The AP reports:
In 2008, as the stock market cratered and the housing market collapsed, more young members of the Army, Air Force and Navy decided to re-up. While several factors might explain the rise in re-enlistments, including a decline in violence in Iraq, Pentagon officials acknowledge that bad news for the economy is usually good news for the military. In fact, the Pentagon just completed its strongest recruiting year in four years. "We do benefit when things look less positive in civil society," said David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. "What difficult economic times give us, I think, is an opening to make our case to people who we might not otherwise have."
Certainly the military becomes a more attractive option in difficult economic times, but couldn't the AP have at least made a nod to the fact that some reenlist out of a sense of patriotic duty, or because they enjoy military life, or because they just like killing terrorists. And while the AP attributes some of the surge in reenlistment to the "decline in violence in Iraq," that decline in violence has a fairly strong correlation with our prospects for victory in that country. A good economy would make recruitment more difficult, but so would losing a war to a bunch of psychopaths in pajamas. Losing teams tend to have trouble holding on to their best players in the off season, but our team is winning while al Qaeda engages in a Nats-like struggle to attract talent to Iraq.