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Should there be a military draft? Absolutely.

Actually, I think a better question is whether anyone should be allowed into the military by any other means.

Eager to kill?

The military is about killing or seriously wounding people in large numbers. That’s a necessary evil at best. It seems to me that volunteering for such activities is akin to volunteering to be the executioner at your state prison. Somebody’s gotta do it, but no one should be eager to do it. And if a person is eager to do it, that person is almost certainly ignorant of what it means to kill or maim others or risk being killed or maimed, or they are mentally defective.

My reasons in favor of the draft:

Can’t criticize the military

There appears to be an unwritten rule that no one can criticize the military in any way because the military are risking their lives and all that. The reaction to Senator John Kerry’s “botched joke” about your being sent to Iraq if you don’t keep up your studies showed how powerful the do-not-criticize-the-military rule can be. (What Kerry said was true during the early part of the Vietnam war. He is apparently an old fogie who has trouble remembering that things are not still the way they were when he was young.) As does Bill O’Reilly’s February, 2007 conniption over an NBC correspondent saying U.S. military personnel were mercenaries.

Prohibition against criticizing the military is a dangerous rule. It implies the military is perfect or above criticism. It is not. Indeed, the acronym SNAFU (Situation Normal: All Fouled Up) was invented by military people to describe military situations. I was in the military for eight years. “All fouled up” is the normal situation in the military. Really. It’s a government bureaucracy that operates with Soviet-style central planning. Soviet-style central planning doesn’t work. Even the Russians don’t use it any more. But the U.S. military still does.

The general reluctance to criticize the military is partly why it is all fouled up. I will not add to that situation by sinning by silence when I should speak up. I hope others with knowledge of the military will follow my example and offer suggestions and constructive criticism that might result in a better military. “Supporting” the military by trying to make it better makes more sense to me than “supporting” it by adhering to a rule of exaggerated praise and no criticism. Both are fundamentally dishonest. And you cannot change it for the better unless you first admit it’s not already perfect.

A fuss

British children’s author Noel Streatfield said that,

Wars were fought by soldiers and sailors, who came on leave and were made a fuss of.

I request that you henceforth make less a fuss of us veterans and instead support us and our successor soldiers and sailors by exposing your children and grandchildren, via a draft, to that to which you exposed us: service in a combat zone.

Your fuss is phony—a manifestation of your rear-area guilt and guilt at letting other mothers’ sons do that which you did not want your son or grandson to do. Deal with your guilt without using us war veterans as props. Do not expect us to let you off the hook because you bought us a drink or put a magnet on your car.

Hearing cannons does not warrant canonization

Those of us who have heard cannons fired in anger do not deserve to be canonized as a result. As honest combat veterans say over and over when interviewed on TV, “We were just doing our jobs.” It is not false modesty. However remarkable the job may seem to civilians who never did it, it was quite common and mundane at the time to those who did. To ascribe some sort of powerful mystique or expertise to all of us who spent time in a combat zone is dumb and misplaced.

There is an undeniable nobility to American service persons “saddling up” and moving toward the sound of the guns, as they have since the Revolutionary War, but thoughts of patriotism and altruism are well in the back of your head at the time when you actually do it. At the time you do it, you are mainly doing it because it’s your job and that of the thousands of guys around you.

Others risk their lives without acquiring the mystique and awe of combat veterans—like police, firemen, Alaska crab fishermen. I read that the most dangerous job in terms of deaths per hour is actually highway worker. If we are to show enormous deference to the opinions of combat vets, some of whom spent their entire time in Vietnam repairing trucks in Danang, how much more awe and deference must we show to king crab fishermen or guys who hold the “slow/stop” sign?

‘Common virtue’

U.S. Navy Admiral Nimitz said at the end of World War II of his men, especially the Marines on Iwo Jima, that, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.” But I think civilians make too much of such sentiments and put a slightly incorrect spin on it. Virtually every U.S. military person who ever served in a combat zone—those eligible for membership in the Veterans of Foreign Wars—risked their lives to one degree or another and thereby demonstrated a measure of valor.

Risking one’s life is uncommon, even unheard of, to a civilian or military person not in a war zone. But it is utterly normal, however strange that might seem, to those who are or were in a combat zone. On any given day in Vietnam, I probably laid eyes on thousands of other American servicemen. Was I risking my life to be there? Somewhat, but so were all those thousands of other guys.

Pay day rocket attacks

Every pay day around six AM the enemy would fire rockets at our base. Like soldiers in prior generations we made the usual GI jokes about setting your watch by the rockets. It was no big deal. They generally missed. We were not heroes. We were just doing our jobs—albeit in unusual circumstances by the standards of those back in the States. If you had been there, you would have made the same adjustment that we did. It was no big deal. Really.

The point is not that American service persons are all heroes, but rather that all Americans, as well as the citizens of most countries, adapt amazingly quickly to the extraordinary conditions of war. The most common experience in combat zones—long periods of boredom punctuated by occasional excitement—is not that big of a deal to the millions of Americans who have experienced it.

Listen to what combat zone veterans say to each other when they are talking about it. It bears no resemblance to the extravagant praise laid on the vets by draft-dodger citizens and politicians. And to the extent that what the non-vets say does not resemble what the vets say about combat service, the non-vets are full of crap. They don’t know what they are talking about.

I am disturbed and embarrassed by vets who silently accept and bask in the all-vets-are-heroes adoration of ignorant or guilt-ridden civilians. And I am concerned that excessive reverence for vets results in too few questions being asked about the wisdom of how we conduct our wars.

Over time, a draft gives every family at least one member with the accurate, proper perspective on military service and combat vets.

Draftees better soldiers

When I joined the Army, I expected what everybody else says: that draftees would not be as good soldiers as volunteers—because they didn’t want to be there. When I was in the Army from 1964 to 1972, we had both draftees and volunteers. Around the time I got out of the Army, they were in the process of moving to the all-volunteer services.

In fact, I found the opposite was true. That is, as a group, the draftees were much better soldiers than the volunteers. How could this be? The draftees were a cross section of U.S. society. At that time, the volunteers tended to represent the lower socioeconomic layers of society. I have never seen any scientific studies of this, but it was sufficiently evident when I was in the Army in the sixties and early seventies that I am confident that such a study would confirm my impressions.

The knock on draftees is that they are sullen and resentful about being forced into the military and do a lousy job as a result. In fact, I found no such thing. The sullen and resentful ones were the volunteers. They were sullen and resentful because they felt they had been scammed into enlisting with promises of adventure and war-movie glory. The reality of being in the military as a private is mind-numbing boredom, hurry up and wait, dysfunctional bureaucracy, ritual harassment by often-moronic or martinetish sergeants and officers, and so forth.

The draftees, on the other hand, did not feel they had been scammed. Nobody promised them anything or used any misrepresentations to get them to join. They just got a letter telling them to report for duty—which they did.

Two actual case histories

I went to two high schools. At one, a guy I’ll call George was the biggest social outcast in my class. If someone wanted to tease a girl, he might say, “I heard George is going to be your date for the prom.” His yearbook write-up probably showed absolutely no extracurricular activities and commended him for his “nice smile.” Your high school yearbook probably has a number of Georges. They probably enlisted in the military in disproportionate numbers.

George told me he spent his free time during high school sneaking through other people’s backyards in his neighborhood at night to train himself for the military. When he graduated, he joined the Marines—an all-volunteer outfit at the time. At times during its history, the Marines had to draft people.

On the other hand, my best friend in junior high was very popular and athletic—MVP of his high school’s various sports teams. Call him Jake. He got drafted into the Army.

When I was a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne Division, I felt like I was surrounded by thousands of Georges. Jake did not volunteer for either the Army or the paratroopers. He served his country including a tour in Vietnam. He was awarded the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, which is one of the few military decorations that I have great respect for. Many military decorations are worthy of far less respect than laymen afford them.

“Georges” volunteer for the military for all sorts of inappropriate reasons:

Draftees are in the military for one very good reason:

Napoleon—inventor of the draft

The greatest military leader in history was Napoleon. I believe we spent more time studying him at West Point than we did studying any other military leader. One of Napoleon’s great innovations that made him the greatest military leader was the draft or levée as it was called in France.

Criminal soldiers

The draft gave Napoleon a tremendous advantage over other armies of the time (early 1800s), all of whom were all-volunteer. He had better quality personnel and far more of them. Other armies relied on criminals, fugitives, and other bottom-of-the-barrel types, not unlike the French Foreign Legion’s long-time image, and other armies had far more trouble with desertion than did Napoleon.

Our current military is not that bad, but it is that small and we constantly hear about troubles caused by the military not having enough troops or having to lower standards to get enough. My 2/14/07 San Francisco Chronicle reported that the number of “moral waivers” granted to U.S. Army recruits was up to 8,129 in 2006. It had been 4,918 in 2003. It ought to be zero all the time.

My 4/22/08 Chronicle says the Army and Marines allowed even more convicted felons into the service in 2007 than in 2006.

Criminals promoted several months earlier?
A study in early May of 2008 said that convicted criminals actually got promoted to sergeant several months earlier on average than recruits who did not have criminal records. Press reports just left that statement hanging without any explanation. No doubt airhead slackers will claim it is proof of truth in the fictional movie The Dirty Dozen. Not likely. I have never seen any studies that convicted criminals get promoted faster in civilian life than non-criminals. More likely, it’s another variable like age. It probably takes longer to enlist if you are a convicted criminal. So by the time the criminals are investigated and allowed into the Army or Marines, they are probably six months or more older. It would therefore not be surprising that they are promoted sooner after they enlist than their younger peers. If you analyzed it by age and convictions, I expect you would find that the criminals are promoted later in terms of their age since birth than noncriminals, which may nevertheless be earlier in terms of time elapsed in the military than the non-criminals.

‘Moral waivers’

“Moral waivers” are required to get into the Army persons who have been convicted of crimes like aggravated assault, robbery, and vehicular homicide. Approximately 900 of the 2006 “moral waivers” were granted so that the U.S. Army could recruit convicted felons. 11.7% of all U.S. Army recruits in 2006 were convicted criminals who needed “moral waivers” to get in.

This is outrageous and is a direct result of the American people’s refusal to use a draft. The fact is that not enough non-criminals are willing to enlist. Since criminals are totally unacceptable as soldiers, we must reinstitute the draft to avoid having to use criminals.

