I think there are three variables at play here.
1) Marketing and recruiting. The Army sucks at the former, so the latter is suffering from low quality. As a result, we are attracting more of the wrong people. More of the wrong people = more AWOLs and desertions.
2) Attitudes toward service. Our culture gets more narcissistic by the day. Serve others? Forego riches and power in law, politics, medicine, business, or elsewhere? These concepts are making less and less sense to more and more high school and college graduates.
3) Incentivizing irresponsibility. Personal responsibility is almost extinct in this country because we create incentives for people to abandon it. Don't want to fulfill an obligation that you've incurred? No problem. Just abandon that obligation and we'll put you on a pedestal as a crusader, speaking truth to power, rather than regarding you as an overgrown child whose word means nothing. When you encourage a certain attitude or behavior, you tend to get more of it.
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