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The following is the text from my letter to the Lake City, FL, newspaper editor June 27, 2023:

Reference, June 24, 2023, edition opinion page article, “Military Recruiting Crisis Getting Worse”, by US Army retired Lieutenant general, Thomas W. Spoehr, Director, The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense:  A dire crisis indeed it is. Because notwithstanding other ultra-serious problems threatening this nation’s dominant superpower status and its ability to defend against foreign threats to our sovereignty, security, safety, and freedoms, this one requires warp speed resolution. General Spoehr’s comment, i.e., “a call to action is needed to increase public awareness concerning the severity of this situation”, may be an understatement. His key reason given for this crisis is the lack of patriotism. That’s true, because our all-volunteer military force is predicated primarily on citizens possessing high degrees of patriotism and courage to join despite awareness of dire dangers involved and unmatched sacrifices required. It is critically urgent for this nation to have a fully staffed, and best led, best trained, and best equipped military force on this planet. To expedite resolving this recruiting crisis and prevent a future occurrence, it is critically incumbent upon Commander in Chief Joe Biden to expeditiously address it to the nation via prime-time television and radio broadcast, explain the danger and potential consequences if it is not resolved, and things that can and must be done to resolve it. All candidates running for office in the 2024 election should also discuss this crisis during media interviews and political debates. The bottom line is that all citizens should be informed about this crisis and its present danger to this nation. A big difference-making thing that can and should be done that would propel recruiting to an overall optimum and sustaining level would be to make all volunteer military pay, including retirement pay tax-free as an addition to existing bonuses and benefits. They deserve it because our sovereignty, security, safety, freedoms, and quality of life are dependent upon the armed forces’ strength and ability to provide sustained optimum defense against threats to those national attributes. Therefore, more than anything else, they deserve priority concern, support, and funding; because if they become uncappable of doing that, no other issues dominating the news, e.g., abortion, immigration, green energy, transgender rights, etc., will not matter, because we would be scrambling to survive as a nation. According to the well-known adage, “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. Using that analogy, the weakest link in this nation’s military strength is patriotism, because it is lacking sufficient numbers of patriots who are willing to serve. If this recruiting crisis is not optimally resolved soon, the draft will most certainly have to be reactivated to negate recruiting shortfalls. In the meantime, promoting patriotism should be aggressively pursued to convince this nation’s youths and young adults that this nation continues to be the greatest that has ever been, but keeping that status is in dire jeopardy due to a severe lack of patriotism.