(One of our other dogs, Gene Harrison provoked me in an e-mail by soliciting my opinions on ROTC and conscription. Asking Rurik for an opinion is much like trying to get a drink from a firehose. You're guaranteed to get all you wanted and more.)

The draft? For me that is a difficult question. My brain, my heart and my gut all pull in different directions. And in today’s arena, it is made worse that the only ones arguing for reinstating conscription are a few dishonest schemers, like Charlie Rangel, who I know intend nothing but mischief. Thirty years ago, soon after Nixon had abolished the draft in a futile attempt to buy off the Watergate mob, I argued that is was a mortal mistake. Even if I was right, I think that three decades have made the end of conscription one of those irreversible mistakes, much like abolition of literacy requirements for voting, or the direct election of senators. You cannot turn an omelet back into the eggs.

At the time, I supported universal male conscription because it provided a large pool of manpower available for national defense and because it served as "the school of the nation".

As the "school of the nation", the draft took men from all walks of life and all social classes and mixed them together, Blacks from The Projects, Southern Rednecks, Urban Jews, Asians, Midwestern small town hicks, the works. Contrary to the civics class mythology, this did not teach us to love all our fellow Americans and treasure all the different ethnic groups. More often, it taught us that our preconceptions were spot on, and turned prejudices into postjudices. But at least the various antagonisms then were based on experience, including a knowledge of how to deal with that disliked "other". The military also taught us all to keep the peace with each other, to submerge our dislikes in behalf of the common cause. In fact it taught us to do this within our own ethnic and social groups as well. You may not like that sonofabitch, but if you cooperate, you’ll both return home alive, if not then neither. This is a truth and a talent that goes way beyond any brotherhood sermons. And I learned that intelligence, even genius-level, is only one particular talent of many, no more no less. Sometimes other talents, such as physical strength, coordination, or acute vision can be just as important or even more so. In our motorpool was a fellow, Dwight from Sink’s Grove, West Virginia, who was one of the dimmest doofuses I’ve ever met. He was also the best mechanic in the motorpool, a mechanical genius who could make even the most hopeless truck or scoop loader respond. The military also taught us self-discipline, and a certain reliability. And an ability to fend for one’s self. And attention to detail, and the ability to respond during a crisis without losing one’s composure. so the military teaches lots of character traits which seem increasingly rare in our civilianized society.

The military also inculcated something else, a primal love of country transcending ideological lines. A psychologist might recognize this as the result of the stresses of training and of warfare operating through Festinger’s "Cognitive Dissonance" theory. The brutalizing and hazing of Combat training were intended mainly to condition the trainee to immediate obedience and to prepare him mentally for the stress of battle. but it also served as a rite of passage, a proof that one has passed the test and become a member of the tribe, making the achievement far more valuable and permanent.

Yes. You heard me right. I said hazing. Harshness, hazing and risk are what distinguishes the military from other sorts of pretend national service beloved of progressives and pseudo-Conservatives. Job-, Ameri-, Peace-, Feelgood-Corps. none of them produce any real esprit. The fact that the schoolmarms and little old ladies of both sexes and all ages cannot comprehend this is another reason military service is so important. I’ve never heard of an organization the Veterans of Foreign Kibitzing. Nor do I expect to see a website called OldPeaceChickens.com. This tradition is also one of the most important experiences which ties together veterans across the generations transcending the various gneration gaps.

Another major benefit of universal military training is the creation and maintenance of a large inactive reserve. This is implicit in the Second Amendment and its evocation of a citizen militia. This is not so important for feeding once again millions more troops into the maw of the Somme or Bastogne. It is important in case of a defeat which might leave our homeland vulnerable. or even more, in the event of one of those scenarios in which the government turns against its own people, or is captured by some alien force, perhaps a stealth Muslim president or a coup. Or perhaps a new civil war. Such SHTF situations are to be dreaded, but if they happen, it is the veterans who will lead the way in coping. Though the NRA is a fine organization (of which I am proud to be a Life Member), gun safety and marksmanship classes are totally inadequate for a combat tactical situation. Huey, Dewey, and Louie do not shoot back or attack your flanks. A large supply of experienced veterans is a country’s ultimate defense. And for true security, that means that all males should be trained, with at least some experience, since the veterans themselves might pose a potential danger to the liberties of everyone else if they were to become a small but alienated, and skilled minority.

