I was in the old Army, when any idiot could serve.

[ThomWV]

I was watching an interview the other day on C-span, for the life of me I could not tell you who was being interviewed by who, but I do have a pretty good idea of what the subject was. For those of you who don't watch 'the sausage being made' every day there is a fierce battle being waged by the Department of Defense to keep its budget despite any attempts to cut so much as a dime out of it. Generals and Admirals have been scurrying all over Capital Hill.

So the conversation had to be about DOD budget cuts and as part of it one of the guys defended the all volunteer force we have today. He said, and his interviewer nodded agreement to more or less continuously, that the complexity of todays military tools is so great that only the best of trainees can handle the demands of service, can learn to operate the tools of war. A draft force would just bring in untrainable rabble, as likely to go AWOL as make it through their short term of service. That was their story.

It didn't make sense to me. Years ago I joined the Army but served with plenty of draftees. The only difference I could see between them and me was they were going to get out sooner. How can the military's mouth-pieces say they can only use the best and the brightest in the face of decreasing standards for enlistment that we've been told about for years now? It is reported that now-a-days people who were previously considered unfit to serve because of prior felony convictions can sign up with wavers - which are routinely granted. And what about the story that sneaks out now and then about the Air Force being run by a bunch of Religious Zealots, are they the special folks that we need in charge of not only the world's airspace but now the Space Command as well?

When the military demands that they need to chose who will serve because the common stock isn't qualified I think it tells us all that something just might be wrong and the answer to this one ain't 42.

[former9thward]

1. The old army was very inefficient.

The new army is much more professional. Why do you think there was massive drug use in Vietnam and virtually none in Iraq and Afghanistan? The old army was filled with draftees who did not give a fuck and just wanted to get through there time without dying. The new army is much better at training and working with new high tech weapons. I would never want to see a return to the draft unless the country was attacked on our shores.

[tabasco]

4. Draftees won the Civl War, WWI and WWII.

Maybe your history classes only went back to the 70s.

[former9thward]

5. War is different now.

Previous wars were massive armies thrown at each other. Troops were glorified cannon fodder. Modern wars the U.S. has been involved with are being fought with technology primarily. Why do you think the Iraq/Afghanistan troop loss is about 5000 over 10 years while WW II was 500,000 loss over 3 1/2 years?

[Laluchacontinua]

19. Funny that 70% of our casualties have no more than a HS education,

since they're such a select bunch.

http://www.stonybrook.edu/workingclass/publications/Casualty%20study%20main%20report%20Oct%202011.pdf

43% of enlistees cite their reason for enlisting as "economic" or "economic + patriotic".

"Americans who have died in Afghanistan are disproportionately white and Native
American working class young people with no more than a high school education."

[former9thward]

23. The 'people go into the army because of poverty' crowd

used to always claim the army was disproportionately black and minorities as proof. Now you are saying it is disproportionately white. Which is it? Are whites now poorer than blacks and Latinos? Just another example of when you have a preconceived agenda you will make any 'fact' support that agenda.

[Laluchacontinua]

26. The fact is 70% of deaths = HS education or less. It doesn't really matter whether

they're white, black or yellow -- they don't appear to be the select group you portray.

PS: There is no contradiction between black soldiers being overrepresented in Vietnam & not being overrepresented in today's military.

[former9thward]

32. You were the one who brought up the racial aspect and now you run away from it.

Facts are such pesky things. Why are obsessed about a H.S. education. Do you think people with "only a H.S. education" can't be trained or work with technology? How arrogant.

[Laluchacontinua]

35. Yes, facts are pesky things, and I find that when I bring facts into the picture,

often people are unable to respond coherently.

[former9thward]

39. Yes, only you know the "facts"

All of the rest of us should bow to your brilliance. OK, got it.

[Laluchacontinua]

40. If you care to provide a link for your "fact" I'll be happy to look at it.

Otherwise your claim is just an unsupported assertion.

[former9thward]

42. Which "fact"

You are the one who posted contradictory "facts" which caused my response.

[Laluchacontinua]

43. like i said.

[PavePusher]

29. Education level is not the sole, or even primary, indicator of intelligence....

and once in, we receive a LOT of training in a broad range of subjects. Much of it is directly translatable to college credits.

[Laluchacontinua]

31. No one said it was. It has a reasonably good overlap with class & income

however. And class background/income is the best correlate with IQ results there is.

PS: Just to make it clear: I personally don't accept IQ tests as a measure of some innate "intelligence" & the association with class is just one of many reasons.

[WinkyDink]

25. Maybe Iraq and Afghanistan are smaller than THE ENTIRE WORLD?

[former9thward]

37. The ENTIRE WORLD was not at war in WW II

Sorry you failed that #worldhistorylesson.