Think about it. We take almost a thousand convicted felons off the streets each year, put the words “U.S. Army” above their left breast pocket and a full-color American flag patch on their right shoulder, hand them deadly weapons like machine guns and grenade launchers, and send them to a foreign country with a limited license to kill and otherwise order people around at gunpoint. We are responsible for their actions. They are representing us as a nation to the world—in particular to people whose hearts and minds we are supposed to be trying to win.

A recent West Point graduate who read a number of the articles at my military Web pages said that he was recently assigned to a basic training unit. He said the Army is scandalously ignoring discplinary and other problems in order to keep the graduation rate high in basic training and to keep the retention rates high among soldiers approaching the end of their enlistment or officer commitment. He gave the example of a recruit giving him (platoon leader) the finger in front of the 50 other recruits in the platoon and the platoon leader being prevented from disciplining the soldier. He was told to “mentor” him instead.

“Mentor” my ass, colonel. You “mentor” the son of a bitch. And you lead him and his finger in combat. I’m leaving to be a civilian. (The West Point graduate who wrote to me said he will be getting out of the Army as soon as he is allowed to.)

I once had a soldier who was short (about to get out of the Army) speak disrespectfully to me in the privacy of my office with only my XO present. I promptly filed court marital charges against him. The soldier was black. So was the battalion commander who stopped the court martial. I was already getting out of the Army at the time, but many of my West Point classmates and others were on the fence and such lack of discipline pushed them over the edge to resign when they could.

Perversely, an all-volunteer Army is most screwed up in terms of lax discipline, criminals, drug use, and so forth during war time when it is harder to get soldiers to enlist or reenlist. Such problems are not present or less present during peace time, but armies are not for peace time.

Cheating on Marine entrance exams
On 11/1/07, the Marines belatedly announced that they had discovered cheating on Marine entrance exams the previous April. Recruiters in Houston arranged for smart guys to take test pretending to be the dumb guys the Marines were trying to recruit. This happened at least 15 times. The worst recruiter offender was discharged from the Marines although the news story did not say whether the discharge was other than honorable. They also refused to name him or the other eight who received Marine Corps punishments. They also refused to release the names of the dummies who got into the Marine Corps fraudulently and are now active duty members of “the few, the proud.”

A Marine spokesman says he does not know why this happened. Gee, I’m over 1,000 miles away and I’ll bet I know. The number of recruits the Marines are supposed to get exceeds the number they can get legally so they got them illegally. What else could be the reason? Basically, they did what they were supposed to do except for getting caught. They got punished for getting caught, not for cheating. They won’t release their names because that would be real punishment and they really don’t want to punish them at all. The guys who are more likely to be truly punished are the ones who noticed that the signatures of the fake test takers did not match those of the dummies they were subbing for and blew the whistle.

If we had a draft like the one in World War II that covered not only the army but also the Navy and Marines, we would not have crap like this going on.

‘Not in my name’

If you liked Abu Ghraib and the miscellaneous murders and rapes that our military have been convicted of recently, which were generally not perpetrated by “moral waiver” recruits, I’m sure you’ll love what the convicts do in your name. “Moral waivers” add a new dimension to the war-protest slogan “Not in my name.” I do not want convicted criminals serving in a military that has the name and flag of my country on their shirt.

I got out of the military as soon as I could for many reasons, not least of which was the growing number of criminals and drug addicts in the Army as a result of Vietnam and the move to the all-volunteer Army. I get the impression that many, if not most, of my West Point classmates who got out were also motivated in large part by the deterioration in the quality of Army personnel in the early 1970s.

Basic training flunk out rate down 45%—through dangerously lowered standards
Between 2004 and 2008, the Army’s basic training flunk-out rate dropped 45%. There could be two reasons for that:

A. the quality of incoming soldiers has improved dramatically
B. the officers who run basic training schools were told they cannot longer flunk as many as they did in the past because the Army cannot recruit enough to replace the flunkies and maintain the number of soldiers they are supposed to in the Army

I cannot resolve the matter with evidence. Neither could Newsweek in the 6/30/08 article where I got these stats. But knowing the Army and logic, I vote for B. That article was about a soldier who should have been washed out for mental problems, but was not. Instead, he was sent to Iraq where he got killed, perhaps because of his mental problems. But the careerist brass scum who would not let the basic training cadre flunk him out met its numbers and that’s all that matters to careerists.

Desertions and desertion prosecutions up

According to a 4/8/07 New York Times story, the Army’s desertion rate is higher than it has been since Vietnam. Furthermore, the Army, which used to treat desertions as nuisance behavior with mild punishment is now prosecuting the deserters at a far greater rate. The rate of desertion prosecutions tripled between 2002 and 2006. In addition, prosecutions for being Absent Without Leave (AWOL) and similar lesser offenses than desertion have doubled in the same time period.

There is some indication that the lowering of recruiting standards is partly responsible for the increased desertion rate. One in ten of the deserters was one of the criminals, low IQ individuals, or high school dropouts allowed in because they were having trouble getting enough volunteers.

Here is the lead from a story on Soldiers.com.

Army Desertion Rate Jumps Sharply
Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. Overall, 4,698 Soldiers deserted this year, compared to 3,301 last year…

I am not sure what Soldiers.com’s agenda is, but this lead gives the deserters an excuse for deserting. That encourages more desertions and gives aid and comfort to the enemy by imputing anti-war motives to the deserters.

It also violates basic journalism principles. The only way Soldiers.com can make such a determination is if they interviewed a statistically significant representative sample of the deserters—and if they were truthful rather than telling the interviewer what the interviewers wanted to hear.

Journalists are supposed to report the facts. The facts are that more soldiers deserted in 2007 than previously during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Soldiers.com cites no basis for their conclusion as to why they deserted. Accordingly, it appears to be speculation—either anti-war propaganda or woe-is-me whining like the GI habit of complaining about the mess hall food.

Deterrence

The reason for the increased prosecutions is to deter desertions, AWOLs and so forth. When I was a company commander in the Army during the Vietnam war, my AWOL rate quickly dropped below everyone else’s because I did two things: I punished them with Article 15s (sort of like a traffic ticket that included a substantial fine) and I had a weekly meeting with all my troops where I went over each AWOL’s excuses for being AWOL and why they were not acceptable. A typical reason was, “I went home to DC over the weekend and the guy who was supposed to drive me to the bus station to return didn’t show up.”

My response, “You’re in the Army now. You need to grow up. It’s your responsibility to get back on time, not your friend’s. If you are going to rely on a friend you’d better pick the friend more carefully.”

That particular soldier later was chosen to speak to an officer class on relations with black soldiers. My roommate was a student in the class and knew the guy was in my company, but did not tell the soldier he knew me. He asked the solder to describe the best commander he ever had and the soldier named me and commented that this was true in spite of the fact that I was the only commander who ever gave him an article 15. He felt I was right to reject his AWOL excuse and had matured as a result of the punishment.

Discipline? OK; TOUGHER discipline? Questionable logic

So I am not suggesting there is anything wrong with disciplining soldiers for going AWOL or deserting. I do, however, think that raising the rate of prosecutions recently is a bit odd. It never should have been low to begin with. The reason I was able to easily achieve a much better AWOL rate was because my predecessors and peers were much too lax in enforcing the rules.

The fact that the Army in increasing prosecutions now sort of indicates that they are taking out their frustration with the lack of a draft on the relatively few Americans who were willing to volunteer. The implicit de facto recruiting slogan here is, “Join the all-volunteer Army and suffer tougher discipline than ever before to punish you for the failure of more of your peers to volunteer.”

You’ve heard the expression, “Preaching to the choir.” This is punishing the choir—because they are too few.

Punishing soldiers for going AWOL or deserting makes perfect sense. But punishing them for the fact that they were among too few young people who volunteered is absurd.

Toughening the discipline on the relatively few who volunteered to punish them for their peers’ lesser enthusiasm for volunteering is akin to the other recent practice of invoking the fine print in enlistment contracts to prevent those who want to get out of the Army when their time is up from doing so—another reaction to the lack of a draft. In the process of deterring more strenuously soldiers from going AWOL or deserting or quitting the Army when their time is up, we are likely also deterring some who might have enlisted from doing so. Media stories about heightened discipline and/or not letting people out when their hitch is up do not encourage volunteers.

The most shocking thing I read in the Times story was that now, for the first time ever, the deserters include military doctors and lawyers! Wow!

One of the potential penalties for desertion is death by firing squad. During World War II, at least one soldier was, indeed, shot by a firing squad for deserting.

Drug use by military personnel
One of the manifestations of military personnel who are too low quality is drug use. According to an 8/7/07 story at Salon.com (It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan—Simultaneously stressed and bored, U.S. soldiers are turning to the widely available drug for a quick escape. By Shaun McCanna), U.S. troops in Afghanistan are getting addicted to drugs in large numbers.

We saw that in Vietnam as well. The media would have you believe it is caused by our troops simply being there. Not so. I was there, in Vietnam, as were my West Point classmates. Reportedly, heroin and other drugs were easy to come by. I would not know. I did not want or seek any. As far as I know, none of my West Point classmates got involved with dangerous drugs in Vietnam.

This is obviously a disaster for the troops involved, but it is also a disaster for their units because you cannot fight effectively when you are high. Furthermore, these guys do not get over being heroin addicts when they come back to the states. And they are veterans so the VA has to dump endless amounts of taxpayer money into the bottomless pit of helping drug addicts stop being drug addicts.

My position is that it’s not covered by the VA because it was not in the line of duty.

But the liberals don’t think like that so you and I will all be paying until we die for the low-quality people we sent to those countries who got addicted to cheap heroin. I am not talking about every soldier or Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan, only the ones who buy cheap local heroin. The fact that many if not most do not get addicted to heroin proves that it is the fault of the troops in question, not the U.S. government that they are addicted. Had we not been scraping the bottom of the barrel to get enough troops, I suspect our representatives in the military in those countries would have been far less inclined to become addicted to heroin.

