Also, they specifically learned during Iraq 2 to target poor kids. Turns out it’s easy to get them to sign on if you tell them “hey, you don’t need to have finished HS, and when you get out, you’ll have your college paid for and job prospects lining up for you if you don’t wanna do college” - something a lot of these kids wouldn’t have otherwise.

While I don’t fully disagree, dishonorable discharge is already effectively a sentence to starve to death on the streets. It makes it incredibly tough to get a job in the States, if not impossible in a lot of places. With the death of a thousand cuts to the welfare system and the fact that minorities and poor whites are overwhelmingly represented in the military, your choice narrows down to “either deploy or get beaten to death by cops in 5 years.”