Posted on 02/08/2012 5:46:40 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
As U.S. forces come home from Iraq after nine years at war, the nation is facing professional troops sufficiently bruised and isolated from American society that some defense experts whisper we may need major changes in military education and even a conscription-based national youth service program to reboot our fighting forces.
Painful reminders are everywhere of an unpopular U.S. military venture that began with grave strategic miscalculations and is ending with violence and political instability in Iraq. In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai is openly contemptuous of his U.S. protectors, while Afghan security forces murder allied officers.
These U.S. military campaigns have cost $1.3 trillion, helped cripple the economy, extinguished 6,400 American lives, more than 150,000 Iraqi and Afghan lives and left disturbing rates of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder among returning U.S. veterans.
The wartime shortcomings of the all-volunteer military are a legacy, in part, of the draft's end 40 years ago. There's been a growing disconnect between the American public and the U.S. armed forces.
Outgoing joint chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen declared last year that "America no longer knows its military, and the U.S. military no longer knows America."
As late as the 1980s, some 40 percent of 18-year-olds had at least one veteran parent. A recent Pew poll confirmed that only 33 percent of Americans between 18 and 25 now have a family connection with the military. Most Americans simply no longer have the same personal stake they once did in the military's actions.
The challenge facing the American military today is as much moral and ethical as budgetary and economic.
The state of constant war has exposed serious limitations in our high-tech, all-volunteer force. This force, the envy of militaries around the world, was created in the wake of Vietnam.
Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize-winning University of Chicago economics professor, saw the military as a labor force that would respond to economic imperatives like any other: the appeal of a job, a steady salary and a secure career. Friedman's economic theory ended the unpopular draft.
Forty years later, the American people's instinctive interest in their troops' welfare has inevitably atrophied.
Tentative questions about the sustainability of the volunteer military, and the growing civilian-military cultural divide, began to surface in earnest last year.
The consensus among enlisted soldiers and officers I've spoken with recently is that the 235,000-member U.S. officer corps, the volunteer forces' engine, is in a state of professional and ethical exhaustion.
Several studies have documented the flight of junior officers from the Army and Marines since Iraq spun out of control in 2005 and 2006. Repeated deployments have left even the best officers stretched thin, overworked and often under-resourced.
Despite their tactical and technological sophistication, mid-level officers are divided over shifting strategic aims and military doctrine, wavering civilian leadership, bureaucratic rigidity and indecisive in-theater operations.
The way forward is a systematic retooling of how our professional military educates and chooses its leaders and recruits its soldiers. Contemporary U.S. officers require technical expertise in the military sciences, the traditional core of a military education. But they need an equally sophisticated grasp of international relations, political history, legal systems, languages and foreign cultures.
The military's emphasis should be on rigorous graduate studies for commissioned officers and ongoing education for noncommissioned officers and senior leaders that meet the standards of the best civilian universities. Officer selection should broadly reflect American society, rather than discourage recruitment from among the nation's economic and social elites.
To reduce the military's isolation from civilian life, the Pentagon should begin by deeply cutting manpower and supporting renewed conscription in the form of a three-year mandatory national service program (including civilian energy, education, infrastructure, environmental and urban service options) for all Americans between 18 and 25, with special benefits for military service.
A well-designed national service program is not a comprehensive prescription for what ails the U.S. military. It is not a return to the draft. But it would restore a needed sense of civic responsibility among young Americans. It would supply manpower demands during wartime and replace most private contractors with responsible enlisted troops.
Most important, it would reconnect our standing military forces with the restraining influence and support of the American people.
Well, I can tell you I didn’t see much warrior spirit in the uniformed unwed mothers that filled Little Creek Amphib Base, Fort Eustis, Fort Story, Fort Devens, Fort Bragg, etc. It would be good to get a few Romney and Sununu boys in uniform.
If I were a HighSchool Grad today The Military would be the last career option on my mind.
Why would I go and Place my life on the line for a country thats self destructing and the rewards are less for our service Personell then they are for the Criminal aliens that are here sucking the life out of our safetynet.
I have the ultimate respect for any draftee that served in a combat role. Many that I knew went regular after their two year committment was up. For them, the spirit to continue to serve was awakened via the draft.
You mean the navy of unwed mothers, reduced standards and sodomite submariners is better than the navy of Admiral Halsey?
The problem is not a lack of willing volunteers. The problem was beginning under Poppy at the end of Gulf War One and continuing even today the maximum number of allowed active duty has been reduced and the obligation is for eight years. Congress determines the number of allowed active duty. Less allowed service members means less persons are allowed too serve. The less allowed to serve means persons know fewer Vets or active duty. It's basic Math.
The Volunteer Military worked great under Reagan. He used the 1982 recession to fill the ranks that were shorted during Carter's term. The huge disconnect with the military is in the Oval Office and congress and has been such since 1989. The help never came because it was never allowed too happen. We don't need a return too the draft we need a return too common sense.
I served during Viet Nam and I know the difference. Are these editors trying to go back to that time?
I think so. But it ain't gonna happen. I agree these guys are clueless.