The subtitle of the Salon article seems to excuse the troops who became addicted on the grounds that they were “stressed and bored.” That’s bull! Troops have been bored since the beginning of time. We were bored stiff in Vietnam most of the time. War has been described as months of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

Their commanders are supposed to deal with that through healthy means. They also need to do enough random drug tests such that the addicts are quickly found out and thrown out. A commander is responsible for everything his men do or fail to do, including use heroin. The facts in the Salon story represent a failure of command, command which has been made far more difficult by the military’s failure to maintain an adequately high standard for its incoming recruits. Furthermore, it pushes the U.S. military across the tipping point. The prevalence of heroin addicts in the military causes the good enlisted men and officers to leave the military which flips the whole thing into a vicious downward spiral.

Aged soldiers

In a 3/18/07 column, We Were Soldiers Once—and Young author Joseph Galloway said the military raised the age at which one can enlist from 35 to 42. My dad was a draftee in Europe in World War II. He told me that at one point during that war the word suddenly came down to discharge everyone of low rank above a certain age. I think it was 35 or 37. Why?

They had done a statistical analysis and found that soldiers that old were a net drag on the military because they tended to get sick or injured more often and caring for them took more personnel than the total number of such soldiers in the military.

I also read articles about the Iraq war commenting on the extraordinary age of many of those serving in the war zone in reserve and guard units. The dead and wounded list also have many people in their 40s and 50s and many grandparents.

Isn’t this one of the things that happened to the Nazi Army at the end—old men and boys being drafted? The Nazis had no choice. They had already drafted all the more appropriate aged men. What is our excuse for doing this when we are the third largest country in the world in terms of population and we have not drafted a single soul for this war? The answer, not an excuse, is that we have become a nation of draft dodgers.

Unhealed but back to the front

Another problem caused by lack of a draft is that wounded or injured military personnel are being declared fit for service before they have completely healed and while doctor’s instructions still prohibit them from a full-range of activities. Somehow, potential combat has been declared to be an activity that does not require a clean bill of health. One soldier who is medically not allowed to lift the kind of weight that is standard garb—like bulletproof vest, camelback water bag, etc.—has been ordered back to duty in Iraq and sued the Army to stop his deployment.

How ridiculous does the personnel situation in the military have to get before the powers that be admit there is a serious problem here?

Lower basic training minimum standards

A 4/16/07 Wall Street Journal story says that the army has lowered its standards for passing basic training. In May, 2005, 18% of Army recruits flunked out of basic training and were sent back to the civilian world. Now, only 6% flunk. Recruits sure as heck did not get thinner or smarter—quite the contrary according to all media reports.

So the standards must have been lowered. I suspect I would have thought that more than 18% should have flunked before and that lowering the flunk-out rate to 6% is nothing but letting even more people who should have been flunked out stay to meet the Army’s numbers needs.

The problem is that warm bodies are not enough. Lousy soldiers are a drag on the Army and cause all sorts of problems like needing more personnel to take care of all should-have-flunked-out-guys’ problems and failures throughout their time in the Army. Low quality soldiers also cause high quality enlisted men and officers to get out of the Army because they do not want to have to work with and clean up after a bunch of guys who don’t do their jobs or “pull their oar.”

Easier promotions

That same Wall Street Journal article said that the Army is having to promote sergeants and officers whom they did not want to promote just because they do not have enough qualified guys to promote but they need X number of sergeants and officers at the various ranks. The military, stupidly, refuses to hire leaders from outside the military. That is, they only promote from within.

Unfortunately, that means they sometimes have to promote people who do not deserve promotion when “within” does not have enough qualified people. During World War II, they brought in a lot of leaders from outside the military and either made them officers from the start or promoted them so rapidly that they might as well have given them the rank from the start. We won World War II.

No draft, no victory

The Union was unable to fight the Civil War without a draft—America’s first. The Confederacy never instituted one. They lost.

Great Britain tried to fight World War I without a draft. They had to relent and institute a draft. Ultimately, Germany and Japan lost World Wars I and II in part because they could not draft as many soldiers as their Allied enemies.

One of the reasons Napoleon ultimately lost at the Battle of Waterloo was that his enemies copied his approach, including instituting their own drafts. The mighty Prussian Army—a so-called “professional” army, all volunteers—got their heads handed to them by French draftees and “unknown officers” so they adopted a draft, too. For details on Napoleon and the draft, see the book The Utility of Force by British General Rupert Smith. I reviewed that book at this web site.

Some would point out that we lost Vietnam in spite of draft. I did not say that a draft is all you need to win a war. Germany and Japan had drafts in World War II. Rather, I am saying that not having a draft greatly increases the probability that you will fail to win the war.

War is a competitive event

War is a competitive event. We need to win our wars. You do not put together a winning team with “Georges.” You need “Jakes.”

Am I saying that all volunteers are “Georges” and all draftees are “Jakes?” Nope. I was a volunteer, albeit by going to West Point, not enlisting. All my West Point classmates were volunteers and about 98% of them were “Jakes,” not “Georges.” Rather, I am saying that on average, when considered as groups, the draftees were better soldiers, sailors, and Marines than the volunteers.

During Vietnam, you could have randomly selected teams of draftees and volunteers from any U.S. military unit. If you then had them compete with each other, not only would the “Jake” team win, they would run circles around the “George” team. Compete in what? It would not matter. Athletics. Chess. SAT scores. Military skills. You name it.

Keep that in mind when you contemplate our current all-“George” military fighting a war against a worthy opponent that has a draft, as opposed to the third-world countries we have been beating up on since the Korean War.

Not enough volunteers during World Wars I and II

The Twentieth Century World Wars were considered “good” wars. Studs Terkel wrote a book about World War II called, The Good War.

But “goodness” notwithstanding, and the total unity of the American people notwithstanding, the military still could not get enough volunteers and had to draft. Furthermore, they not only drafted people into the Army, like my father and uncles, they also drafted people into the Navy and Marine Corps. They evenly drafted openly-gay men. So our vow that we will never again have a draft condemns us to losing any future large-scale war. It is impossible as a practical matter to win any but the smallest wars without a draft.

SEOSEC

Today, the American people as a group seem to think the military should be staffed by SEOSEC, that is, “Somebody Else Or Somebody Else’s Child.” They couldn’t care less about the quality of the people who serve as long as it’s not them. Furthermore, they want no risk that they would be drafted and no increase in taxes to pay for a higher quality military.

In fact, implicit in the decision to have a military at all is a decision to staff it with people of adequate quality and character to get the job done. An argument could be made that because of the catastrophic consequences of losing a war, we should staff the military not with adequate people but with the best people.

How do you get the best people to do a job that is akin to being an executioner? A draft is the only way.

Back-door ‘draft’ of those who previously volunteered

I have seen a number of media accounts of active-duty military who had completed the tour of duty they enlisted but who were not allowed out. Apparently there is some fine print in the law that lets the military extend active-duty personnel beyond their agreed commitment and the military has invoked that law on a number of occasions during the Iraq and Afghan operations.

That’s not right. They did that to West Pointers and others during Vietnam. Those who complained to their Congressman or sued in civilian court generally were allowed to get out as I recall.

What a betrayal! You are a good enough citizen to volunteer to serve in the military and risk your life to do so and the thanks you get is to extend you to punish you for the failure of other Americans to do like you did. Give ’em an inch and they take a yard. It’s like some Kafkaesque, Alice-In-Wonderland, upside-down version of letting a convict out of prison early as a reward and incentive for good behavior.

A 2/27/08 Los Angeles Times story said that about 8,000 Army soldiers were currently being forced to stay in the Army beyond their enlistment contract. This short-sighted outrage will make it harder to recruit by revealing that you cannot trust the U. S Army. This so-called "stop-loss" policy applies to soldiers whose units are about to deploy to Iraq. Some of them may die in Iraq, on a date after the enlistment they agreed to.

Another back-door ‘draft’ of sorts in the extension of combat tours from 12 to 15 months

On 4/11/07, the Pentagon announced that it was extending combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan from 12 months to 15 months. One again, this is a result of the fact that not enough young people are volunteering for the all-volunteer Army.

However, at least one soldier in Iraq said it was actually a good thing for winning the war because the longer U.S. personnel are there, the better they get at dealing with the enemy. Well, duh! The one-year tour in Vietnam was one of my pet peeves about that war and I believe is one of the main reasons we lost it.

During World Wars I and II and Korea, the U.S. military personnel there were there “for the duration,” that is, until they won. As a result, they got better and better at fighting the enemy and more and more angry about being there instead of home so they won the world wars and fought the Korean war to a mutual cease fire agreement.

In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, all the military personnel had or have to do is wait until the end of their tour to go home. Then they are replaced by a new group who start all over building rapport with the locals, learning local enemy tactics, and so forth. This is a typical stupid military way of doing things that is more focused on “morale” and such than winning.

With a draft, the military could focus on winning rather than trying to rotate personnel frequently in order to keep their recruitment and re-enlistment rates high enough to avoid losing too many.

Back-door ‘draft’ III: forcing Air Force and Navy personnel to work for the Army

Yet another way the Army is trying to compensate for the lack of a draft is to “draft” some of those who volunteered for the Air Force and Navy into the Army by borrowing them from those services. Some, according to a 4/16/07 Associated Press story, are even serving as Army infantry (convoy protection). An Army spokesman said convoy operations were “routine” activities. Sure. Tell that to former Army Quartermaster Private Jessica Lynch and her comrades, some of whom were killed in the convoy out of which she was wounded and captured before she was rescued.

The main reason people volunteer for the Air Force and Navy is to avoid being in the Army or Marine infantry. The Air Force and Navy are not so much attractive as they are a way to get the benefits of being in the military without the danger and misery of being in the infantry.

So what effect do you suppose news stories about Air Force and Navy personnel being forced to serve with the Army will have on recruiting and retention of Air Force and Navy personnel? Me too. The Army is going down due to lack of a draft and now it may take the other services down with it.

Most Air Force and Navy personnel detailed to the Army seem to be providing more rear-area type duties. What does that do to the Army guys who were previously performing those duties? Turns them into infantry.

When I was in the Army the main reason people who enlisted in the Army ended up in those rear area types of jobs to begin with is they made some extra effort, like agreeing to a longer tour of duty, to avoid the infantry. What effect do you suppose media stories about such persons being forced into the infantry after all will have on enlistment and retention rates? Me too. The infantry is going down due to lack of a draft and it may take the other Army branches down with it.

Take turns

The word “draft” has taken on diabolical, demonic connotations to most Americans. But the basic idea is benign and simple. Some things are dirty jobs that few people want to do but someone has to do. When it’s garbage collecting or roofing, we can pay others to do it rather than do it ourselves. But military power and war are special cases.

