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To: Joe S Pack who wrote (31046)	4/8/2003 5:40:57 PM
From: Joe S Pack	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

You don't have to be US citizen to be all you can be. There are 40000+ Green carders are in US Military as per this report. Yeap, military is getting outsourced. I hope next war should allow anybody in the world who is willing to serve the US army (at J6P's tax expense) find a place. asia.reuters.com << Today's U.S. Military: Blue Collar, Working Class Tue April 8, 2003 04:31 PM ET By Michael Conlon CHICAGO (Reuters) - When the United States was locked in civil war 140 years ago, the rich hired the poor to fight for them, and many who died in a conflict that took more U.S. lives than all wars since were indigent and foreign born. While no one buys their way out of serving today, questions remain about what segments of society shoulder the burden of uniform and duty. "It is a blue-collar, working-class military," says Charles Moskos, a sociology professor at Northwestern University. "The elite certainly don't serve" in comparison to their numbers, he adds. A 1999 Pentagon report concluded that in terms of socioeconomics the enlisted ranks were "similar to the population as a whole, but with the top quartile of the population underrepresented." Today's all-volunteer military often draws those seeking money for an education, like 19-year-old Jessica Lynch, the West Virginia Army private and aspiring teacher whose rescue made front page news, and Joseph Maglione, a 22-year-old lance corporal from Pennsylvania called up from the Marine reserves during his senior year in college to duty and death in Iraq. "I joined for the educational opportunities and because I was always interested in the military," said Jamie Jarrett, a Tennessee state highway patrolman from the town of Henning who signed up with the National Guard in 1991 during his junior year in high school. OPPORTUNITY FOR EDUCATION "The military offers a lot of opportunities for education and advancement. It really broadens horizons," he told Reuters from Kentucky's Fort Campbell where his transportation unit was activated in February. Phillip Morris is a juvenile court officer in western Tennessee and a member of that state's Army National Guard 268th Military Police Company. He told Reuters he joined the National Guard because his grandfather was in the Navy and he "liked hearing him talk about his experiences." He plans to stay in for 20 years to get retirement benefits but for the moment he's on active duty at Ft. Campbell standing by for orders. As always the military is a portal for immigrants. By one estimate about 40,000 men and women now in the uniform carry green cards -- legal resident aliens. The number of foreign born in the service is believed to be much much higher, Moskos said, though firm figures are hard to find. At one point early in the war one in four of those killed or missing on the U.S. side was foreign born, Moskos said, adding that in the United States unlike some countries military service has not become an expected patrician duty. The Iraq war has not produced anyone of the stature of a Prince Andrew on duty during the Falklands War, he said, adding that "more British nobility died, proportionately, during the two world wars than commoners." In the U.S. Civil War on the Union side those who paid $300 and found a substitute could avoid being drafted; on the Confederate side those owning 20 or more slaves could have themselves or one of their sons exempted. Most southern whites did not own slaves, leading to the popular phrase "rich man's war, poor man's fight." Various versions of war by proxy are scattered across the history of warfare. One U.S. Department of Defense study said questions had been raised on whether an all-volunteer force were would lead to "recruiting primarily from an underclass (that) would create a serious cleavage between the military and the rest of society." SOME DIVERSITY But a Pentagon analysis covering the 2000 fiscal year concluded: "Although the force is diverse, it is not an exact replica of society as a whole. The military way of life is more attractive to some members of society than to others. "Among the enlisted ranks, the proportion of African Americans continues to exceed comparably aged population counts. Hispanics are underrepresented in the military, but their percentages have risen over the years." The Pentagon however does not release economic statistics, such as annual income of the families from whom recruits come, that would provide clues to their background, according to the Center for Defense Information. Even the fact that two-fifths of recruits now come from the South does not necessarily shed light on their background since that part of the country while beset with endemic pockets of poverty also has a long tradition of military service and military academies, an analyst with the center said. John Eighmey, a professor of journalism and mass communication at Iowa State University said the National Research Council panel on military recruitment on which he served urged the Pentagon to expand the ways for people to serve in the military while working toward a college degree. A spokeswoman for New York Republican Rep. John McHugh, chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee handling defense personnel matters, say efforts are already under way to attract more college students to make the military look somewhat more like America.