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.
Ah, sorry, one more thing, because I missed that. Yes, I have, during Vietnam. We used to call them sh*tbirds. I really don't care what James Webb told you about it because I know firsthand, and I really, really don't care about your boyfriend Danzig.
No...you haven’t seen squat Bill. You may have hung around a hazardous fire zone but that’s about it. Oh, and if you were in the Navy of course, you saw no conscripts because nobody was drafted in the Navy. At least get your lies right.
You aren’t even worth the time. Look up Cat4 and get back to me.
Look up “Little Mikey Boorda” and get back to me. No doubt your combat experience and any decorations were awarded for the same combat actions his were. What’s your next assignment for the fleet, arranging Gay Pride Day for the local Naval Reserve Center?
Let's see, what do you know about the Navy? I know, let's quote you:
the navy of unwed mothers, reduced standards and sodomite submariners...
Yeah, you're an "expert" all right. That's how you choose to characterize the men and women who are serving. I think I'll let that speak for itself. There's your credibility, right there. Wear it well.
http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/2182.html
Webb writes with credibility, unlike say John Dalton, Mike Mullin, Mikey Boorda or Dick Danzig, and his message is out of tune with those that view an effeminate military favorably.
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.
There is, however, real statistical data that refutes "what you can tell".
The demographics of the Army closely parallel the demographics of the country at large -- by race, education, income level, etc.
People like Cong. Charles Rangel -- who's been pushing for a draft -- are responsible for the notion that the demographics of the armed services are skewed toward the poor and uneducated. But...it's...just...not...true.
OK, I’m willing to be educated. Show me that statistical data that refuses what I noted.
The study was posted on FR a couple of years ago.
I didn't keep a link to it. But if you're interested enough, you could probably Google something up. Suggest "military (or Army) demographics".
Well, I must say, I am disappointed in you. You tell me that I’m dead wrong and yet you don’t bring in the evidence.
So, I guess I’ll stick with what I thought in the first place. Intuitively, it seems perfectly reasonable.
Except it's not true.
And I wasn't telling you that you were "dead wrong". Only sharing information that your impression was mistaken -- based on data that had been published. I thought maybe you'd appreciate the information.
You don't have to take my word for it, though.
However, I'm not your librarian. If you have an interest in the data, you can find it for yourself. Or you can remain misinformed. That's your decision.
Incidentally, there was one skew in the data, as I now recall. Geographically, the South and West were relatively over-represented, the North and East were relatively under-represented.
And, as I recollect, Rumsfeld was still the Sec Def when the study was published. That gives you a time frame.
I apologize for the heat, my FRiend. You have FReepmail.
The draft military did great in Vietnam, but eventually the years of massive combat without purpose, led to a disgruntled military.
The Vietnam war was really about a 75% volunteer military anyway, it was WWII that was the draftee war.
The Navy didn’t draft during the Vietnam war as they had in large numbers during WWII, only the Marines and Army did.
Popularity for the Vietnam war, was highest among the under 30s, who also voted for Nixon by 52% in the 1972 election, by the way.
I lost a hard drive recently or I would have a lot of sources for you, but this Heritage report for example, gives you an idea that our military is a sort of elite compared to the general population, only about 13 to 20% of the age group are even qualified for military service.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/08/who-serves-in-the-us-military-the-demographics-of-enlisted-troops-and-officers
“Based on an understanding of the limitations of any objective definition of quality, this report compares military volunteers to the civilian population on four demographic characteristics: household income, education level, racial and ethnic background, and regional origin. This report finds that:
U.S. military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officerswho do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Previous Heritage Foundation research demonstrated that the quality of enlisted troops has increased since the start of the Iraq war. This report demonstrates that the same is true of the officer corps.
Members of the all-volunteer military are significantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 percent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods-a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.
American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted personnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18-24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor’s degree.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service. Enlisted troops are somewhat more likely to be white or black than their non-military peers. Whites are proportionately represented in the officer corps, and blacks are overrepresented, but their rate of overrepresentation has declined each year from 2004 to 2007. New recruits are also disproportionately likely to come from the South, which is in line with the history of Southern military tradition.
The facts do not support the belief that many American soldiers volunteer because society offers them few other opportunities. The average enlisted person or officer could have had lucrative career opportunities in the private sector. Those who argue that American soldiers risk their lives because they have no other opportunities belittle the personal sacrifices of those who serve out of love for their country.”
The Cindy Sheehans, Michael Moores, Ted Ralls, `Alan Colmes’ and Bill Mahers of this world have no idea what it takes just to get into the “easiest” MOS/AFSC/ratings, much less Special Forces, military intelligence, nuclear power, aviation, etc. Anytime a presstitute or blogger tries to take on the subject of the military, foreign policy or intelligence, they usually spin-off into fantasyland within a paragraph or two.
Thanks for posting the study. It’s not the same one I was referring to — because it was pre-2008. But it reinforces the same message.
Very interesting, but what about my concern that the U.S. military seems to be composed of very young soldiers (almost all of them high school graduates, to be sure) and not augmented by the presence of men of an older age who hold bachelor and advanced degrees, such as the ones that I encountered during the early 60s?
My question may have its answer in this excerpt from your post: “Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 percent came from the wealthiest quintile.” The wealthiest quintile would suggest—but that’s all it does, i.e., suggest—that college educated men and women are found in significant numbers in the enlisted ranks, but there’s no data showing the various age groups in the military in your post. That’s what I wanted to see.
It seems to me that it’s that component of the current U.S. military that one lacks once draftees have been done away with. The draft sweeps up that older population (especially those from the Ivy League schools) and puts them in the military, where their varied backgrounds contribute significantly, I would think, to the ability of the military to react to its missions.
It would help if you would post your numbers to back up your concerns, then we could know if there is a reason to share your concerns with you, or just ignore you.
the soldiers and sailors serving today are widely loved and admired...
they are not spit on...
there are multiple national celebrity lead money funds set up to help the returning vets...
the war did not START wrong at all....the wrongness only happened after Hussein was killed and we suddenly became all soft and prissy...
and I might add that the lives lost there is a tragedy.....some of the best people are those serving in the military....but bamey boy and his policies saw to it that MORE Americans were killed in Afghanistan with his short regime than all the yrs of Bush...
the leftist see a new source of taxation.....because to support this 3 yr mandatory crap we'll all have to fess up bigger and bigger taxes....
let people who can fight for America , fight for America....
we don't need any wimpy whiny boys or girls in there...
can you imagine...we'd have to have equally distributed homosexuals and there will be quotas for sure...
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