Let us remember the origins and evolution of our own Western civilization. Originally Greece, Rome, and the various barbarian kingdoms all incarnated the traditions of the people armed. Voting by raising the right had originated from the tradition of warriors brandishing aloft their weapons. While the fall of these systems differed somewhat in each case, all may be typified by the Roman example of the people who ceased performing their military duty, hiring instead barbarian mercenaries to fight for them, till at last the Romans were too effete and untrained to do anything but submit when the armies decided they might just take over. Again and again, the story is a variation on this theme, and the peasants who could not forsake their fields, and the townsmen who would not leave their villas came to forfeit their authority to the men-at-arms who did know the uses of sword and spear. The countries which preserved the tradition of the yeomanry in arms, such as England and Switzerland were the places which remained most free. And let us note carefully, that Muslim laws traditionally mandated that weapons were to be restricted to Muslims alone.

Universal, or near universal male military service remains the arbiter against enemies foreign and domestic. Another aspect of this is that a populace familiar with arms tends not to develop the separate military caste which so often leads to the loss of liberty, the collapse of personal freedom, and enserfment for the masses. And this leads me to thoughts about ROTC. If there is to be domestic danger from an army, that danger comes from the commanders. This is particularly the case if the officers become an in-bred class, alienated from the rest of society. Not only might they decide to move to protect the interests of the country from perceived misguided and corrupt political leaders, but civilian leaders, equally alienated in the opposite direction, and totally ignorant of military needs and values might well try to impose unacceptable policies driving the military into a coup sheerly out of self-defense. The best defense against such a situation is to have a large percentage of our officers men who arrive in the officer corps with a civilian higher education and serve relatively briefly before returning to civilian life. And if some of those "civilian officers" make the transition to a service career, so much the better. This will assure that a significant portion of the officer corps will remain in touch with the civilian ethos they are pledged to defend. And it will also tend to make available for later service in civilian leadership positions citizens who have an understanding of military matters, men who can read the military reports and can recognize which military assertions are serious needs and which are bureaucratic scams and diversions. Today far too many of the congressional leaders are incompetent to their jobs of military oversight; they don’t even know the right questions to ask, and cannot tell a straight answer from a lie. Consequently, they respond by treating everything as an attempt to deceive them, but often direct their most scathing criticisms for those problems least deserving. In my opinion, an intelligent enlisted veteran who has studied deeply may be able, but the odds of finding such people are much better among those who have been briefly company and junior field grade officers. To develop such officers in the numbers necessary, we need ROTC. And on the military side of the issue, steady infusions of ROTC officers will mitigate against careerism which seems to have become such a plage of our military since conscription was ended. of course. Conscription and ROTC reinforce each other. The certainty of conscription as an enlisted man has been a traditional motivator for ROTC cadets. And the presence of large numbers of ROTC commissioned officers provides the volume of junior officers needed for a large conscript army.

So where do I find my conflict? What is the negative side of a large conscript army? There are several problems.

About three years ago, I had a rare opportunity. My friend Colonel Walter J. Boyne, USAF (ret.) began writing "Operation Iraqi freedom, What Went Right, What Went Wrong, and Why", Forge Press, 2003. He hired me to serve as a manuscript reader/commentator and assistant, and he began writing even as the war was beginning. In the course of our arguments, I was able to change Walt’s view on several points, and he led me to change my mind about several other issues.

