Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer told Newsmax that recruiting efforts for the U.S. armed services are hampered by a lack of choices. 

“Well, you don’t have a good crop of young kids to pick from. There’s two things that have impacted this. Obviously, the lowering of standards to the point of where you show up, you get a trophy. That’s not good,” Shaffer told The Chris Salcedo Show.

Shaffer also blamed inadequate instruction in America’s K-12 public schools. “What they teach, reading, writing, arithmetic, the three R’s, would be a good place to start. Again, the standards there, Chris, are not adequate for the purposes of having kids come into a high-tech military,” he said.

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