The result: US ground forces are increasingly made up of a motley mix of under-age teens, old-timers, foreign fighters, gang-bangers, neo-Nazis, ex-cons, inferior officers and a host of near-mercenary troops, lured in or kept in uniform through big payouts and promises.
In the latter half of the Vietnam War, as the breakdown was occurring, US troops began to scrawl "UUUU" on their helmet liners - an abbreviation that stood for "the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful".
The US ground forces of 2007 and beyond, fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan or any other war, may increasingly resemble the collapsing military of the Vietnam War, the band of criminal misfits sent behind enemy lines during World War II in the classic Vietnam-era film The Dirty Dozen, or the janissaries of the old Ottoman Empire.
With a growing majority of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq, even ardent hawks refusing in droves to enlist, and the Pentagon pulling out ever more stops and sinking to new lows in recruitment and retention, a new all-volunteer generation of UUUUs may emerge - the underachieving, unable, unexceptional, unintelligent, unsound, unhinged, unacceptable, unhealthy, undesirable, unloved, uncivil, and even un-American, all led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HI16Aa03.htmlread the whole article, it motivates the statements above....
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