One of these matters was the all-volunteer army (since the other services had long been all volunteer, only the army relying on a draft.). First there is the issue of greater discipline and motivation. In a conscript army, the troops are there unwillingly - by definition, and many of them will behave accordingly. they will give the minimum effort and try to rebel in oh so many ways, trying only to avoid the stockade or other punishments. How many times I heard the expression "Close enough for government work"! Of course, even with the volunteers, the army still harvested a portion of screw-ups, but under the AVF routine, they are more easily jettisoned, and it is not like a conscript force where troops just dare the command to "send me home". of course this makes the life of an officer or senior sergeant so much easier. Of course, this does prejudice somewhat the testimony of those military who loudly champion the AVF.

But this leads to other problems, such as retention and finding sufficient warm bodies when the attrition starts to get ugly. Nobody enlists with the goal of getting maimed. It has led to a need to offer pay and benefits levels to recruits, even for Guard and Reserve components, which are insulting to those of us who served at conscript pay&benefit rates. During the late 1970s and 1980s this was a bigger problem, since there were a lot of people enlisting just for the college benefits and the skiing like they saw in the ads. Some of those people were taken aback when they learned in 1991, and then again in 2002 that military service occasionally might mean fighting a war! By now, it would seem that anyone joining, or remaining in service knows exactly what is involved, and may have joined for precisely that reason. But rumors and debates persist that the military manages to meet its enlistment goals by lowering standards, and bluffing through with a "can do, make it happen" posture. (The reality of these allegations we could know better, had we larger numbers of ex-military people capable of seeing through the camouflage.)

The other really important issue is the degree of training necessary to for a recruit to become proficient in his MOS, or to learn to operate the new high technology combat equipment. Were we to give the current level of training to the old two-year conscript army, they’d be gone before they became fully combat capable. Working with Walt on his book I was overwhelmed learning about the new technologies, not only things like Predator drones, but devices at infantry squad level, now in use. I began to feel that my Viet Nam era training was so outdated, I might well have been better fit for maybe the Spanish American War. Of course this means that a modern squad of professional infantrymen can bring more fire power to bear, can accomplish what maybe would have formerly required an entire battalion. But if those ten men can do the job of 600, then they also absorb that much more in training and expense. Wee we to train and equip a mass conscript army to the same degree we train and equip our volunteer forces, it that would break our defense budge and bankrupt us, let alone the fact that we could not find enough of those masses with the talent to absorb the necessary training.

And attempting to impose a new conscription in the present state of our national culture is likely to prove a political disaster. The great flood of angry volunteers on September 12, seems never to have found its way to the recruiting offices, and by September 15, they seem to have opted to defend America with yellow ribbon magnets. We must also note the deep and bitter divisions in our society, on racial, class, and cultural lines. Do we want to conscript MS-13 gang members? or New Black Panthers? Or perhaps the Arab-Americans from Dearborn? Conscripting the unwilling or openly hostile cohort of our society will lead to the same sort of problems as we experienced in the 1960s, both for the army and for society as a whole. Except that this time with sleeper cells already in America, and a wide-open southern border, it would probably be far worse. And the is no reason t believe that our government would be more ruthless in its response.

Likewise, attempting to pay, to house, to garrison , to equip a mass army at contemporary standards and pay rates would bankrupt us. We could have a mass army or a professional army, but not both.

On balance, at this time, in our current situation I must side with the champions of the AVF. Highly skilled and willing volunteers, suffering fewer casualties are more to our needs than a mass army, semi-trained and suffering mass losses. In my opinion, our difficulties in Iraq right now are attributable lee to a shortage of troops than to arbitrary restrictions on utilizing the full capacities of those that are there. More troops would not make a difference, would only provide the jihadis with more Americans to target. More troops would require more infrastructure and support, and would further degrade our civic affairs efforts.

However, I can imagine scenarios in which this balance could change, rapidly and tragically. If we became involved in a conventional war with China, we might well need a mass army just to hold the perimeters. If Crazy Kim or the Iranian Thug Merchant were to detonate a nuke against a major American theater target, we might lose 25,000 of our high value troops at a single pop. Then, even if we responded by annihilating North Korea in a spectacular mass retaliation, our forces would still be short-handed to pick up the slack elsewhere. Or if we find ourselves in three major theaters at once, perhaps a conflict with Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela simultaneously, with major provocations and actions also being conducted along our Southwestern borders, and against our forces in Iraq. Such a scenario is a distinct possibility.