They are not only dirty jobs, they are extremely dangerous and they confer upon the persons in question the right to kill or injure other people. Military service should not be outsourced or the sole province of a lower class of society. You cannot pay a person enough to die for you. We all need to take turns doing it, in part to make sure it’s done right, and in part out of fairness. They are also extremely important jobs. We can survive some spilled garbage or a roof leak. We cannot survive a military defeat.

There is also the question of whether one part of society paying another part to fight wars is the use of mercenaries. In substance and morally, it is. The use of mercenaries is generally illegal under international law. Mercenaries are not entitled to the Geneva Convention protections for prisoners of war. This is because, as I said above, fighting wars is a special case. The normal rules of finance and economics should not apply.

Milton Friedman

I recently saw a TV documentary on the late economist Milton Friedman, whom I love. He was a leader in the effort to outlaw the draft. He got into a debate with then General William C. Westmoreland about the draft. Friedman called a draft army a “slave army.” Westmoreland responded that an all-volunteer army was a “mercenary army.”

Bill O’Reilly

Bill O’Reilly went nuts about an NBC reporter who used the word “mercenary” in February, 2007. William Westmoreland, who also called military volunteers mercenaries graduated from West Point in 1936, was a veteran of World War II and Korea, and was the main commander in Vietnam for most of that war. At the time of the debate with Friedman, Westmoreland was the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, the highest ranking Army officer. It is hard to imagine that he was not patriotic or a supporter of the U.S. Army.

Westmoreland certainly did not need to take lessons on respect for the military from O’Reilly who never served in the military. O’Reilly graduated from high school in 1967, which was probably the peak year for the Vietnam war. He did serve as a war correspondent in El Salvador and the Falklands Islands. In my observation, war correspondents generally saw more combat up close and personal than most soldiers in the same wars. For example, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite has sometimes been condemned as a liberal. Probably true. But he also flew into Arnhem, behind enemy lines, in a glider with paratroopers during Operation Market Garden in World War II.

‘Demolished mercenary argument?’

Alan Greenspan, who was also involved in the decision to switch to an all-volunteer military, said that Friedman “demolished” the notion that volunteer soldiers are mercenaries.

Well, I heard his arguments in the documentary and I thought he was borderline disingenuous, failing to make any distinction between the unique license to kill and willingness to die of a soldier and such every day occupations as doctor or plumber. Giving Friedman the benefit of the doubt, I will suggest that his error on this subject was probably that if you are a hammer, you tend to see the world as being made up entirely of nails. Friedman was a lifelong economist, so he probably sees economics as the dominant format for analyzing everything. But not everything in life is economics. There are also emotions, principles, justice, and so forth.

Also, Friedman never served in the military. He worked for the U.S. Treasury Department during World War II. So his perspective on the draft was strictly ivory tower and his anti-draft arguments were strictly academic.

Stop paying them

One way to see the extent to which our all-volunteer military is mercenary would be to end all monetary compensation for military personnel and just provide room, board, and uniforms and equipment to the troops. Those who are motivated purely by patriotism would remain. Or we could pay them the same as we pay Peace Corps members, who are motivated largely by non-mercenary motives because of the Peace Corps policy of not paying much more than the Third-World citizens being helped by them make. I believe our military are paid far more than our Peace Corps members.

I expect the number of people in the military would decline if we cut their pay to the level of the Peace Corps or lower. That suggests that mercenary motivations are at least part of the reason many are in the military. As I said elsewhere in this article, the typical member of the military these days has a number of motivations for being there—including money for college, the financial value of the military’s generous retirement benefits, and so forth.

The fact that military enlistments and reenlistments rise during recessions in the civilian economy indicates at least in part a mercenary motivation for enlisting.

Military wage rates are generally competitive with civilian occupations and, I would suspect, with actually mercenary wages paid in countries where real mercenaries are actually in use. Soldier of Fortune magazine could probably comment on what a mercenary goes for these days. Military benefits far exceed the most generous civilian plans.

At least part of the motivation is mercenary

Speaking as a former member of the military who had zillions of conversations with fellow members at the time, I would say that patriotism is probably the least important reason the vast majority of individuals are in the military and few of them would serve if that were the only reward for doing so. Speaking of them as if patriotism were their only, or even main, motive strikes me as misinformed or dishonest and probably a manifestation of survivor guilt or rear-area guilt on the part of the never-served-in-the-military persons.

I am not saying that U.S. military personnel are motivated only by money. Actually, even mercenaries who call themselves mercenaries are probably not motivated purely by money. They also seek adventure and status among cretins.

Patriotism is in the back of the minds of nearly all of U.S. military personnel in my observation. But in an all-volunteer military, money is a primary motivation and a sine qua non for most volunteers.

The one thing I can say for sure about draftees is that they are not mercenaries and that is my point and the one Westmoreland made. Neither Westmoreland nor I intended to demean the service of volunteers. But a draftee Army is intrinsically more appropriately selected and motivated than a recruited one for the profoundly serious and very dangerous business of killing others and risking their lives in the process.

Huge bonuses to enlist, reenlist, bounties

The Army had to pay over $600 million in reenlistment bonuses in 2006 to keep their reenlistment rate as high as they needed it. In 2003, they only needed to pay $180 million in such bonuses. The Army is also awarding $2,000 bounties to those who identify a prospective recruit who later does, in fact, enlist.

The Army is considering paying $45,000 new recruits either for purchase of a home or to start a business. The earlier or additional promotions described above are also monetary incentives to remain in the military in that promotions are accompanied by pay increases.

They did pay $35,000 to captains to stay in the Army. Their target was about 15,000 retentions. They only got about 11,000. Furthermore, they figured out that many who received the bonuses would have stayed in the Army anyway had they not received them.

Jack McNeal is a former Army first lieutenant. He is now CEO of Probus Executive Search in Mountain View, CA. He says of encouraging a young person to join the Army, “I’d be hesitant to do that myself.”

Speaking as another former first lieutenant, I agree. My alma mater West Point wants us to recruit cadets. I cannot in good conscience do that—not until the Army cleans up its act and learns how to fight asymmetrical wars effectively. At present, going to West Point or the Army increases your chances of ending up in a body bag or Walter Reed. For what? To be the 113th-from-last guy killed in Iraq in a war that accomplished little of value to the American people?

Retired Army lieutenant colonel Ann Wansley said,

They want me to con some innocent young person into signing up for an occupation which promises to put him or her in danger of death or severe, long-lasting mental or physical harm. And for this I am supposed to cheerfully accept payment? What kind of person do they think I am?

Says Donna Davidson, a San Francisco executive recruiting consultant of the bounties,

It seems mercenary. I don’t know who advised them to do this. It seems like about as low a tactic as I can imagine.

Explain to me again why our increasingly highly paid “volunteers” are absolutely not mercenaries.

Are the 100,000 private contractors employed by the U.S. in Iraq mercenaries?

The 3/26/07 Time magazine has a lengthy article about the 100,000 private contractors the U.S. military employs in Iraq in support of the war effort. The roles they play include:

They are armed and operate armed helicopters. Many are former U.S. military personnel. The founder and sole owner of one such company, Blackwater Security Consulting LLC, a guy named Eric Prince, is apparently a U.S. Naval Academy dropout or flunk out who later became a U.S. Navy officer and who was “attached” to a Navy SEAL team, whatever “attached” means in that context.

Normally, Marines guard embassies around the world. (Don’t ask me why.) Apparently now, Blackwater often does instead. That’s U.S. Marines being replaced in the exact same military job by private, paid contractors.

According to Time, many of the lowest paid civilian security guys in Iraq are from Nepal, Chile, and Fiji. Sounds like an American foreign legion. Former U.S. and British military personnel who work for Blackwater get much higher pay. One low-level guy who was a former SEAL was paid $600 according to the story. He ended up one of the Americans who was killed, mutilated, set on fire, and hung on the Fallujah bridge.

A judge involved in a case in which Blackwater is the defendant said, “Blackwater has wrapped itself in the American flag” for saying it speaks as part of the total military force in Iraq.

A 2006 Pentagon assessment of future defense policy said private security contractors were part of the total force and told how to make them part of U.S. war-waging.

Sure sounds like mercenaries, albeit many are home-grown. And it sounds like they have been made necessary by the lack of a draft and the military’s inability to get enough people to volunteer for the military and/or the military’s inability to get approval to recruit more military. It also sounds like the private security personnel are far more expensive than draftees, at least on the front end. Career military people get huge retirement benefits, but draftees rarely stay for a career.

he 6/25/07 Time magazine had an article by Joe Klein about the need for courage on the part of presidential candidates. It discussed “National Service” saying,

In a new book, Are We Rome?, Cullen Murphy avoids the standard imperial cliches but finds some interesting parallels, especially the notion that the Roman Empire began to falter when it started hiring out major functions of government, including military service, to private contractors.

I am concerned about that, but not whether contractors prepare meals. Rather, I am concerned about moves to turn the U.S. Army into a day-labor Army that relies on foreigners rater than U.S. citizens for its manpower. See the America’s Foreign Legion subhead below for more on that.

Draft-dodger nation

The notion that those who join the military at least in part for the money and other financially valuable benefits is just one side of a provocatively worded “coin.” The other side is that those who have not served in the military or been eligible to be drafted into the military are draft dodgers.

There are a number of ways to dodge the draft. During Vietnam, draft dodgers went to other countries like Canada or Sweden, they claimed to be conscientious objectors, they got into the reserves or national guard (which was a way to avoid active-duty military service back then and the method used by President George H.W. Bush’s Vice President Dan Quayle and President George W. Bush), they lied about being in the reserves or national guard (that was how President Bill Clinton illegally dodged the draft). But there is another way to dodge the draft: outlaw it.

Let me tell you the only groups of U.S. citizens who are not draft dodgers:

Everyone else is arguably a draft dodger. Nowadays, the favorite way, and only way necessary, to dodge the draft is to pass a federal law that prohibits drafting anyone. That law makes us predominantly a nation of draft dodgers with a minority of veterans.

A Spartan king was quoted by Thucydides as saying,

The nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.

Just so. We are currently that nation.