[PavePusher]

28. And they did so in large part by sheer weight of numbers.

The current military is much smaller than the numbers of the past, and we are more highly trained and educated than at any point in history.

[Laluchacontinua]

14. Yeah, most americans are much too stupid to be in the military. To hear the PTB tell it,

most americans are too stupid to do much of anything.

[WinkyDink]

24. "drug use in Vietnam and virtually none in Iraq and Afghanistan"~~Hahahahaha! Riiiiight.

[former9thward]

33. The media would love to show drug use in Iraq/Afghanistan

Just like they did in Vietnam. I'm sure you will show links to media stories about drug use by our troops in those countries.

[Laluchacontinua]

36. Actually, they wouldn't. Which is why they don't. Stories of drug use by

the troops would undermine support for our five-front 10-years & counting war on terra.

TV coverage of this war is NOTHING like coverage during Vietnam. Basically the media prefer NOT to cover this war. They would prefer we forget it's happening except for designated photo ops.

The media prefer not to cover ANYTHING real.

[former9thward]

38. You obviously don't watch TV or read internet news. Fine, your choice .

The major networks cover Afghanistan and Iraq before that all of the time on their newscasts. Much more than Vietnam was ever covered because the technology for real time coverage is there where in Vietnam reels of film had to be flown back to the U.S. But even if you think there is an enormous conspiracy by the media to cover up drug use, how about the internet? How come no stories about drug use from the hundreds of thousands of troops who have been in those countries? Or are all of them part of your conspiracy too?

[Laluchacontinua]

41. This guy must be part of my conspiracy theory.

JD: How would you compare the coverage of Vietnam War with the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

NU: Vastly different. In Vietnam, we photojournalists pretty much were free to tag along missions and even roam about the country at our own risk. Yes, we took horror images of dead bodies, injured soldiers, burning villages and monks. But we also captured pictures of humanity like mothers carrying for their children and peasants tending their farms...

That's why beginning with the invasion of Panama under Bush Sr., the Pentagon has instituted a tight policy to restrict and control the movements and images produced by war photojournalists and videographers.

As soon as the U.S. began the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and (2002) years later in Iraq, many of my photojournalist colleagues from the AP and other news organizations headed over to the Middle East. I was about to go, but my friends who had been there advised me to stay. Most became frustrated because of the many restrictions on photography. Dead soldiers, no. Body bags, no. Injured soldiers, no. Civilian deaths, no.

Often times only one or two photographers were allowed to tag along some missions. Their photos became pool photos for all news agencies. Several photographers ignored the rules and ventured out of their own. But they immediately got black listed and had to go home. The control of war images was so tight that some of my friends also voluntarily packed their bags.

http://newamericamedia.org/2011/07/coverage-of-wars-a-photojournalists-perspective.php


and the nyt (2008 report):

Since the start of last year, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a part of the nonprofit Pew Research Center, has tracked reporting by several dozen major newspapers, cable stations, broadcast television networks, Web sites and radio programs. Iraq accounted for 18 percent of their prominent news coverage in the first nine months of 2007, but only 9 percent in the following three months, and 3 percent so far this year.

The policy debate in Washington that dominated last year’s Iraq coverage has almost disappeared from the news. And reporting on events in Iraq has fallen by more than two-thirds from a year ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/business/media/24press.html


and these guys...

Media coverage of U.S. military casualties has been met by Bush administration efforts to downplay reports about soldiers' deaths throughout the invasion. Unlike the Vietnam War, when the media regularly published photographs of flag-draped coffins of American military personnel killed in action, the Bush administration prohibited the release of such photographs during the Iraq invasion. This ban was instituted in 2000 by the Clinton administration, and mirrors a similar ban put in place during the Gulf War,<50> though it appears to have been enforced less tightly during previous military operations.

According to Senator Patrick Leahy, the administration also scheduled the return of wounded soldiers to Dover Air Force Base for after midnight so that the press would not see them.<51> This practice was documented by both the Drudge Report and Salon.com.<52> A number of Dover photographs were eventually released in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by blogger Russ Kick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War


Just outside the main gate to Bagram airfield, a U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, sits a series of small makeshift shops known by locals as the Bagram Bazaar. For Afghans, it is the place to buy American goods, but the stalls that make up the heart of the bazaar are also well known for what they provide American soldiers stationed at Bagram. Walking through the bazaar it takes less than 10 minutes for a vendor in his early 20s to step out and ask, “You want whiskey?” “No, heroin,” I tell him. He ushers me into his store with a smile....

http://www.salon.com/2007/08/07/afghan_heroin/

[former9thward]

44. I am talking about drug use and you know it.

You conveniently left out Afghanistan. Yes Iraq coverage has lessened in the last couple years because our military effort has wound down there.

