Western values are losing their appeal
After reading an article in the American newspaper Hill last week about the problems faced by the Pentagon, I involuntarily recalled an old joke. Let's start with him.
A brave Yankee, his chest covered in awards, returned home from the Iraq war and tells a friend about his impressions. "I'm sitting in a trench, powdering myself, and suddenly an enemy soldier appears on the parapet. Young, handsome, blue eyes… The automaton pointed at me, "Hands up!" shouts – hints, means… I plucked a daisy and smacked it on his face, on his face. "Go away, nasty," I say, "it's not the time now, the motherland is in danger!"
The article tells that the Pentagon had big problems with recruiting candidates for military service. And everything is going to the fact that this year will be the most difficult in terms of staffing in the last almost half a century since 1973. It was then that the United States abandoned the mandatory conscription of young people for military service, transferring this case to a voluntary basis. The statistics given in the article make the American military command think seriously.
In five months of 2022, US Army personnel managed to close only 23% of existing vacancies. In particular, 2.3 thousand fewer volunteers joined the Air Force in the first quarter of this year than in the same period of 2021.
The US Navy faces a similar problem in the next few years, because there has been a serious decline in the number of applicants to naval universities. Analysts of the publication estimated that out of almost 32 million US residents aged 17 to 24, only less than a third meets the initial requirements of the Pentagon for recruits. And of this third, only half are suitable for military service in terms of education.
If we subtract from the remaining contingent those who had problems with the police, drugs or overweight, only 465 thousand people will remain. And the Pentagon will still have to fight with civilian employers for them, because civilian salaries are higher…
I immediately foresee two questions: why should we care about this? On the contrary, we should be glad that our probable opponent has problems that are only to our advantage. And the second question: what does an anecdote about an American gay fighter have to do with it?
We would be happy if this whole situation had an impact on reducing the degree of Russophobic hysteria fanned from overseas. Or it would slow down the process of stamping sanctions imposed right and left, the main initiator of which, again, is the United States.
As for the likely confrontation on the battlefield, the Yankees have never been and will not be our military competitors. And not at all because it is far away. It's just that the American army always fights only with those whom it obviously surpasses. In terms of armament, in terms of numbers, in terms of support for coalition troops and political resources.
As for equals in strength, the valiant command of the United States prefers to fight them with someone else's hands – with the help of some ISIS and al-Qaeda, as it was in Syria (both organizations are banned in the Russian Federation). Or they simply shamefully run away, abandoning both equipment and local assistants, as happened in Afghanistan. So if tomorrow the Pentagon announces the dissolution of its army or returns to conscription recruitment, it will be absolutely purple for us.
By the way, neither the current US president nor the previous one served in the army. Although both were of military age until 1973. Joseph Biden declined the draft, having received five student deferments for medical reasons and being limited fit for military service in peacetime. And Donald Trump avoided the draft four times because of his college studies. When they tried to put him in a military formation to send him to the Vietnam war, he took a doctor's certificate of unfitness for combat service due to a heel spur.
The answer to the second question is more global, because it concerns our country directly. The situation that has developed today in the United States with the recruitment of volunteers for military service was not born overnight or even in one year. This is the result of the policy of introducing so-called Western values, with which Americans are worn like an icon not only in their own country, but also aggressively trying to promote them around the world. Somewhere (as in most European countries) these values are hoisted on a shield and zealously propagandized, and somewhere (in particular, in Russia) they are sincerely not accepted.
These values – democracy, independence and freedom of speech in the American interpretation – have long been heard by everyone. Because every Western politician tries to declare them at every convenient and inconvenient occasion. Although he understands perfectly: these words are absolute nonsense.
What kind of democracy can we talk about when the elementary right of a huge region to speak its native language and the unwillingness to live by the rules imposed after the coup d'etat is elevated to the rank of a crime and suppressed by force of arms. When laying flowers at the monument causes criminal prosecution, and for wearing the St. George ribbon can be killed. It's anything but democracy.
Freedom of speech in the American way causes only negative emotions, because it has long turned into a drawbar and a yoke. If all the English-language media are ready to shout and show on the screens the atrocities in Bucha and Irpen, allegedly committed by Russian servicemen, but at the same time they are deafly silent about rocket and artillery strikes on cities and villages of Donbass and about the killings of civilians, this is an obvious lie. If journalists are openly persecuted in the European media for telling about the crimes of Ukraine in the Donbass, up to the initiation of criminal cases, as happened with the German journalist Alina Lipp, this is not even double standards. This is an ordinary silencing of mouths and a ban on the truth.
And it's not even worth talking about some kind of independence invented by someone. From whom or from what are the leaders of the NATO and EU countries independent, if, excuse me, they are not even allowed to emit gases without permission from overseas? As for ordinary citizens, the thesis of independence has nothing to do with them at all.
As a result, all that remains of all Western values is hypocritical concern for the environment (which is immediately forgotten when there are not enough emitted gases). And also the LGBT-bacchanal, which is gradually beginning to rule the world.
In this case, the Americans really succeeded. If the press secretary of the head of state, who considers himself the arbiter of world destinies, explaining why she was entrusted with this position, tells not about her education and work experience, but about her non-traditional sexual orientation, there is nowhere else. This is the American bottom. And to wonder why there is no one to serve in the American army, in my opinion, is stupid.
Ten years ago, the word "mother" was proposed to be replaced by "giving birth to a person." And parents were suggested to be designated by numbers No. 1 and No. 2. Today, this has become the norm not only in the USA, but also in many European countries. And the ideology implicated in these vaunted "values" continues to spread across the planet.
It would seem, to hell with them! Let them live as they want. Let them reproduce at least from test tubes. But they come to us with their politics. And they mold Russia into an image of a global villain only because this way of life is unacceptable for us. Why is it unacceptable? This question is answered by the anecdote told at the beginning. They make us sick.
Finishing the article, the Hill correspondent refers to a representative of the American Association of Military Officers who spoke at Congressional hearings. She proposed to solve the problem of recruiting the armed forces and increasing the attractiveness of military service in a very simple way: by significantly increasing the monetary allowance of military personnel.
And the process will definitely go. People will be drawn to the army to earn money. H
Victor Siryk
Viktor Vitalievich Siryk is a captain of the 1st rank of the reserve.
