Kevin Ryan, who is a retired Army Brigadier General, had an article a few days ago in the Christian Science Monitor regarding the nearly-broken Army:

While in Moscow as US Defense attaché from 2001 to 2003, I received several calls from Russians with a remarkable and unexpected request. They wanted to join the United States Army.

I often think of those phone calls now as I consider the efforts our nation makes to find and recruit quality men and women into the service. Is there an opportunity out there beyond our borders that we ought to explore while recruiting the best and brightest to our nation's defense?

I would like to make the case that there is, and it could benefit our nation in a number of ways.

As our country debates a multitude of immigration issues, otherwise opposing sides seem to agree on at least one thing: There is value in recruiting immigrants into our military forces.

The president and Congress have been working with the Department of Defense since 2002 to encourage legal immigrants to join the military by promising to speed up the process for citizenship for any member of the service who completes one year of duty. In the four years since the program began, more than 25,000 immigrants in uniform have become American citizens. That's the equivalent of one of the active Army's 10 divisions being manned entirely by immigrants.

OK, here we go again. Let’s get a lot of foreigners in our Army and turn ‘em all loose on the Ayrabs. Make ‘em sweat and kill for US citizenship. We discussed this fantasy five months ago.

Plans like this require a two year lead time at a minimum. You have to establish the recruiting policies and procedures, then set up your recruiting centers. Where do you want to put them? Western Europe? Eastern Europe? South East Asia? Wherever you recruit from, you will face language, cultural and political obstacles. Maybe General Ryan isn’t aware of it, but the US, the Bu$hCo malAdministration, and our illegal war of aggression and occupation aren’t popular in many countries.

I get the feeling that a lot of countries would not want to spend the enormous sums of money that would be needed to protect these US recruiting centers around the world. I haven’t been able to verify this, but I think US Embassies and Consulates would be prohibited by law from housing these centers. Be certain that host countries will not want this done inside their borders.

But let’s make it easy and suppose that we set up these centers in, say, 40 or 50 countries. And we get some volunteers. So we give them some sort of temporary visas, pay their air transportation to the US, put ‘em up in some kind of high security fenced-in compounds while we wait for the host countries to give them a favorable background security clearance. Do you wonder how long that would take? We have to feed them, of course, while we’re waiting for the host country security clearance. Mmmm.. Lots of varied diets to cater to. Would we want to start teaching them English before we get them cleared? Where are we going to get the varied language teachers to teach them English? (Note to Secretary Rumsfeld: let’s make sure there are no sissy-boys among the linguists we recruit, eh? You know how you hate homosexuals.)

Meanwhile, we have to teach combat soldiers to train foreign recruits. Drill Sergeants with little or no experience with foreign personnel will have to learn cultural prohibitions. Simple things like calling out, “Hey, you! Troop! Come here!” with the basic American hand gesture, palm up, fingers wiggling. No… can’t do that. In most Asian countries that’s an insult. No touching them between the crown of the head and the knee either. Many countries have a taboo about placing your hands on another man’s torso. It’s going to get complicated.

It takes almost two years to make a raw recruit into a combat-ready soldier. That’s an immutable fact. In today’s high tech Army it could take longer, especially with people who have poor or non-existent American English.

Now, General Ryan suggests a short-cut:

Why can't we expand our presence overseas to recruit foreign citizens who also possess higher educations and speak English? The idea is not as far-fetched as one might think. …

If the US Army placed one recruiting station in the capital of India, an English-speaking democracy of more than a billion people, we would have available a pool of enlistment-age adults equivalent to the entire population of the United States - more than 300 million men and women. Or, if we don't want to pay for a recruiting station in New Delhi, we could mail recruiting brochures to some of the 1 million foreign students who actually make it to America's colleges and institutes on temporary visas each year. Perhaps they would like to have their school debts paid along with guaranteed work.

It’s not clear to me why English speaking Indians would want to join the US Army in droves when their life goal is providing a better life for themselves and their families. It seems to me that most of those 1 million foreign students can’t wait to get back home with their American diplomas, which are still a money machine in other countries. And I'll bet an Indian Army killing Muslims will be a BIG hit in the Islamic Crescent. Why would they want to risk their lives when all they wanted was the degree? For that matter, there are easily 70,000 college students who belong to the Young Republican groups on American campuses. They already speak the language. Offer them something they want, like a guaranteed spot writing for The Weekly Standard if they survive their eight years.

Readers of this online magazine, as well as others such as Alternate Brain, Pen and Sword,Democratic VeteranThe Moderate Man and One Veteran’s Voice are well aware of how poorly served veterans are by this pack occupying our government. I’d bet a lot of people overseas are, too. I’m not sure they’ll be eager to be vets.

UPDATE: Gilliard is hot on the case:

India has a long and storied military tradition with regiments with 200 years of service. Why the fuck would the Indian government, risking the ire of it's Muslim population, have Indians serve as colonial troopers in Iraq. General, there are two generations of Indian dead in Commonwealth cemetaries in Iraq.

Kut, Basra, these names are taught in Indian military academies and for good reason. Indian soldiers died in Britain's wars there.

I seriously doubt that other countries want their citizens being approached to serve a foreign power engaged in an illegal war.
No, General Ryan, we need better leaders who don't pick wars of choice. Not Indian mercenaries.