The Army Gets a New Slogan

After 20 years of using the slogan “Be all you can be,” and then a few years with “An army of one,” the U.S. Army has begun using a new slogan in a $200 million advertising campaign launched this month: “Army strong.” 

From The Washington Post:

The campaign’s core message is that the Army builds not only physical but also mental and emotional strength in recruits, bonding them into a powerful, close-knit team. 

“There’s strong, and then there’s Army strong,” a deep male voice intones as martial music rises from a brass band in the background. 

The television ads, launched nationwide for Veterans Day along with Internet placements and other outreach, omit all but the most fleeting images related to the all-volunteer Army’s biggest endeavor ever: the war in Iraq. 

Presumably potential recruits would be well aware of the war in Iraq even absent an obvious mention in the ad. The Post is trying to lend credence to John Kerry’s “botched joke” here. 

Given the makeup of Congress this coming January, and other goings-on in the country, I’d suggest some future slogans for the Army that would make more sense in today’s world: 

–“Sign up before you’re Rangel’d up” 

–“Protecting the freedom of Americans for over 230 years, even the ungrateful jagoffs” 

–“It’s not just a job, it’s Dick Durbin comparing you to a Nazi“ 

–“Patton pending” 

–“Your ticket to a USO show” 

–“We do more before 9 a.m. than Congress does all year” 

–“Sign up today, get a Hummer“ 

–“Join Uncle Sam. Yep, the same Uncle who would buy you beer and tickets to R rated movies when you were under 17″ 

–“An Army of one… gets it’s ass kicked, which is why we need you too!” 

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Here’s an interesting article on the history of selling the military, along with recruitment posters like the following one from the World War I era. Looks to me as if Uncle Sam himself could have been the catalyst for the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law:

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