Nothing but draft-dodger presidents lately
The best evidence of that may be the last two presidential administrations. All four of the elections that put Bill Clinton and George W. Bush into office involved a draft dodger running against a war veteran. The war veterans who lost those elections were George H.W. Bush (WW II in the Pacific), Bob Dole (WW II in Italy), Al Gore (Vietnam), and John Kerry (Vietnam). All four were defeated by two draft dodgers: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Clinton received a draft notice during the Vietnam war. He got out of it by telling his draft board that he had enlisted in the National Guard, which was a lie. George W. Bush was in the National Guard. Young people may thing that being in the National Guard was not draft dodging. The hell it wasn’t! Unlike what former guardsman Bush has ironically done in Iraq and Afghanistan with the guard and reserves—sent them into combat repeatedly—National guards and reserves saw almost no combat at all during the Vietnam war. Indeed, President George H.W. Bush had some difficulty during the 1988 campaign when it was discovered that his vice-presidential running mate, Dan Quayle, had been in the Indiana National Guard during he Vietnam war. Anyone who was of age during Vietnam can confirm that the Guard and Reserves were ways to avoid serving in Vietnam or on active duty.

Prior to Bill Clinton, being a draft dodger had been the kiss of death for a politician since the first draft was instituted during the Civil War. Indeed, Clinton wrote a letter to a military officer expressing great concern about “maintaining his political viability” in view of likely criticism about his draft dodging. Al Gore and John Kerry appear to have been running for president since they were 12 and seem to have consciously gone to Vietnam on the assumption that the old rule that draft dodging was the kiss of death would still be in effect when they ran for president. Guess again. In a nation of draft dodgers, Gore and Kerry looked like saps.

It’s not likely to get any better in 2008. Other than John McCain, there are no leading presidential candidates who ever served in the military or even whose children have served. Dark horse Duncan Hunter was an airborne ranger in Vietnam at the same time I was there. Ron Paul was in the Air Force. Democrat Chris Dodd was in the Army for six years. Democrat Mike Gravel was in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps, whatever that is. I never heard of it.

Slavery and indentured servitude
A number of draft-hater readers of this Web site have snarled at me that I am advocating “indentured servitude.” Actually, they are. I am the one opposed to indentured servitude.

These ignoramuses believe that slavery and indentured servitude are synonyms. They are not. They are opposites. Indentured servitude is voluntary and limited in duration, like all-volunteer Army contracts. Slavery, on the other hand, is involuntary and forever. You can look it up. Read the Wikipedia article on indentured servitude at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant. Indentured servitude was a contract in which an employee promised to work for an employer for a set period of time—usually about three to seven years. The employee could not change his mind.

In the North America in the 17th and 18th centuries, most, I repeat, most Americans were indentured servants. Their transportation cost to America was paid by their employers and was part of why they agreed to be indentured servants. It is now illegal (breach of a “personal service contract” can now only be enforced by monetary damages, not specific performance or refusing to let the person quit the job) and exists today only in the form of contracts between the U.S. military and military personnel, most notably enlistments, service academy students, and military officers who have remaining obligations as a result of receiving education or choice assignments.

Since 1973, the all-volunteer U.S. military consists mainly of indentured servants who cannot quit until they complete their contracted period of service. In some cases, they cannot even quit then and are extended under some fine print in the contract or pertinent law.

Higher standards today?

I was in the Army from 1964 to 1972. Back then, I believe we accepted high school dropouts, criminals, and very-low-IQ individuals. My impression from media accounts is that the standards have been raised somewhat since. Although I have also read recently that the standards had to be lowered because of difficulty meeting recruiting targets.

In the aftermath of Senator John Kerry’s statement about U.S. military in Iraq being the worst students, I believe I read that the current active duty military personnel actually are above average compared to U.S. society as a whole. Certainly with the current obesity epidemic, the people in the military are generally more physically fit than the average non-military person. (After I wrote that, I vacationed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village hotel on Waikiki Beach. Next door was Fort DeRussey, an Army recreation hotel for all services. I was disappointed to see that more than half the non-coms and officers I saw in uniform there were overweight. If they lack the self-discipline to win the “Battle of the Bulge” around their own waist, how are they going to lead and inspire their men to win against the lean, hungry barbarians from the Middle East?)

Too many screw-ups

I’m glad to hear the standards have been raised, but I have also seen stories about Abu Grhaib, murders and rapes of civilians, and I have seen TV documentaries about military basic training and there appear to be a lot of people of distressingly low talent and character in the U.S. military. That should not be.

The typical career officer or non-com would denounce any such criticism of the troops saying they were, “Damned fine men and women! Outstanding! Best men and women in the world!” This is pro forma propaganda and party line. It may be a necessary working assumption for leaders when dealing with their subordinates, but the quality of the U.S. military is what it is. If the military brass really believes that stuff, they should release the various test scores on IQ, physical fitness, etc. to the public so we can compare them to the rest of society.

My own first military unit, the Corps of Cadets at West Point, has a lot of graduates who are fond of saying that West Point is the academic equivalent of the Ivy League. No, it’s not. The only objective standard measure I know to consider is SAT scores. Last time I checked, West Point was 100 to 300 points below the Ivy League and came closest to Wake Forest University. West Point may have ranked higher in the past when it was smaller. When I entered in 1964, there were 2,512 cadets. Now, there are about 4,400 and the Vietnam War (late 60s and early 70s) greatly lowered the public’s regard for the military and therefore demand for spots at West Point.

America’s foreign legion

France has a foreign legion. Frenchmen are not allowed to serve in it as enlisted men. The U.K. has its Gurkha units. Colonial powers like France and England had to do that because they could not otherwise get enough troops to control their vast empires—even with a draft.

That is not the American way. Or is it?

In fact, it is rapidly becoming the American way, not because we Americans chose it, but because we refuse to personally defend our own country.

Proposals are now being considered to open U.S. military recruitment offices overseas and to let non-citizens who serve in the U.S. military cut ahead in line, so to speak, to be awarded U.S. citizenship faster.

The 12/26/06 Boston Globe said that,

Foreign citizens serving in the US military is a highly charged issue, which could expose the Pentagon to criticism that it is essentially using mercenaries to defend the country.

There’s that word “mercenaries” again. If it is so out of line, how come everyone from General William C. Westmoreland to the Boston Globe keeps using it?

It should be noted that it is against the law for a U.S. citizen to serve in the military of any other country than the U.S. So our recruitment of foreigners to serve in the U.S. military would be a case of, “Do as we say, not as we do,” also known as hypocrisy.

The Globe also wonders if foreigners in the U.S. military could jeopardize our security. It sure as heck would if we were fighting against the country in which they were still citizens, the country in which their friends and relatives still live, the country in which their friends and relatives are serving in that country’s military.

Non-English-speaking U.S. soldiers?

There is also the question of fluency in English. Lack of fluency in English could result in miscommunication. Miscommunication in the military can result in lost lives and even lost battles.

During the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, Germans posing as Americans infiltrated American lines and wreaked havoc. Once the U.S. figured out that was happening, GIs peppered unknown persons wearing American uniforms and purporting to be Americans with questions that only Americans would know the answers to like questions about Major League Baseball or American radio programs.

If some our GIs of the future are to be foreign, which of our American citizen soldiers will be able to tell which of foreign U.S. soldiers are fake? Or how will our foreign U.S. soldiers be able to tell when enemy soldiers are pretending to be fake Americans? (See the Wikipedia discussions of Otto Skorzeny’s false flag efforts during World War II.)

‘American’s willingness to serve’

The Globe also suggests that recruiting foreigners would,

reflect badly on Americans' willingness to serve in uniform.

Ya think?

The fact is, Americans are unwilling to serve in uniform or have their sons or grandsons serve in uniform—not all of them, but so many that the third most populous country in the world cannot find enough volunteers to staff its military. As I said above, we have become a nation of draft dodgers.

We already have a program that accelerates the U.S. citizenship of green-card-holding foreigners who enlist in the U.S. military. In 2005, 4,600 U.S. military personnel became soldiers while in uniform—up from 750 in 2001. In 2002, President Bush waived a rule that required a three-year waiting period for naturalization if the individual in question were in the U.S. military. Congress later waived the fees for such persons and extended citizenship to the survivors of immigrant, non-citizen soldiers killed in combat.

‘Vital’

A recent law gives the U.S. military the right to bring non-U.S. citizens into the military if it’s “vital” for national security. Let me get this straight. If we are in dire straits in terms of national defense, we still just recruit foreign volunteers rather than draft our own citizens? That makes perfect sense. And if we get short of military bread rations, is there a law to let the military eat cake?

The Globe goes on to say,

And military recruiters, fighting the perception that signing up means a ticket to Baghdad, have had to rely on financial incentives and lower standards to meet their quotas.

The notion that signing up means a ticket to Baghdad is not a perception, it’s a fact. It does mean as ticket to Baghdad, or Kabul.

And about that phrase “financial incentives.” Better watch out saying things like that. Bill O’Reilly may accuse you of calling U.S. military personnel “mercenaries.”

At present, the Globe says there are 30,000 non-U.S. citizens in the U.S. military. That’s about 2% of the total. It’s also two divisions of soldiers. The Dallas Morning News says over 69,000 U.S. military personnel are foreign, 5% of the total.

Quoting again from Joe Klein’s 6/25/07 Time article,

...While the all-volunteer U.S. Army is a far cry from the barbarian mercenaries that Rome eventually used to fill out its legions, there is a dangerous chasm growing between the U.S. military—a subculture with a bracing value system emphasizing service, discipline and common purpose—and the slovenly culture at large.

I agree that there is a wide and growing chasm between the Army and the general population, but Klein is way off on his details. Basically, he is spouting the image members of the Army would have us believe. In fact, it is the Army that is slovenly in substance. Their value system is frat house for the youngest enlisted members and the bureaucrat’s position, pension, and PX privileges for the older members. While it’s true that they are in “the service,” the amounts they are paid in current pay and benefits as well as future pay and benefits are now so attractive that the Army no longer represents the selfless sacrifice it did in bygone days. As described above, the military is considering making joining the Army far more lucrative in order to overcome its recent failures to attract and retain enough volunteers.

Discipline in the Army is crap in many ways. Military personnel exhibit discipline in boot camp and in spurts in combat situations. Otherwise, they are big on outward shows of discipline like shiny shoes and belt buckles and salutes, but they are almost devoid of the sort of day-to-day discipline that characterizes the efficient operation of private businesses. As anyone who stops and thinks about it realizes, the military is extremely inefficient and truly a SNAFU organization (Situation Normal, All Fouled Up) If they were truly disciplined, they would not be inefficient and all fouled up.

