot yet, but was a fool. – John Dryden

A patriot is a fool in ev’ry age. – Alexander Pope.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. – Samuel Johnson

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first. – Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen. – Ambrose Bierce

That pernicious sentiment, “Our country, right or wrong.” – James Russell Lowell

“My country right or wrong” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother drunk or sober.” – G. K. Chesterton

Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and “My country never wrong” is an even more dangerous maxim than “My country, right or wrong.” – Bertrand Russell

Patrioism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. – George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. – George Bernard Shaw

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. – George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy. – George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it. – Denis Diderot

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography. – George Santayana

The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations. – H.G. Wells

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. “Patriotism” is its cult. . . . Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship. – Erich Fromm

One of the great attractions of patriotism–it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat, Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous. – Aldous Huxley

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots – Gordon Allport

It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. – Elbert Hubband

Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy. – William Inge

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. – Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions. – Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism corrupts history. – Goethe

Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind. – Thorstein Veblen

The standardization of mass-production carries with it a tendency to standardize a mass-mind, producing a willing conformity, not merely to common ways of living, but to common ways of thinking and common valuations. The worst defect of patriotism is its tendency to foster and impose this common mind, and so to stifle the innumerable germs of liberty. – J.A. Hobson

2. Patriotism and War:

At the bottom of all patriotism is war: that is why I am no patriot. – Jules Renard

No other factor in history, not even religion, has produced so many wars as has the clash of national egotisms sanctified by the name of patriotism. – Preserved Smith

Naturally the common people don’t want war . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. – Hermann Goering.

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them! – Albert Einstein

3. Patriotism and Religion:

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. – Guy de Maupassant

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. – Luis Buñuel

To be patriotic, hate all nations but you own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretenses but your own. – Lionel Strachey

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism! – David Starr Jordan

4. The American Syndrome:

If you have a weak candidate and a weak platform, wrap yourself up in the American flag and talk about the Constitution. – Matt Quay

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be “American” before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? It is really too easy a disguise for our shortcomings to dress them up as a form of patriotism. – Edith Wharton

The 100 percent American is 99 percent an idiot. – George Bernard Shaw

Treason is in the air around us everywhere. It goes by the name of patriotism. – Thomas Corwin

5. Three relatively positive assessments of patriotism:

A patriot is somebody who protects his country from his government. Or better yet: who has the guts to protect his country from its government. – Piotyr Dirk

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. – George Washington

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. – Thomas Jefferson

[madmom]

2. My step son was in Kosovo, came home was ready to re-up until b*sh

gutted the enlistment bonuses.

[C_Lawyer09]

8. Enlistment bonuses and retention bonuses are two very different animals

There are a slew of reenlistment incentives to include monetary bonuses. There is the Commanders education incentive, the BEAR program, which always is accompanied by cash incentives for critical skill areas, such as powerplant operator, linguist, special forces, tactical data systems operator, satellite communications repair, etc. Enlistment incentives change almost weekly. It depends largely on training slots, as well as need in the field. For example, I never recieved any bonus, whether enlistment or retention. I was a Parachute Rigger. I enlisted two Soldiers as Parachute Riggers, one with the airborne ranger option. One recieve 30k and one recieved 40k. Soldiers recieve half after completion of training, and the rest is pro-rated throughout their enlistment, on annual anniversary etc. The Army has a program, thats been fielded for three years, where the recruiter can show the applicant all the jobs they qualify for with their test score and certain ship dates. They can reserve the job for up to a week. That means they need to go up to the military entrance processing station and enlist within seven calendar days. They will ship off to training somewhere in between 9 days and 6 months. They are apprised of this at the time they reserve the job. The only thing that will nullify the reservation is if they are found physically unqualified at MEPS. For example, one must have correctable vision of 20/20 for infantry. For this reason, a few of my applicants switched option to military police, which doesn't have the same requirement.

[Bette Noir]

3. We're sending another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan,

and simultaneously reducing enlistment bonuses? I don't follow the logic.

[Robb]

5. That struck me as counterintuitive also. nt

[saigon68]

6. Trash the economy some more equals

Plenty of sheep to sign up for the killing jobs

[frylock]

7. exactly..

what are they going to do? come home and get a job?!

[C_Lawyer09]

9. Not neccessarily

Applicants still need to qualify by citizenship, physically, morally, mentally etc. About 30% of 17-24 year old men and women are qualified. In the last place I recruited, the figure was more like 20%. Even though a moral waiver is possible, it is much harder to complete and get approved than most realize. I.E. I submitted two waivers for two test qualified individuals, 84 and 86 QT (percentile) respectively. One pot possession less than an ounce on school grounds, denied, and one maliscious mischief with sexual intent, grabbed his ex girlfriends butt, parents pressed charges, that was denied as well. Of course you can realize I chuckled some, as various magazines babbled incoherently about all the supposed "standards being dropped". I realize you're Vietnam era, rest assured, many Vietnam vets were confused, angry, disbelieving, when they were told their, son, cousin, friend of the family couldn't enlist. Also, in point of fact, it's easier to qualify for many support jobs, like supply, cook, or lineman, versus infantry.

[saigon68]

10. The worse the economy, the more the Pool of recruits

ergo the higher the standards.

In my day McNamara's Morans (sic) took their place as Project 100,000. I'm sure you have heard of it --- the Link is for those who haven't.

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/05/29/mcnamara/
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n6_v27/ai_17040672/

Touted as providing "rehabilitation," remedial education, and an escape from poverty, the program offered a one-way ticket to Vietnam, where these men fought and died in disproportionate numbers. The much-advertised skills were seldom taught.

McNamara called these men the "subterranean poor," as if they lived in caves. In a way they did; their squalid ghettos and Appalachian hill towns were unseen by affluent America. All the better for McNamara and his president Lyndon Johnson. Unmentioned in Project 100,000's lofty sounding goals was the fact that - as protest became the number-one course of study at America's universities - the men of the "Moron Corps" provided the necessary cannon fodder to help evade the political horror of dropping student deferments or calling up the reserves, which were sanctuaries for the lily-white.

Officials denied that the members of the "Moron Corps" were dying in higher numbers, but the irrefutable statistics embraced by mathematical whiz kid McNamara tell another story. Forty percent of Project 100,000 men were trained for combat, compared with 25 percent of general service. In one 1969 sampling of Project 100,000, the Department of Defense put the attrition-by-death rate at 1.1 percent. By contrast, the overall rate for Vietnam era veterans was only 0.6 percent.

"I think McNamara should be shot," said Herb DeBose, a black first lieutenant in Vietnam, who later worked with incarcerated veterans. "I saw him when he resigned from the World Bank, crying about the poor children of the world. But if he did not cry at all for any of those men he took in under Project 100,000 then he really doesn't know what crying is all about. Many under me weren't even on a fifth-grade level.... I found out they could not read .. no skills before, no skills after. The army was supposed to teach them a trade in something - only they didn't."

[Bombero1956]

11. my nephew signed up last year

My brother and I were plenty upset to learn that he had taken the $20,000 sign-on bonus. From what I'm told he was "promised" a computer science MOS which would keep him stateside. He failed that exam for that school and ended up becoming a helicopter mechanic. I just found out Thanksgiving day that he is being deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan next month. This will be his first deployment and even though he may not be out and about running patrols he will still be exposed to the dangers of being in country. I hope everything goes well for him.