Pursuant to my previous military post
Military lowers standards
In case you were thinking that we might be able to prevent rape in the military by raising the requirements for becoming a soldier, think again. According to the article I have linked, the military is actually lowering its standards in order to recruit more soldiers, no doubt because of how much of our military personnel and resources and monies are being used every day in Iraq.
"The Army is accepting a growing number of new recruits with everything from health and weight issues to lower academic test scores to criminal records. The number of incoming soldiers with prior felony arrests or convictions has more than tripled in the past five years. This year alone, the Army accepted an estimated 8,000 recruits with rap sheets."
A lot of these crimes were eight burglaries or drug-related. According to the article, some Pentagon officials are calling this "a recipe for chaos." At least one of the soldiers granted a "moral waiver" to join the military was recently convicted of raping an Iraqi girl and then murdering her and her entire family. On the other hand, Cpl. Angelo Vaccaro also received a moral waver and sacrificed his own life to save some wounded soldiers.
To bring this back to my analogy with the Catholic sex abuse scandal, I understand that some seminaries have raised their standards in terms of pyschological screening to try to weed out anyone who might be a potential sex offender. The military seems to be taking the opposite approach.
All the more reason, if you ask me, why we need to use our military sparingly. If we got in less wars, we would need less soldiers, and thus could have smarter, morally better, and more skilled soldiers.
In case you were thinking that we might be able to prevent rape in the military by raising the requirements for becoming a soldier, think again. According to the article I have linked, the military is actually lowering its standards in order to recruit more soldiers, no doubt because of how much of our military personnel and resources and monies are being used every day in Iraq.
"The Army is accepting a growing number of new recruits with everything from health and weight issues to lower academic test scores to criminal records. The number of incoming soldiers with prior felony arrests or convictions has more than tripled in the past five years. This year alone, the Army accepted an estimated 8,000 recruits with rap sheets."
A lot of these crimes were eight burglaries or drug-related. According to the article, some Pentagon officials are calling this "a recipe for chaos." At least one of the soldiers granted a "moral waiver" to join the military was recently convicted of raping an Iraqi girl and then murdering her and her entire family. On the other hand, Cpl. Angelo Vaccaro also received a moral waver and sacrificed his own life to save some wounded soldiers.
To bring this back to my analogy with the Catholic sex abuse scandal, I understand that some seminaries have raised their standards in terms of pyschological screening to try to weed out anyone who might be a potential sex offender. The military seems to be taking the opposite approach.
All the more reason, if you ask me, why we need to use our military sparingly. If we got in less wars, we would need less soldiers, and thus could have smarter, morally better, and more skilled soldiers.