By Bill Derby
One of my readers sent this idea in to me and at first glance doesn’t sound so bad. Believe me, as a fellow veteran, I respect our men in uniform today and what they are charged with doing in the current military. But, you have to admit, our leaders have lost direction and strategy for what’s going on in our world and have put our military in harm’s way.
Drafting new old recruits or re-drafting old veterans over 60-years-old just might help eliminate some of our enemies in the world and protect our younger generation.
Here is the basic idea sent in from an old veteran:
I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I’m too old to track down terrorists. In today’s military thinking, you can’t be older than 42 to join the military. They’ve got the whole thing backwards.
Instead of sending 18-year olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn’t be able to join a military unit until you’re at least 35.
For starters, researchers say 18-year-olds think about the opposite sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about women a couple of times a month, leaving us more than 280,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.
Young guys haven’t lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. ‘My back hurts! I can’t sleep, I’m tired and hungry.’ We are bad-tempered and impatient, and maybe letting us hunt down some terrorists that desperately deserve it will make us feel better and shut us up for a while.
An 18-year-old doesn’t even like to get up before 10 a.m. Old guys always get up early to head to the john, so what the heck. Besides, like I said, I’m tired and can’t sleep and since I’m already up, I may as well be up looking for some fanatical so-and-so.
If captured we couldn’t spill the beans because we’d forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.
Boot camp would be easier for old guys too. We’re used to getting screamed and yelled at and we’re used to soft food. We’ve also developed an appreciation for guns. We’ve been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling.
They could lighten up on the obstacle course however… I’ve been in combat and never saw a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training.
Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too… I’ve never seen anyone outrun a bullet.
An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He’s still learning to shave, to start a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn’t figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head.
These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm’s way.
Let us old guys track down those terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple million angry old guys with bad attitudes and automatic weapons, who know that their best years are already behind them.
Another thought, women over 50 who have enjoyed spending their earlier years with their man could also be considered for the draft. They would make great drill sergeants or generals. They have developed tactics on how to make men over 60 do anything they ask, a winning combination.
