Volunteer army? Mercenary army is a more apt description of the current state. Some of you argue here we should only send to war those who want to be there. That is a good idea in theory. However, what do you do when you can't get enough volunteers to sign up to support a bloated, drastically underestimated war effort? You have two options. First, institute a draft and distribute the socio-economic costs of the war across all classes, races, religions, locales etc. Or, you can raise incentives (enlistment bonuses etc) and lower standards (gang membership, past convictions etc), thereby allowing more people to volunteer. It seems very logical for me to pursue the first option, but our government has chosen the second, with some unintended consequences.
FBI Says US Criminal Gangs are Using Military to Spread Their Reach
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=42002
For the sake of space, this is just one article from Stripes, a magazine published by the US military; not a blog post from the Daily Kos or its liberal brethren. A news search reveals numerous other articles on this exact topic.
“It’s often in the military’s best interest to keep these incidents quiet, given low recruitment numbers and recent negative publicity. The relaxation of recruiting standards, recruiter misconduct and the military’s lack of enforcement (gang membership is not prohibited in the Army) have compounded the problem and allowed gang member presence in the military to proliferate,” Simon said.
With the relaxation of standards for enlistment in the military, gangs see enlistment as free urban warfare training.
There are no official statistics on gang membership in the military, but some experts have estimated that 1 percent to 2 percent of the U.S. military are gang members, Simon said. That compares with just 0.02 percent of the U.S. population believed to be gang members, she wrote.