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.
I would prefer the return of the draft, for four reasons: 1) it gives the military a good “slice” of the American population (including many in the universities who would not otherwise serve), 2) there is no reason for anyone of sound body and mind to serve their country in the most basic function, e.g. its military protection, 3) as pointed out in the editorial, it brings the American population as a whole in emotional contact with its military, and 4) I think that from the viewpoint of us supporters of the Second Amendment, it helps us since people in the military are not squeamish about firearms and thereby provides a populace sympathetic for our cause.
Amplifying upon reason #2, I think that all young people should serve their country for at least a couple years and I think that there is no reason why young women should be exempted.
Oops, there should be a “not” after “mind to” in reason #2.
The military, in obedience to the elitists, have had to go globalist, pervert and aggressively anti-Christian-American.
I don’t think this is going to work out well for the volunteer military in the long run. The military will lose it’s reputation as defenders of American freedom and Western character and then that is that concerning the pool of patriotic citizens they used to draw upon for volunteers.
The elitists all know it and want to force military service on America. They need a big globalist military to boss around Americans and the world. But it won’t be the same quality and heart they used to have if the elite keep on the current path of amoral humanism and political correctness.
So does involuntary servitude.
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It’s politically untenable, which is why President Nixon 86’ed it. Mr. Obama wouldn’t have the stones to bring it back.”
Oh, I know that. I was just giving my reasons for the desirability of the draft. Having served when the draft was in effect and working with Harvard and Princeton graduates I know that a lot of good men are no longer a part of the military, which is a shame.
Problem with your scenerio is we will never get a purely military draft. It will be a “National Service” obligation with the option to join the miltary or to “give back” by serving the poor and underprivelaged in inner city make work scams.
I went delayed entry as a junior in high school and then shipped out for basic combat training after graduating. That was 1978. Stayed in until 1983. I knew several people who were upper middle class or wealthy, but I assume those kind don’t join anymore. One was the scion of an uber-rich oil family.
>> The challenge facing the American military today is...
The Left.
The way things are going with all of the cutbacks, I don’t think it will be very long before Americans will not be allowed to serve in the military. All the slots will be filled with homosexuals, warlock and witch wannabes and illegal aliens trying to get on the fast track to amnesty in order to receive a “U.S. citizen” diploma.
Yeah, Zer0 plays b-ball with a couple of them, but deep down inside they know that they're just pawns, getting shot up on a mined chess field full of politicians, that don't really give a sh!t.
Respect and pride in your accomplishments begins at the top, and unless your CiC covers your six, all in our military forces become downgraded and disalusioned.
Bib BS. The main problem with our military is the Usurper in Chief, and politicalization of the war. The last thing we need is a draft.
The elites (especially leftist) would find a way out, and they are the one’s who treat our boys like crap. I’d like to send them all to a work camp in Antartica.
The USA would be better off. They can keep their freakin hands off our wonderful soldiers, and shut their stupid mouth.
I agree. And if there are parades for returning Iraq/Afghanistan vets (and I have not been aware of any), to honor their service and sacrifice, not nebulous victories, there will be an outpouring of affection and appreciation from fellow Americans, not a disconnect.
There was a pretty big one a few weeks back in St. Louis. Drew more then 100,000 people. I think a few other places also have them in the works.
40 years ago, I’m sure the returning Vietnam soldiers who got spit on appreciated the interest in their welfare.
Nothing much changed under Bush as far as repairing damage done in the Clinton years went. Yes it was good to visit injured troops. But the actual monetary and much needed substantial increases in End Troop Strengths were never asked for. IOW a few were ran ragged in over deployment and over extensions. Bush years were ran on Clinton administration End Troop Strength numbers set in 1996 and never increases beyond a low few thousand. When Rummy then Gates was chosen as Sec of Def no change was going too happen. Rummy was a Ford Republican who's tenure in same job under Ford left a lot too be desired.
When not at formally declared war, conscription is not duty, it is socialist slavery, pure and simple.
The REAL liberal complaint against the volunteer military is that they can no longer muster the kind of public outrage against the military that they could when a draft existed.
All attempts to bring back the draft have been started by liberals, and that is their ultimate goal. They want the Jane Fonda/John Kerry sit ins, just like the "good old days".
Regarding your post 48, you can be assured that the upper class and wealthy, and, I might add, the educated, do not join anymore and the military services are poorer for it.
From what I can tell, the military services are chuck full of high school graduates and the very young (18-20 or so), and the very few college graduates in the officer corps.
Not a very good sample of the American public, is it? And that is exactly my point.
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