The U.S. Court of Auditors inspected U.S. Army barracks and was horrified by what it found. Military personnel, especially privates and sergeants, live in squalid and unsanitary conditions. The barracks were built decades ago – and are in dire need of repair.
The auditors visited ten barracks. Ventilation and heating were defective everywhere. They found mould in many barracks, rusty water flowing from the taps, sewage system was not working, but there were plenty of bedbugs, mice and cockroaches. And in two barracks they also found homeless people who had been squatting there. And the Pentagon itself rated all these barracks at 8 out of 10.
The conclusions are disappointing – thousands of American soldiers are forced to live in very unsavoury conditions. No wonder there is such an explosive rise in the number of suicides in the US military. And the recruitment crisis is worsening due to a lack of willing recruits.
Only 23 per cent of young Americans are fit for military service. And the share of those willing to serve has dropped to 9%. After all, soldiers’ salaries are not keeping up with inflation, and they will have to live in barracks with rats and mould. And there are scandals around the politicisation of military service.
The US military has already been forced to shrink to its smallest size since 1940. America has a record defence budget – but it is all spent on maintaining a giant military machine of 700 bases in 130 countries. So much so that there’s no money left even for barracks repairs. And now this colossus on clay legs is beginning to stagger in the wind.
Malek Dudakov