If we ever fight a war like Korea again, we’ll move back to conscription rapidly. There is nothing ‘professional’ about sex and racial preferences in promotions, lowered standards for females, low density MOS’s decimated by pregnant nondeployable females, etc. Jim Webb has regularly made the point that the best military he served in was the military of the mid-sixties. I agree with him. Keep the standards high and draft from the entire able bodied MALE population. As the force is now, if we ever had to fight a Pusan type action with our CS and CSS forces in the trenches we’d be screwed.
I say it’s a load of crap. I’ve been on active duty going on 23 years. I see new Soldiers come in who join to get out of situations at home and they excel. I also see some who join because to them it is a “social program” to get benefits. A volunteer army is the only way to go. I’ve had Soldiers complain about a lot of different things and the best response is, “you volunteered” and they usually agree. I’ve considered getting out a few times (during Clinton’s regime) and once obama was immaculated. Now I plan to stay only two more. It is changing so much that I don’t recognize it for what it was when I joined. The political correctness is rampant and too many Soldiers are overly sensitive about every little thing. If the newer ones are a reflection of American society I am afraid of what is in store for us.
Sergeant York didn’t want to be there...
[These U.S. military campaigns have cost $1.3 trillion. . .]
That’s roughly what the “Stimulus” cost with interest. Comparing the “Stimulus” and the two wars, which expenditure produced the most jobs?
I agree with you regarding the citizenship component of the draft. Frankly, I believe there is something to be said for every family participating in the national defense. The idea that the McCains and Hunters are showing up for every war while the Romney and Sununu boys sit back and watch. This shouldn’t happen.
And then Roman turned to professionals and paid bribes to other countries, called foreign aid, and then what happened.
Only sociopaths truly relish the thought of being in combat.
My point is we simply cannot afford to hand over national security to malingers, malcontents, and those with their heads firmly static in rectal defilade.
What the US was not prepared for was the tribal conflicts in the regions we are engaged in have been going on for thousands of years. It is generational combat and we are simply not ready or willing to engage in that protracted level of combat.
These people believe in constant jihad. Me against my brother, my brother and I against our father, my family against the tribe, the tribe against the world.
That this is supposedly "unpopular" is neither here nor there. The military goes where it is ordered to go. The commanders tend to be optimistic in public, and avoid contradicting their civilian leadership (and those who aren't and don't get fired) but that is normal.
Strategic miscalculations? The military defeated the Iraqi Army in days, then proceeded to engage and defeat a nation-wide insurgency. So, which miscalculation?
Karzai is contemptous of Washington politicians who keep threatening to cut and run and leave him high and dry.
Afghans are powerfully attracted to the Talib mentality which means Talib infiltration of the Afghan military is always going to be a problem.
Adm. Mike Mullen declared last year that "America no longer knows its military, and the U.S. military no longer knows America."
I doubt that. The American Left doesn't know its military, they don't send their kids. But average Americans do know their military, and the military is quintescentially American.
The consensus among enlisted soldiers and officers I've spoken with recently is that the 235,000-member U.S. officer corps, the volunteer forces' engine, is in a state of professional and ethical exhaustion.
Probably. They are stretched pretty thin, required to deploy into combat again and again. Politicians like the notion of a "lean" military but on the ground that means guys get to do combat tours again and again and again. Thats the consequence of not having enough depth and redundancy.
This is a regional brush war, and we can't wage it without sending the same guys back in over and over.
To reduce the military's isolation from civilian life, the Pentagon should begin by deeply cutting manpower and supporting renewed conscription in the form of a three-year mandatory national service program (including civilian energy, education, infrastructure, environmental and urban service options) for all Americans between 18 and 25, with special benefits for military service.
Conscription for a civilian corps? How does that reduce the exhaustion of an overtaxed military? How does that decrease the supposed alienation between the military and the civilian Left?
A well-designed national service program... It is not a return to the draft.
But he just called for conscription in the previous paragraph.
it would reconnect our standing military forces with the restraining influence and support of the American people.
Restraining influence? Are they on a rampage I hadn't noticed? This is drivel. And they have never lost the support of the American people, on the contrary, support for the military has never been higher everywhere except the American Left. Granted, the Left has a problem with them, but the Left is the problem, and not the military.
http://cog-ff.com/booklets/Booklets/Modern%20Romans.pdf
Here is a link to an interesting booklet comparing the US to Rome. Sadly, there are quite a few paralells.
Afirmative action - draft gays
I can see a time in the not to distant future, after the idiots of both parties have finished gutting our fighting force when a draft becomes a necessity for national survival.
We are under attack by a relentless enemy who will exploit every weakness and will not stop fighting until the USA and western civilization is destroyed or they are unconditionally defeated.
That doesn't describe any Navy - it's capitalized - that I ever served in or know at the present time. May I ask you what information you have that would lead you to characterize the men and women who are serving on your behalf in those terms? Stuff you've read in the media? Who love the military and want to present them in a positive light?
I'm trying to be polite here. That kind of crap was great for the cool kids to spout after Vietnam. I don't have a lot of patience for it, then or now.
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