Given the inherent difficulties in military recruiting during an unpopular war, it stands to reason that the Defense Department would want to create more flexible standards.
The number of waivers granted to Army recruits with criminal backgrounds has grown about 65 percent in the last three years, increasing to 8,129 in 2006 from 4,918 in 2003, Department of Defense records show.
During that time, the Army has employed a variety of tactics to expand its diminishing pool of recruits. It has offered larger enlistment cash bonuses, allowed more high school dropouts and applicants with low scores on its aptitude test to join, and loosened weight and age restrictions.
It has also increased the number of so-called “moral waivers” to recruits with criminal pasts, even as the total number of recruits dropped slightly. The sharpest increase was in waivers for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the Army’s moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide.
In theory, this sounds reasonable to me. Once someone has served his or her time, they deserve a second chance. If they’re willing to volunteer for military service, especially during a war, I can appreciate the Pentagon’s willingness to liberally distribute “moral waivers.” There’s some irony in limiting the ability of ex-cons to legally own a gun, only to let them join the military, but why quibble?
I’ve been curious about the response from the right to this. I saw one conservative blogger write, “Look at it on the bright side: If we are going to lose American soldiers fighting in Iraq I’d rather lose people with criminal records.”
I can’t be sure, but that may be the darkest, most cynical thought I’ve seen about the war in a very long time.
And on an unrelated note, Aaron Belkin, director of the Michael D. Palm Center, a research institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, raised the same point I was thinking.
Under its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, it has fired over 11,000 capable troops, including nearly 1,000 considered mission-critical and over 300 foreign linguists, just because they’re gay. This despite overwhelming evidence that letting known gays serve does not impair cohesion, recruitment or effectiveness.
Yet simultaneously the military accepts those who, according to its own research and standards of review, undermine readiness by virtue of their failure to conform to society’s rules.
For all its insistence that letting gays serve openly would be an unacceptable risk to the military — even if they haven’t engaged in “homosexual conduct” — the Pentagon bends over backwards to create exceptions in the case of ex-convicts, whose actual criminal behavior is defined by having created a disruption. […]
Why does the military give a free ride to those who have proven to be disruptive while it gives the axe to proven soldiers who simply happen to be gay?
Good question.