In other words, in the long-term discharge of their daily duties, the young people working at McDonalds or your local movie theater are more disciplined than the young people in the military. That’s because they have real bosses who are paying real money out of their own pockets for their services. They also have real competitors and customers. Their “wars” are bloodless, but they are continuous and the financial stakes, if not the life-and-death stakes, are high.

Lower standards for foreigners, too?

With regard to lowering standards, will our recent practice of letting thousands of convicted criminals enlist also apply to the foreigners? How will we be able to tell if the foreigners are not criminals, or even if they are of adequate age? Lesser developed countries may not have adequate records or may deliberately conceal criminal records to get rid of criminals a la the Cuban Mariel boatlift which dumped the worst criminals from Cuba into Florida in 1980.

Some, no doubt Democrats who perceive illegal aliens to be future Democrat voters, have urged that illegal immigrants be recruited into the U.S. military. Pardon me, but do our extradition treaties with the foreign countries in question cover deserters? If not, how is this viable?

Some have called the recruit foreigners idea a step toward a day-labor military. It is one thing for Americans to decide they would rather have illegal immigrants than pick fruit. It is quite another for Americans to decide they would rather have illegal immigrant soldiers than serve in the U.S. military.

‘All-volunteer’ missions

Many a war movie has a story about an “all-volunteer” unit that is picked for a special dangerous mission. If I were the officer put in charge of a special, difficult mission, and allowed to pick my team, it would be a cold day in La Jolla before I would assemble an all-volunteer group. You have to be nuts to volunteer for dangerous missions, unless you have some needed special skill that no one else available has.

I would not want to lead a group of nuts on a dangerous mission. I would want a bunch of well-adjusted, intelligent guys who wished they were not on the mission. As the leader, I would not have volunteered (absent my being needed because of some specific necessary skill that I alone possessed among those available to go) and I would want similarly sane and mature persons with me.

D-Day was one of the most dangerous military missions ever. There were darned few volunteers hitting the Normandy beaches that day. World War II in general was one of the most dangerous missions ever. There were draftees in all branches then, including the Marines and Navy. It should be noted that we not only won that war, we won it in three and a half years starting from unprepared scratch.

My dad and uncles served in World War II. My high-school-dropout Uncle Jack was the youngest non-pilot captain in Europe at one point during the war. He often said that the war was won by the draftees in spite of the career volunteer types. I would not be able to confirm that, but it sounds right.

Bureaucrats

Career military officers and noncoms are lifer bureaucrats. The civilians drafted into the noncom and officer ranks were used to getting things done efficiently in civilian businesses and farms. They also were “over there” “for the duration” and wanted to go home. They were not about to wait until some lifer filed out forms in quintuplicate.

In his book Sea of Thunder (about the WW II Leyte Gulf naval battle), Evan Thomas makes a similar comment to my uncle’s: “By and large, the reservists [roughly speaking the officer equivalent of a draftee enlisted man] performed astonishingly well—indeed, in may cases, better than the Annapolis men, who sometimes were a little too respectful of hierarchy and showed less initiative than the citizen soldiers.” I would add, “The Annapolis men were only ‘sometimes’ too respectful of authority?!” Service academies are obedience schools as much as they are anything else.

In Vietnam, everybody got to go home after one year regardless of whether we won. Not surprisingly, we did not win.

Draft is only way to get non-bureaucrat leaders

Getting non-bureaucrats into the military is the main reason to have a draft. Entrepreneurs and employees of civilian for-profit businesses are used to conducting themselves with a high degree of efficiency and results orientation. Bureaucrats are used to simply avoiding pissing off or embarrassing their superiors. They are in the boot-licking business.

Bureaucrats are process oriented, thus their fondness for statements like, “It’s not my job.” Process-oriented people react to complaints by pointing out they have filled out their paperwork or done whatever some policy manual says is their portion of the chain of action and, if the desired result was not achieved, it’s someone else’s fault and they wash their hands of any further responsibility of getting the job done.

We cannot win wars or achieve anything else worthwhile with such people. Rather, we need people who are in the habit of getting the job done by whatever legal means necessary—results-oriented people who are in the habit of operating efficiently and of using common sense.

Phobia volunteers

One exception to my aversion to volunteers would be for certain duties that trigger involuntary phobias in some persons. For example, the submarine service long ago learned to only use volunteers. Furthermore, if a submariner ever changes his mind, he’s gone at the end of the patrol. I presume claustrophobia is the reason. Also, the thought of being surrounded by water at such depths that the pressure would kill you if the drowning didn’t freaks out many people as well—even those who do not suffer from claustrophobia per se.

Voluntary phobias, like the fear of exerting oneself, would not exempt one from any particular military duty. Similarly, universal phobias, like the fear of getting shot by an enemy soldier, would not be cause for exemption from any duty.

Skills not otherwise available

There are some skills that the military must have but cannot create, like doctors, lawyers, native-speaking translators, and nurses. Again, a draft is likely necessary to acquire those skills.

The draft I envision would not just bring in some one-size-fits-all human being. Rather, it would be like an NFL draft. The NFL needs X number of quarterbacks, Y number of linebackers, and so forth. Similarly, the military needs A number of doctors, B number of nurses, C number of Arabic interpreters, and so forth. They need to draft not just bodies, but also the skills and aptitudes they need.

‘Look like America’

One of America’s Draft Dodgers in Chief, Bill Clinton, said he wanted his presidential cabinet to, “look like America.” Actually, I disagree with that. The cabinet is too small and too important to be staffed like some Chicago machine political patronage job.

But I think making it look like America is a very good idea with regard to the U.S. military. For example, my grad school alma mater is Harvard. I think the percentage of Harvard former students or graduates in the military should be the same as the number of Harvard people in the U.S. population. Maybe it already is. I would be surprised if it were. Actually, there were plenty of us vets at the Harvard Business School. But I suspect that the other graduate schools and the undergraduate college at Harvard are underrepresented in the military. They should not be allowed to systematically avoid military service.

When I was at Harvard in 1975-1977, there was a palpable contempt for me and my fellow vets from the draft-dodger students. My son Dan graduated from another Ivy League college, Columbia, in 2003. He often told me that the palpable Ivy League contempt for the military was alive and well in the Twenty-First Century. Making the Harvard and other Ivy League communities contribute their fair share to the military would likely bring those communities closer to a more accurate and appropriate view of the military.

The same appears true of groups like the wealthy and the educated. They appear to me to be underrepresented in the military. I have known of families where almost every generation served in the military, generally as draftees, and other families where generation after generation never served. That’s not right. No group or family should be underrepresented in the military. I want them all breathlessly waiting to see where their birthday comes up in the annual draft lottery.

Confederate Army?

One of the things I most despised about being an Army officer was having to spend ten months of my life at military bases in rural areas of the Southeast. I was at Fort Benning, GA, twice; Fort Gordon, GA, once; and Fort Bragg, NC, once.

Fear of Killeen, TX

My greatest fear in Vietnam was not getting killed. It was getting assigned to Fort Hood, TX when I came home. I spent part of my time in Vietnam researching things like getting a private pilot’s license and renting a plane with a group of other officers to get the heck out of Killeen, TX on weekends if I ended up there. Fort Hood was a distinct possibility for everyone in the Army because it is a huge base.

The only Northeastern branch

I deliberately chose the Signal Corps when I graduated from West Point because it was the only combat arm with a base in the Northeast: Fort Monmouth, NJ. I was stationed there twice, thank God. Shortly after I got out of the Army, they closed the Signal School at Fort Monmouth and moved it to Fort Gordon, GA. My other choices (combat arms then), and their base locations, were Artillery at Ft. Sill, OK; Infantry at Ft. Benning, GA; Armor at Ft. Knox, KY. The Engineer branch was based at relatively civilized Ft. Belvoir, VA but I could not choose that because of my class rank.

The official accent of the Army

I joked when I was in the Army that the official accent of the Army seemed to be Southern. Soldiers would “you all” and “good old boy” me, then when I asked where they were from, they would say Brooklyn or Gary, Indiana. (The official accent of the Air Force is reportedly West Virginian because that’s where “Mr. Right Stuff” Chuck Yeager was from. As far as I know, the Navy and Marines have no disproportionate accent.)

I do not mind Southerners dominating NASCAR or the NFL or country music. I do not mind Southerners being in the Army—in proportion to their percentage in the U.S. population. But I do mind the U.S. Army being the Confederate Army in the sense that its personnel are disproportionately Southern. According to a story in the 2/22/07 Wall Street Journal, 40% of U.S. Army officers are from the South. That’s way too many.

Why is this? According to the Journal, the U.S. military retreated from the anti-war parts of the U.S., namely the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast starting during the anti-war movement in the Vietnam era. That included closing military bases, recruiting stations, and ROTC programs. The military also prefers rural areas and especially the South because everything is far cheaper there.

That, in turn, tipped the U.S. military into a vicious spiral where Southernization begat more Southernization. One of the many reasons I got out of the Army and have urged others not to get in is the Army’s being predominantly based in the rural South and staffed by people from the rural South. I suspect a lot of my “Yankee” West Point classmates got out in part to return to the part of the country where the word Yankee refers to a baseball team.

Oh, to be young and single in—civilization

For one thing, most soldiers are young and single. Young and single does not mesh with the rural anywhere. 20,000 GIs and, what, maybe 300 local women of the right age and marital status. It meshes even less with the rural South when you are a “Yankee.”

At both Gordon and Bragg, all of us newly minted West Pointers—including the Southerners—were comparing notes on the girl situation. As I recall, only one guy ever met a girl during the months we were there. He met her at a honky tonk and instantly dropped her later when he learned she was married to a sergeant who was in Vietnam. All of which fit very nicely with the fact that my roommate and I had to live in a trailer park on Old MacDuffie Road in Augusta at the time. Lovely.

Family reunion

I also did not care for competing with Southern fellow lieutenants for promotion by Southern colonels. I expect that a study of staffing would reveal that not only does the Army do more recruiting in the South for both officers and enlisted men, it also has a higher retention rate among Southern natives than “Yankees” because we “Yankees” felt like we were crashing a family reunion when we were in the military.

