Many U.S. blacks have rejected joining the American military largely because of the Iraq war, resulting in a sharp drop in black recruitment figures since the conflict began in March 2003, a news report said Wednesday.
The share of blacks among active-duty recruits declined to 13 percent in 2006 from 20 percent in 2001, the last year before the invasion of Iraq began to seem inevitable, a report published by The New York Times said, citing Defense Department statistics.
While blacks continue to account for a larger share of the existing troop level than their share of the general population, as has been the case throughout the 34 years of the all-volunteer force, that margin is shrinking, the report said.
The sharpest decline in black recruitment has been experienced by the Army, which has the most troops deployed in Iraq; black recruits dropped to 13 percent of the Army's total in 2006 from 23 percent in 2001. In the Marines, with the second-largest force in Iraq, the share of black recruits decreased to 8 percent from 12 percent in the same period.
There were also declines in the Navy and the Air Force, though not as great as those in the two other services, the report added.
The commander of the Army's recruitment efforts, Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, himself a black graduate of West Point, said there were several reasons for the change, including a healthy job market competing for youths but also African-Americans' disapproval of the war.
He said parents and educators who had recommended the military in the past might be less inclined to do so today.
In a recent CBS News poll, 83 percent of blacks surveyed said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq; only 14 percent said it had done the right thing in taking military action. Whites, by contrast, were closely divided: 48 percent said military action had been right, and 46 percent said the United States should have stayed out.
The poll was conducted Aug. 8-12 with 1,214 adults nationwide and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Source: Xinhua
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