The Military

[ShadySands]

Americans and Their Military, Drifting Apart

 

Had some interesting discussions with friends about this opinion piece yesterday (Memorial Day) and wanted to get your thoughts on it, especially since a lot of you are not American and come from places with mandatory service.

[Walsingham]

It's an interesting question. If you want an interesting curveball view, check out the way Societies treat non-native soldiers. Particularly the campaign by Joanna Lumley to improve British Army treatment of gurkhas. 

 

My own view is that the public in most Western nations struggle to reconcile popular media antipathy to warfighting with the popular media affection for warfight_ers_. Tough, self-reliant, self-sacrificing. And the contrast between those values and the values of other public figures such as celebrities and politicians.

 

Most people reconcile this struggle by painting the Armed Forces as victims in wars beyond their control. There was a British general who discussed this at length - it's not my idea. But I haven't time to look him up just now.

[Enoch]

There is, of course, always going to be a culture gap between the civilian and military.  But I'm not so sure that the authors are proving much by citing statistics for miliary service relative to the period when we still used conscription (not to mention their WWII references, when the entire culture was functionally militarized).  For one thing, they treat the lower numbers of folks serving as the reason for the adoption of technological change, when the opposite is true-- the military adopts new technology because it is more effective, which has also led to declines in manpower needs.  Plus, the 20% of members of Congress with prior military service is still far higher than that percentage in the population as a whole (7%)-- comparing to a time when the bulk of the ruling elite would've been draft-ready during WWII (and was far more male-dominated than today) is not a particularly helpful measuring stick.  And the point about military families is wholly anecdotal and even the anecdotes are limited to Officers only.

 

Yes, it would be nice if Congress were a little less eager to cede warmaking authority to the Executive, and it would be great if they accounted for the full likely costs of military action, communicated that honestly to the public, and paid for it up front.  Good luck with that.  And they do have a good point about how the military has largely cloistered itself in massive base communities, rather than the pre-BRAC dispersement of smaller installations.  Clustering military stuff at places like Ft. Bragg is great for efficiency, but does reduce the scope of day-to-day military-civilian interactions.  But I'm not sure that such squishy cultural justifications are sufficient to overcome the efficiencies of concentration. 

 

But their core suggestion strikes me as rather problemmatic:

 

 

Let’s start with a draft lottery. Americans neither need nor want a vast conscript force, but a lottery that populated part of the ranks with draftees would reintroduce the notion of service as civic obligation. The lottery could be activated when volunteer recruitments fell short, and weighted to select the best-educated and most highly skilled Americans, providing an incentive for the most privileged among us to pay greater heed to military matters.

 

The bulk of the services' manpower needs during major military actions (i.e., the only time when they have trouble with volunteer recruitment) is good old-fashioned infantry.  Does it really make sense to take our "best educated and most highly skilled" citizens out of their ostensibly valuable role in the economy to make them into riflemen?  Sure, we did it in WWII, but there's a big difference between what we should do to address concerns over the how much "heed" is paid to military matters and what we should do to address genocidal global fascist aggressor nations.  Also, however the "weighting" is accomplished, people are going to figure it out and devise a way to game the system. 

[Guard Dog]

Speaking as a vet I am absolutely 100% opposed to any kind of compulsory service or draft. Being in the military is not easy. It is a hard life (although I learned after about two years in it is only as hard as you make it on yourself). To serve well, to succeed in it you have to want to be there. And we should only want the ones who want to be there.

 

The infantry is the most difficult job in the service. It takes someone with quick wits as well as good physical condition to do that job. I was not in that MOS myself but like every other Marine I went through the first phase of the SOI after boot camp and of course had training every week the whole time in. Since draftees ended up almost exclusively in the infantry we would do our military and our nation a serious disservice by filling out it's ranks with people who are just "putting in their time". Past history has proven that out.

 

Granted if we were ever engaged in something on the scale of WWII that changes everything but outside of that... bad idea.

[Nepenthe]

See, that's what I disagree with (having served in a conscript army, myself). It's what, if not outright prevents, certainly abridges the gap between civilian and military Enoch spoke of above.

 

Of course in our case draftees - being everybody - don't wind up as infantry, but in nearly all conceivable military occupations. Personally, I had what in the US would be CA type training... And sure, our situation is different, in the sense that everybody who gents sent abroad is either a volunteer reservist or member of the active paid staff.

[BruceVC]

In South Africa during Apartheid conscription was rigidly enforced. And if you were unluckily enough to be conscripted in the late 1970's and 1980's you could be  sent to South West Africa ( now called Namibia) or the border between Namibia and Angola where you fought Cubans, Russians and Africans that were aligned with Communist ideology.

 

It was a real war and this had a serious detrimental mental impact to many people long after there military service was finished. The problem is that Conscription is fine when a real threat faces your country but in the case of South Africa it was used as a way to enforce Apartheid, which was a morally reprehensible reason. So after Apartheid ended many people now questioned what  they had spent up to 10 years fighting for. At least in the USA the veterans are still seen as heroes and are treated with respect.

