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Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Defenders of the West

A number of countries recruit foreigners for their militaries--including America:

The most successful recruiter of foreigners have been the United States, which currently has about 50,000 non-citizens in service (out of some 2.2 million active duty and reserve troops, about 2.2 percent of all troops). ...

In the last decade, some senior American officers suggested recruiting more foreigners. Not just non-citizens with green cards but foreigners who are not residents of the United States. This brought forth protests from those opposed to, well, whatever. Historically, the American military has usually had more foreigners in the ranks than it does now. During the American Civil War about twenty percent of the Union Army was foreign born troops. There were entire divisions of Irish, Germans, or Scandinavians. For the rest of the 20th century, the all-volunteer military continued to have a higher (than today) percentage of foreigners.

I'd be fine recruiting foreigners from abroad and putting them on a citizen fast track.

Why let those who would fight to defend the West languish in Western militaries that will never fight a foreign enemy of the West? Why let Westerners-at-heart languish in non-Western countries where they will never be able to defend our common outlook?