Pentagon and military leaders are considering a recruiting campaign centered around Charlie Kirk. The idea would be to frame the recruiting campaign as a national call to service, an official said. Possible slogans that leaders have discussed include “Charlie was awakened” and “a generation of warriors.” Anthony Tada [???], who serves as Undersecretary of Defense and Personal Unreadiness [???], is leading the effort, the official said. Leaders are considering using chapters of Kirk’s political organization, Turning Point USA, at schools across the United States as military recruitment centers. The officials did not know what the timing would be or the rolling out of the possible new recruiting campaign. Trump officials have sought to pay public homage to Kirk the day after the assassination. J D Vance helped carry the casket. These efforts also extend to the attempt to punish those who speak ill of Kirk after his assassination, as NBC has also reported. Hexeth [???] last week told staff to actively search for any members of the military who had worked with the Department of Defense who mocked or condoned Kirk’s death and said they could be punished. He called on members of the public to report. The recruiting worries have been there. Trump and Hexeth have touted an uptick in recruiting since Trump’s inauguration. Those actually began under President Joe Biden after two years of shortfall in 2022 to 2023. In June, the Pentagon established a recruiting task force to address military recruiting challenges, develop a forward looking recruiting strategy, and find ways to maintain momentum on recent recruiting increases. In a July press briefing, Parnell addressed that task force and said the Pentagon believes seven to eleven percent of Americans see military service as a viable path forward, down from twenty seven percent after 9 11. He praised recent recruiting wins but added that great numbers might not always be the case. The United States saw a soft drop in births after the economic downturn of 2007, eighteen years ago, shrinking today’s pool of potential recruits. There are also fewer parents who have served in the military than previous generations. Those trends combined with challenges from the COVID pandemic and the shortfalls of 2022 and 2023 align with that. The Army introduced a Future Soldier Preparatory Course in 2022, a program that helps young people prepare for physical fitness and scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. According to the Army, almost fifty thousand men and women have completed this course, which helped boost recruiting numbers. Part of the recruitment rebound has been due to the military dedicating billions of dollars to recruiting and retention bonuses. That money is what helped drive the rebound, said two Department of Defense officials. My personal view. To immediately start a campaign rallying military recruitment after basically this generation’s Martin Luther King died is wrong. You can compare him to a lot of things, but as a citizen his assassination is the most highly triggering assassination in modern times. To immediately want to signal the shift to war reminds me of 9 11. I remember being a teenager and hearing that delusional patriotism to go to Iraq. Iraq was pointless. Afghanistan was absolutely pointless. There was zero excuse to do either of those things and we were walked down that road as a country. If we take this on surface level and combine it with censorship and the other geopolitical things going on and then look at the last six to nine months, it feels like preparing the American public for a future war. It does not align with the whole technological defense talk and the Golden Dome and a super highly intelligent robot AI military at the same time. From a general citizen point of view this reads like a blitz to change normal society in America. You are trying to rally a country for military purposes when that man who died was completely against war in all aspects. He would be ashamed that the country would try to recruit military off of his death. That is my opinion.