Accentless children

I was neither married nor had kids when I was in the military, but I am grateful that my California kids grew up with no regional accent. I am glad they did not grow up where I did, in Southern New Jersey, where I acquired an accent that I got rid of as a radio announcer in college. But I am really glad they do not have Southern accents and that whole anti-“Yankee” mentality that most brats (children of career military personnel) seem to have.

Not a lot of red neck Muslims

According to the Journal, by retreating to the rural South, the military is not only missing out on the services of Yankees, it’s also missing out on the service of America’s Muslims and Arabic speakers, which the military sorely needs.

West Point cadets nowadays spend three days in Jersey City, NJ during their junior year. Why? To get to know Muslim culture of American Muslims who are numerous there. But the Army closed its two ROTC programs in Jersey City years ago. This is further evidence of what I found to be the case: West Point is a squared away place that tries hard to do the right thing. The Army, on the other hand, is Situation Normal, All Fouled Up.

It’s supposed to be the UNITED STATES army

A draft, along with regional quotas for officers, would restore the military to an organization that looks like America. That is not a nice-to-have feature. It’s mandatory. To the extent that the U.S. has, and/or perceives itself to have, a military made up of red state red necks who have a very different accent and world view, the American people will be less inclined to support the military with their tax dollars, their children, and the will to win our wars. And if the military is predominantly Southern, I wonder what allegiance our military personnel will feel towards their majority Yankee masters in Washington, New York, Chicago, and California. Not a healthy situation.

Also, as I said elsewhere in this article, war is a competitive event. We should not be defending our country with the best people the South has to offer. We should be defending it with the best people the country has to offer. The military, like the government, should be of the people, by the people and for the people, not of the Confederates, by the Confederates, and for the Yankees.

Onward Christian soldiers

I also get the impression that the U.S. military is being taken over by evangelical Christians who proselytize their fellow military personnel. When the proselytizer is your superior, you resist the proselytization at your career peril. I do not know if the predominance of Southerners is related to the extraordinary number of evangelical Christians in the military, but the red state South seems to be a hot bed of evangelical Christians as well.

The U.S. Air Force Academy has been in the media a number of times recently for pushing Christianity on students who are, obviously, also Jewish, Muslim, and other religions or atheists. “Religious bullying” one story called it. Another used the phrase “fundamentalist bigotry.”

At least one book has been written on the subject: With God On Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup Inside the U.S. Military. One Web site describes the book as, “the authors present a shocking expos of life inside the Air Force Academy and its systematic program of Christian fundamentalist indoctrinations sanctioned, coordinated, and carried out by Academy officials.” The author of that book founded http://militaryreligiousfreedom.org/.

The author, Michael L. Weinstein, is a Jewish Air Force Academy graduate and father of two Air Force Academy graduates. When his cadet sons were targeted by anti-Semitic remarks from people at the Academy, Weinstein sued and wrote a book about it. He was previously White House counsel under President Ronald Reagan.

I saw him give a talk and take questions on C-Span 2. In response to one question, he said his organization had traced the dominance of the military by Christian fundamentalists and that it began in 1972, the year he noted, when the draft ended. He attributed the takeover [my word] of the military by Christian fundamentalists to the end of the draft.

If, indeed, the U.S. military is being taken over by persons who try to convert other military personnel to Christian fundamentalism and discriminate against those who refuse to do so, that is a serious problem and, again, a problem that stems from using all-volunteers rather than a draft to staff the military.

When you boss and his boss and his boss etc. go to the post chapel every Sunday, you’d better be there, too, if you want to get promoted. If you don’t want to go to the chapel, you probably should get out of the military and get into a career where such matters are irrelevant to your promotions and assignments.

On 9/17/07 in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, KS, Spec. Jeremy Hall of the Fort Riley, KS MPs sued Defenses Secretary Robert Gates and Army Major Paul Welbourne for discriminating against non-Christians in the military. Hall alleges that he got permission to circulate fliers about a meeting of atheists and other non-Christian soldiers, but when he tried to convene the meeting advertised by the fliers, Welbourne stopped the meeting and threatened Hall with court martial and blocking his reenlistment.

On 7/8/08, CNN ran a story about an Army enlisted man, Jeremy Hall, who sued the Army because he decided to become an atheist and noticed that his previously sterling career came to a halt. He says the Army has become a Christians only organization with regard to career advancement. The story quotes Michael Weinstein, whom I mentioned above, as saying he has been contacted by more than 8,000 members of the military complaining about the dominance of Christians. He also is suing with Hall. The Pentagon denies the charges.

‘Draft Dodgers in Chief’

Since I used the phrase “Draft Dodgers in Chief” in the plural, you may wonder who the other one was. George W. Bush. He was in the National Guard during Vietnam. Ironically, as president, he has shipped the Guardsmen and Reserves to Iraq and Afghanistan in great numbers. But during Vietnam, Guardsmen and Reserves were only very rarely sent to Vietnam or even called to active duty.

Bush himself was never sent to Vietnam as a guard. Both the Guard and the Reserves were then well known, well-traveled ways to avoid being drafted and shipped to the combat zone. The first President Bush’s vice president Dan Quayle avoided service in Vietnam by joining the National Guard and that fact was a bit of a scandal when he ran for VP.

I do not mean to equate what George W. Bush did during Vietnam to what Bill Clinton did. Clinton lied about joining the guard or reserves to avoid the draft. Clinton also publicly denounced the U.S. policy in Vietnam while he was in England as a Rhodes Scholar.

George W. Bush did join the Air National Guard where he became a fighter pilot (F102). That is a substantial demonstration of courage regardless of the presence of the enemy. Also, although guardsmen rarely got sent to Vietnam or any other combat zone at the time, there was no guarantee of that. Bush could have been activated and deployed to Vietnam or elsewhere. I am sure that if he had, he would have gone and done his duty. Clinton would have developed a bad back or some such.

(While I respect the skill and courage of fighter pilots, if you could buy them as a group for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they’re worth, you would have a sizable capital gain. In particular, they seem to believe because there is a coincidental resemblance between a phallus and the aerodynamic shape of an aircraft fuselage, and because engineers use the word “thrust” to describe jet engine power, that their graduation from flight school endows them with extraordinary sexual prowess and attractiveness to women. The public got a peek at this goofy notion and the accompanying boorish behavior in the infamous Tailhook incident. Those of us who were in the military got more frequent exposure to it. It should also be noted that submariners, whose boat and its missiles bear even more coincidental resemblance to a phallus than a winged aircraft, and whose nuclear and rocket engines produce far more power than a jet plane, have never drawn the conclusion that either has anything to do with the sexual prowess or attractiveness of the submarine crew.)

I trust my describing our last two presidents as “Draft Dodgers in Chief” will end any reader’s notion that I favor Republicans or Democrats in my views on military. My impression of the Republicans regarding military matters is that they are too trigger happy and too trusting of military leaders with regard to spending and strategies and tactics. My general impression of the Democrats’ military posture is that they have a broad hatred and contempt for the military. The military is a necessity. Anything that’s worth doing should be done right, including maintaining a military.

Getting spit on

I was not one of the Vietnam vets who ever got spit on. Although I was one of the many who were told by the Army not to wear our uniforms when we appeared off the military base.

I will bet that the vast majority of the spitters were Democrats or left of the Democrats politically.

When I entered the military, you had to wear your uniform when you traveled by plane or train in order to get the then standard half-fare deal. By the time I got back from Vietnam, they had changed the policy so that you only had to show your military ID card to get half fare. You could wear civilian clothes when you traveled. The reason for the change was to help us avoid being spit on or otherwise hassled. Although members of the military have a statutory legal right to wear the uniform, we were explicitly advised not to wear our uniforms because of spitters and other harassment.

Fewer wars if we had a draft

Perhaps the main reason to have a draft is to have fewer wars. When the Iraq invasion was pending, I wrote that I thought it was probably the right thing to do, but that I would oppose it if any of my three draft-age sons had to go. Therefore, I said, I must not really be adequately in favor of it. Had there been a draft, I would have actively argued and voted against the war. When it was other father’s sons and daughters going, it did not seem like my problem. War is much too serious a business for it not to be everyone’s problem in the nation in question.

Georges Clemenceau famously said that, “War is to important to be left to the generals.” It’s also true that war is too important to be left to military personnel who had to be persuaded to join for reasons other than duty or patriotism.

George is a good soldier

Another thing I am not saying is that the “George” types did not do their duty and exhibit courage and all that. They generally did. They are probably disproportionately responsible for screw-ups like friendly fire and atrocities and so forth, but as a group, they did their duty and were brave.

The question I am addressing here is not whether they were good or bad, but whether America is best served by a military that consists 100% of volunteers. It is not.

Universal military service?

In many countries, including many much admired by American leftists, military service is mandatory for all. Wikipedia has a list of countries that have various forms of mandatory military service. You can see it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription#Countries_with_mandatory_military_service_.28partial_list.29. It includes such bastions of admired-by-the-left culture as Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. That Web site also has various arguments against conscription (a draft). My impression is that the authors are not neutral on the subject.

Too many soldiers

Am I advocating universal military service? No. I sort of like the idea from an egalitarian standpoint, but I doubt it would be practical. We are the third most populous country in the world after China and India. We have 300 million people. If you remove people who are what was called 4-F (physically unfit) during World War II, you would still probably have about 250 million to serve when they passed through their late teens or early twenties. That’s a lot of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines for a country that currently only has 500,000 military on active duty and 700,000 in the Guard and Reserves.

If you figure the 250 million Americans have about 60 years of adult life, on average, you would have about 4 million people at each age. If, say, you made age 19 the year for military service, we would have a 4-million person military continuously. Actually, it would go up and down due to the Baby Boom, echo of the Baby Boom, and so forth. That is a World War II level of manpower. We had 8 million in uniform the day that war ended in 1945.

Too much money

In addition to being a massive military probably bigger than we need, it would cost an astonishing amount, and render those same 4 million a year veterans eligible for medical care, education and home mortgage benefits. Not only would the cost of maintaining so many in the military be huge, their absence from the civilian workforce would also take a huge toll in lost income taxes, productivity, etc. In September 2006, only 1.7 million Americans were unemployed. So you can see that putting 4 million a year in the military would greatly disrupt the civilian work force.

So I am discussing universal military service only to put what I am advocating—universal eligibility for a lottery-based draft—into perspective and to compare to other nations’ military draft policies.