 

One more important point about South African conscription is that South Africa also played a big part during the Cold War by preventing the spread of Communism through Southern African. So its military efforts weren't just about keeping Apartheid in place.

 

So I am only in favour of conscription if the country faces a real external threat or absolutely needs additional manpower for an important foreign deployment .

[Nepenthe]

You raise interesting points. I'd suggest that conscription works best when there is a threat of massive conflict, total war, if you will, but less so in a situation of constant low intensity/remote conflict.

[BruceVC]

You raise interesting points. I'd suggest that conscription works best when there is a threat of massive conflict, total war, if you will, but less so in a situation of constant low intensity/remote conflict.

 

Well said my friend, you have summarized my post nicely

 

And they say Lawyers tend to over-complicate things

[Nepenthe]

 

You raise interesting points. I'd suggest that conscription works best when there is a threat of massive conflict, total war, if you will, but less so in a situation of constant low intensity/remote conflict.

 

Well said my friend, you have summarized my post nicely

 

And they say Lawyers tend to over-complicate things

 

 

Just the bad ones.

[Orogun01]

So democracy is dead because people are uninformed and impotent, the government has an all warrior caste and can launch a war at any time, plus they can drone American citizens on US soil. What else is new?

This is why whenever I try to explain my thoughts on the US I always tell them that it's like Star Wars, there is an evil empire that bombs down planets that's being opposed by an order of religious nuts that came from a sand planet.

[Guard Dog]

Orogun you are such a pessimist!

[Walsingham]

So democracy is dead because people are uninformed and impotent, the government has an all warrior caste and can launch a war at any time, plus they can drone American citizens on US soil. What else is new?

 

This is why whenever I try to explain my thoughts on the US I always tell them that it's like Star Wars, there is an evil empire that bombs down planets that's being opposed by an order of religious nuts that came from a sand planet.

 

 

[Monte Carlo]

I like the whole Starship Troopers schtick. Weaklings who cant hack fighting giant bugs on strange alien planets shouldn't be allowed to vote.

[Walsingham]

I agree with Monte. We need to GM some giant bugs, pronto. Or failing that cram Volourn into a giant crab suit.

 

 

~~

 

I wasn't conscripted, being in England, but my boarding school had compulsory cadets. It was appalling. Nearly put me off the Army for life.

 

I think that far from improving the connection with the Armed Forces conscription hugely undermines it by filling the ranks with people who don't want to be there and who drag down those who do.

 

Having said that I _DO_ think conscription into some sort of bloody awful service like nursing homes would be improving. Nothing builds character like getting sprayed with p***. But basically I'd just find it funny to mither people younger, healthier, and better looking than myself.

[Nepenthe]

I agree with Monte. We need to GM some giant bugs, pronto. Or failing that cram Volourn into a giant crab suit.

 

 

~~

 

I wasn't conscripted, being in England, but my boarding school had compulsory cadets. It was appalling. Nearly put me off the Army for life.

 

I think that far from improving the connection with the Armed Forces conscription hugely undermines it by filling the ranks with people who don't want to be there and who drag down those who do.

 

Having said that I _DO_ think conscription into some sort of bloody awful service like nursing homes would be improving. Nothing builds character like getting sprayed with p***. But basically I'd just find it funny to mither people younger, healthier, and better looking than myself.

 

Yyyeah, you might be onto something, my experiences would certainly agree. The happiest conscripts I've known have been in the paras/frogmen, where you not only have to volunteer, you actually have to apply... while we CA guys were placed in a borderline penal unit... Of course, it proved useful later on and might have had some kind of perverse genius in it, building our civilian affairs talents by forcing us to deal with a platoon of total muppets, but it did ruin the whole backpack and gun in the woods thing for me. Who'd think that walking around with a fully automatic 7.62 rifle could suck that much?

[Agiel]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/how-meals-win-wars/276448/

 

Fantastic article from the Atlantic about the little stuff.

[Walsingham]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/how-meals-win-wars/276448/

 

Fantastic article from the Atlantic about the little stuff.

 

Funny thing about people. It's very often the little things, isn't it? Not even just food. But a nod in the morning, or a teaspoon with the coffee. I wonder what that says about our cognition?

[Drowsy Emperor]

I'm for conscription and against professional armies as it leads to them becoming a mercenary pretorian guard of whoever is the ruling class while the general population grows passive. 

[Orogun01]

What do you think PMCs are? I'll give you a clue Private Military Contractor.

[Volourn]

Conscription is garbage unless sued as a last resort.

 

Why would the army want someone who doesn't want to be there? That's how you get peons who shoot up their own comrades. Plus, i don't believe in slavery and conscription *is* slavery.

[Walsingham]

The simple fact is that modern warfare is as far beyond musket armed conscripts as those conscripts were beyond spear armed hunters. Conscription has value, but for warfighting? Forget about it.