Want a dictatorship

They were more loyal to the Legion
than France

Enhance force levels? Look to immigrants.

The US should grant preference for visas to those willing to serve in the military.
By Kevin Ryan

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. – While in Moscow as US Defense attaché from 2001 to 2003, I received several calls from Russians with a remarkable and unexpected request. They wanted to join the United States Army.
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The president and Congress have been working with the Department of Defense since 2002 to encourage legal immigrants to join the military by promising to speed up the process for citizenship for any member of the service who completes one year of duty. In the four years since the program began, more than 25,000 immigrants in uniform have become American citizens. That's the equivalent of one of the active Army's 10 divisions being manned entirely by immigrants.

The average American may not know it, but non-US citizens have for years been accepted into our military as volunteers. The only prerequisite has been a green card demonstrating permission to reside in the US. Most of these immigrants became American citizens, having served in our nation's defense even before they received all of its benefits and rights. Instead of thinking outside the box when recruiting, let's make the box bigger and seek out these great soldiers in the numbers we need.

The US Army, which in 2005 fell 7,000 soldiers short of its recruiting goal, already has recruiters in American territories such as Guam and Puerto Rico. Why can't we expand our presence overseas to recruit foreign citizens who also possess higher educations and speak English? The idea is not as far-fetched as one might think. In an analogous effort, the Army Materiel Command stations teams around the globe to obtain new technologies to fulfill our materiel needs. The same principle can apply to satisfying our personnel requirements. We only accept the highest-grade technologies, and we would only recruit the highest-caliber people.
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If the US Army placed one recruiting station in the capital of India, an English-speaking democracy of more than a billion people, we would have available a pool of enlistment-age adults equivalent to the entire population of the United States - more than 300 million men and women. Or, if we don't want to pay for a recruiting station in New Delhi, we could mail recruiting brochures to some of the 1 million foreign students who actually make it to America's colleges and institutes on temporary visas each year. Perhaps they would like to have their school debts paid along with guaranteed work.

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The Army could seek out soldiers with valuable cultural and language capabilities. America could put recruiting shortages in its past, and the country would gain educated, legal, patriotic, new immigrants who, like immigrants before them, would do the work that many Americans won't - serve their country in its defense.

No, Gen. Ryan, they refuse to die in Bush's colonial war in Iraq.

For an educated man, he seems militantly ignorant.

India has a long and storied military tradition with regiments with 200 years of service. Why the fuck would the Indian government, risking the ire of it's Muslim population, have Indians serve as colonial troopers in Iraq. General, there are two generations of Indian dead in Commonwealth cemetaries in Iraq.

Kut, Basra, these names are taught in Indian military academies and for good reason. Indian soldiers died in Britain's wars there.

I seriously doubt that other countries want their citizens being approached to serve a foreign power engaged in an illegal war.

Then the problem of loyalty is another issue. Foreign soldiers are loyal to the unit, not the country. Which is what happened to France in 1960. The Legion wanted to stage a coup so they could stay in Algeria. Which is why you don't want an army of foriegners defending you.

No, General Ryan, we need better leaders who don't pick wars of choice. Not Indian mercenaries.