If you figure half the current active-duty people would be draftees, you would be drafting about 1/2 x 400,000 = 200,000 a year and if there are indeed 4 million eligible, that would be 200,000 ÷ 4,000,000 = 5%. At present, I believe we recruit about 80,000 a year into the military. If that were all you wanted to draft, the percentage of people 19 years old being drafted would be 80,000 ÷ 4,000,000 = 2%. So the average eligible person would have 98% probability of not being drafted.

We had a peacetime draft before

Most Americans think of a draft as a war-time measure. Actually, we had a draft in peacetime for about three months before we entered World War II and between World War II and Vietnam. Elvis Presley, Ralph Nader, and Senator Ted Kennedy were among the famous people drafted during peacetime. Nader had graduated from Harvard Law School before he was drafted. The Army, in typical fashion, made him a cook. Ted Kennedy had just been thrown out of Harvard for cheating when he was drafted. In 1971, as a senator, Kennedy opposed ending the draft and going to the all-volunteer force.

Letting the rich avoid service during the Civil War

During the Civil War, young men could buy their way out of the draft. It was called a “commutation fee” and it was $300. Adjusted for inflation, $300 in 1913 would be $6,112 in 2006 dollars. I cannot go back before 1913 because that is the limit of the Consumer Price Index calculator on the Internet. So we can see that the 1863 $300 “commutation fee” was probably upwards of $10,000 in today’s dollars.

Today, we claim to abhor the notion that one could buy one’s way out of the draft for a sum that most people could not afford then. But have we really eliminated that or just changed the payment flow? To put it another way, does the current military have disproportionate representation by lower financial class persons? It seems that it does.

So how can we claim we have gotten rid of the Civil War “commutation fee?” The rich are still buying their way out of the military. Only now they do it by paying taxes that are spent on recruiting advertising and incentives ranging from military salaries to college tuition.

The poor pay no such taxes because of their income being below the lowest tax bracket. And those same low-income individuals are the targets of the recruiting drives. Who else regards the military pay and tuition benefits as desirable enough to risk their lives for them?

The Civil War commutation fee just cut out the middleman. Nowadays, the rich are still buying their way out of military service, but their “commutation fees” are being “laundered” by the IRS and the various recruiting commands.

Draft is almost universally hated in the U.S.

I am aware that, unlike the European countries that have drafts, the citizens of the U.S. are almost universally opposed to the draft. Even Charlie Rangel, who called for reinstitution of the draft, was just trying to make a point, not actually bring back the draft. So I have no illusions about whether my recommendation will be followed.

The current discussion of whether to reinstitute the draft is mindless and profoundly selfish. People simply do not want to be drafted and they do not want their child to be drafted. Period. End of discussion. End of thinking about the matter. “Let George do it,” is how this mindset was described during World War II. George being anyone other than me or my child. As I explained above, George is probably not the best person to do or even adequately qualified to do it.

As far as I can tell, virtually no one cares about the quality of U.S. military troops as evidenced by the near total lack of people seriously advocating a draft. All anyone cares about is avoiding service and, in the case of politicians and military leaders, avoiding angering those who wish to avoid service.

Is a ‘professional’ military better than an amateur one?

Many people say the all-volunteer army is “professional” and the draft military is amateur. End of discussion.

Hardly. First, you cannot win an argument by simply applying an attractive label (“professional”) to your side and an unattractive one (“amateur”) to the other side.

Furthermore, although “professionals” are generally better than amateurs, that is reversed in bureaucracies. I am not the only businessman who would have few qualms about hiring a former military person—but only if he or she was in the military only for a brief period. I and many others regard career military people as poisoned by decades of being a bureaucrat.

Bureaucracy is bad and the way they do things generally does not work in the competitive business world. Career military noncoms and officers who retire from the military generally take government jobs. Why? Because they are experienced, “professional” bureaucrats. They are often viewed with suspicion by civilian businessmen and they, in turn, view competitive civilian businesses as too cut-throat and risky. Interesting, isn’t it, that military people who sometimes say, “Killing is our business,” would shun merely metaphorically “cut-throat” businesses.

‘Professional’ at what?

And what exactly is it that current military people are professionals at? It sure isn’t winning wars. The last true war with front lines and all that was Korea—which was a tie not a victory. Vietnam and all subsequent U.S. wars other than Desert Storm (expelling Iraq from Kuwait in 1991) were civil wars. Did we win any of those? Somalia? Afghanistan? Iraq? We seem to have gotten our way in Panama, but I doubt the tactics and strategies of the U.S. in the Panama “war” are studied at West Point as much as Napoleon, Hannibal, Robert E. Lee, and Douglas MacArthur.

In addition to our not having much success intervening in civil wars, the sheer amount of time individuals in our current military brass have spent exchanging fire with an enemy is measured in minutes or hours. Desert Storm literally lasted 100 hours. How much could even the most diligent student of war learn in 100 hours?

In professional baseball, that’s called a “cup of coffee.” As in, “Did you ever get to the majors?” “Yeah. I had a cup of coffee in 2003 in September with the Cubs.” The phrase “cup of coffee” in professional baseball refers to a brief stint of days or weeks with a major league team.

The typical highly decorated officer of the current U.S. military has combat decorations from no more than minutes or hours of contact with the enemy. I do not mean to diminish the service or courage of those men and women, but such brief experience is hardly a basis for claiming to be a “professional” in the sense that lawyers or doctors or engineers or athletes claim to be professionals. True professionals undergo years of relevant training and years more of daily experience. War is, fortunately, a rare event. But the fact that it is rare unavoidably means that professional expertise at successful war fighting is also correspondingly rare.

The U.S. military has more than its share of criminals and high school dropouts for the word “professional” to be used in any but the broadest definition of that term. They are professional only in the athletic sense of because they get paid for it. and that brings us back to the term “mercenary” which the advocates of the all-volunteer military do not like. You can’t ignore the fact that people are in the military in part for the pay when the question of whether we have a “mercenary army” comes up, then point to the mere fact that they get paid for what they do to prove they are “professionals.” You can’t have it both ways.

Draftees typically serve for two years; volunteers, for three. Don’t tell me that extra year is all it takes to be exalted as a “professional” compared to the mere “amateurs” who were drafted.

Combat ‘experts’

During the buildup to Desert Storm, I got a kick out of middle-grade officers—captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels—pontificating to their troops about combat in front of news cameras. “How would they know?” I would comment to my family members. Those guys were 25 to 35 years old. It was 1991. U.S. combat activity in Vietnam ended in 1972. Men who were 35 years old in 1991 were 16 years old when Vietnam ended. Exactly what “war” did they fight in to earn the right to pontificate about combat in 1991?

They and their supporters would point to their training. The training I got from 1964 to 1972 was World War II European Theater tactics. Watching the History Channel and Military Channel depictions of current basic training and SEAL, Ranger, paratroop, and other similar training, it still looks to me like we are mainly practicing for World War II in Europe. Occasionally, I see men and women on TV military shows practicing clearing buildings in an urban city—which was actually also a World War II chore—albeit one of the few still needed.

Each combat action that U.S. military are in is different—different from prior combat and even different from simultaneous action like Iraq and Afghanistan. Expertise learned in Fallujah may not even apply to Basra, let alone to Afghanistan or Bosnia. The enemy is different. The terrain is different. The climate is different. The weapons are different.

So what does the military teach the troops to prepare them for the next combat theater—to make them “professionals” at winning actions in that theater? Heck, the expertise of veterans of the European Theater in World War II may not have even been of much use in the Pacific Theater had they been transferred there—even though the two theaters were simultaneous.

Infantry and armor only

Note that I am mainly talking about infantry and armor tactics here. The Air Force, Navy, and artillery deliver explosives to distant, inanimate objects like buildings, bridges, ships, and aircraft. They would also shoot at groups of enemy soldiers in the open if they had the chance.

They are amazingly good at that and getting better every year. Why? Because they can practice and because they can make better use of technological advances than guys fighting in house to house in cities against enemies pretending to be innocent civilians. It is much harder to realistically practice ducking improvised explosive devices and enemies who pretend to be civilians or allied solider or police and/or hide among women and children.

The U.S. Air Force, Navy, and artillery are so good that no American enemy in their right mind will give them an appropriate target. When the Taliban did briefly, they were promptly vaporized. So were the Iraqis in the Kuwait war in 1991.

Afraid to use the military

One manifestation of the all-volunteer military is that we are afraid to use it. An all-volunteer military is a relatively small military.

In his book Utility of Force, retired British general Rupert Smith has a subhead

We fight to preserve the force

Under it he says,

The fourth trend brings us back to the pre-Napoleonic era, in which the warring armies could not fully commit to the definitive fight since, lacking a system of cheap manpower such as conscription and given the expense of materiel, they could not afford to replace their forces. These issues have once again become relevant in our modern times, for different reasons but with the same effect: we fight so as to preserve the force.

He elaborates that politicians now fear “body bag” effect and are overly averse to casualties.

Some readers may think casualty aversion is a sign of sanity.

Yes and no.

While avoiding casualties per se is obviously good, one must not lose sight of the big picture. Sometimes excessive reluctance to incur casualties in a given situation can lead to even great casualties later. A casualty in time sometimes saves nine.

While there is a danger in military leaders who apply the phrase, “They are expendable” too freely, there is an equal or greater danger in being so timid and fearful of casualties that you incur even more casualties over the long run as a result of your initial timidity. To the extent that the lack of a draft causes such timidity, the lack of a draft, paradoxically, increases casualties. That is the cruel, but undeniable, calculus of military actions.

Does the military exist to serve the needs of the career military people or to fight wars?
On 8/23/07, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine General Peter Pace reportedly will advise the President to reduce the number of troops in Iraq. Why? Because the military does not have the stamina or enough people to sustain such large numbers of deployment to combat areas. “Strain the military” is the phrase in the Los Angeles Times article. The article says the military believes they need to reduce the size of the forces in Iraq in order to bolster the military’s ability to respond to other threats.

Let me get this straight. We send troops to battle at the convenience of the military not as needed to deal with threats to our security? Defense policy is to be set by some sort of military union rules about how long a soldier or Marine can be in a combat area?

This is a bunch of bull. Accepting for the sake of argument that we need to win the war in Iraq, General Pace needs to say “We need more troops,” perio