But back to the point. I am not talking about showing dead bodies, coffins, etc. Drug use. You say it is the same as Vietnam and that is BS. Again are the hundreds of thousands of troops who were in those countries all part of your conspiracy? Many of them are against the war. They have access to internet blogs, sites, etc. Must be a big room to fit all those involved in the conspiracy.

[Kaleva]

2. I was told by old timers that there was a big difference between draftees and the all volunteer forc

I joined back the Navy back in '77 and a number of chiefs and first classes mentioned that the quality of people serving increased after the draft ended. To be sure, there still were some dirt bags but overall, there was a noted improvement over the draftees and men who joined the Navy to escape being drafted into the Army or Marines.

[provis99]

6. it's not quality they were interested in.

Volunteers are simply more likely to obey immoral commands and follow wrong orders than draftees are.

[Kaleva]

7. On what evidence do you base that on?

Most of Sherman's army that ravaged the South was made up of draftees. I don't think everyone involved in the Mai Lai massacare was a volunteer. As it was a rare bird who volunteered for combat duty in Vietnam, my guess is that the bulk of Charlie Company was made up of draftees.

[provis99]

34. since you gave no evidence for your assertion

you have no business asking me for one first.

[PavePusher]

30. WTF?! n/t

[tammywammy]

3. With all the RIFing going on, the service is much more selective. n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. How many wars has the "New" army won against the "untrainable rabble" they keep losting to?

Looks like all that high tech gear run by professionals is the equivalent of the red coats worn by the "professional" Brit army in the ex-colonies.

[Kaleva]

10. We didn't win Korea or Vietnam with draftees.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Seeing as how we're so bad at it, we should get out of the war business.

[Major Hogwash]

17. Post of the day!!! Som people will never getit. Even if the soldiers had PhDs, they would get killed

That's what war is.
And 20 years later, they all line up on different sides and fight another war.

Bush should have been held accountable for invading Iraq to begin with.

[Major Hogwash]

18. And we should stop all this private contracting for an Army bullshit, too!!

Since when did we okay using mercs to fight these wars??
It's wrong, and I don't pay taxes to pay some redneck cracker twice what our soldiers get paid, just so they can go over to a foreign country and wax civilians!!!

Outfits like Xe should never be allowed to exist!!
I don't know whose idea Blackwater was, but it should never have been allowed to get off of the ground.

I don't understand why Pelosi or Reid doesn't purpose just such a bill.

[Laluchacontinua]

13. I think we've only "won" one war since WW2, actually. And it wasn't really much of a war.

Grenada.

[eridani]

16. We haven't had many real wars--only occupations.

Anti-occupation forces only have to make occupation too expensive to keep doing it. They don't have conquer occupiers and force them to directly serve their own interests.

[Zanzoobar]

9. Consider it a welfare program.

You can either pay people to sit around or pay them to kill brown folks.

It's a ruthless game.

[Mimosa]

12. I've heard of kids up for first offense drug offences being told to 'join the military'

I've heard of kids up for first offense drug offenses being told to 'join the military' and the charges against them would be dropped.

[Downwinder]

15. Alvin York was a draftee. n/t

[SoDesuKa]

20. Draftees Are Good Soldiers

This topic comes up every now and then. I tend to agree with the guy who posted on DU that draftees are good soldiers. It's not that difficult to be a soldier. The notion that they only take the cream of the crop is recruiter bullshit.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=688928&mesg_id=688943

[Downwinder]

21. The warm bodies I meet today

don't appear that different than the warm bodies in the '60s.

[SoDesuKa]

22. Troops Are Troops

With all this talk of "unit cohesion" etc., the fact remains that military roles are rigidly defined and the players are modular. Infantrymen are far more alike than they are different. Fancier weaponry doesn't change the essential task. One out, one in, same same.

If you're talking about support troops you might have an argument for quality difference. But I don't buy that one either.

[JVS]

27. 2 factors here are being conflated, one is the draft, the other is contracting out.

Without the draft, there is a narrower band of people who enter the military. At the top end this keeps out most of the people who would have sought academic deferrals in the past. They have plans and these often don't involve the military. Some of these guys you can lure back in with ROTC to pay for education. But for lots of Americans with good prospects, the military just isn't tempting. The other side of the coin is that you also no longer get the influx of the general population that led Robert McNamara to try to make some use of the least qualified candidates with his Project 100,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000 . So you end up with a narrower band.

The effect of contracting is that it allows the military to be more selective in what it does with the smaller band of people who are applicants rather than draftees. In the movie Patton, there is a line about being able to not have to tell your grandchildren that you spent the war shoveling shit in Louisiana. There are a lot less shit shoveling jobs now. Without contracted support the military might very well need to lower standards to regain the people to do that work, but since they have support they can keep standards from falling.