Impossible as it seems, we need to find some way of combining a small professional military core with an available mass military of limited capability. The reserve components may have been originally intended as the solution, but they have evolved and are much closer to the regular forces and are regualrly on duty. The solution to this dilemma has not yet occured to me. Restructure of the reserve components? Different levels of pay and benefits? Deporting all the slackers off to Pakistan?

hmmm. That last one has some entertaining possibilities.

-Rurik

Contributed by George Mellinger on October 9, 2006 at 09:54 PM in Gene Harrison, George Mellinger, The American Warrior | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: Decurion

Let me interject a buck sergeant's perspective.

The issue of discipline is one near and dear to my heart. I have had enough stress dealing with Joes who enlisted knowing there is a war on, to deal with some sullen conscript that I cannot effectively discipline. Take his pay, his rank, send him to jail? It won't matter because he believes he is already effectively in jail. I'm not going to merely resort to beating him with a baseball bat like some sergeants did "back in the Day". Kick him out? That's his goal.

Personally, I'd rather go to war short bodies than with some one in that situation.

It would kill voluntary recruitment of high-quality Soldiers (which most of the ones that make it through training are) by sending the message that if Uncle Sam wants you, he'll tell you to show up.

How would a draft be carried out? Are we still going to have rich boys showing up with a doctor's note? How about college exemptions? What percentage of the age group would actually serve? In 1960, there were a couple dozen divisions in the Regular Army. Today there are 10. We don't have slots for more than a tiny fraction of the age group, and instead of getting the best of the age group (ie: Those motivated to want to serve and who pass the ASVAB and physical) we get a random selection. You can't enforce any quality control because if it gets out that flunking the ASVAB is a great way to avoid the draft, then no one will pass it.

Oh, says the pro-draft man, let's just quadruple the size of the Army.

Yeah, right. First, it is politically impossible to arm and equip an additional 10 divisions, never mind 30. It would cost too much. Further, the production times are such that it would take years to produce the requisite numbers of vehicles and other equipment. In 1960, some rifles, machine guns, recoiless rifles, and a handful of jeeps and radios were all that was necessary for an infantry battalion. This is no longer the case.

Until that level of equipment was reached, you'd have these sullen masses of conscripts housed in tent (there aren't enough housing for them) in the middle of nowhere (there isn't enough physical space on existing military installations) led by. . .

Yeah, where are we getting the leadership for this horde? Are we going to simply bump everyone in the Regular Army up two or three paygrades and hope they are equal to the task? Spread the Regulars out among all these damned conscripts, thus making every unit we have combat ineffective? You're also diluting the quality of the pool we get to select NCOs from, and guaranteeing that fewer of these troops will desire to stay in the Service long enough to reach more senior paygrades. Perhaps in Vietnam, a Soldier with a year in service would be considered an acceptable candidate for promotion to sergeant. Now, he's a PFC.

A two-year commitment is also misleading. If you send a Soldier through training it lasts between 14 weeks and a year (more technically oriented MOSs--such as Automations Specialist). Then they go to a unit preparing for deployment, ideally at least six-nine months before deployment so they get the full benefit of the predeployment training cycle, and then deploy for a year, then minimum 90 days after deployment for reintegration. You're really talking about a three year commitment, depending on training length.

You want a mass of semi-trained volunteers which would only be liable for self-defense, then use the existing structure. Virginia, Texas, and many other states have a formalized militia structure. Virginia call their the State Defense Force. They are not Federally recognized and funded, and their justification is to fill the National Guard's civil defense functions in event of a Federalization of the National Guard. This structure could be expanded and beefed up, but purely at the State level, without sucking up Federal monies (which would come at the expense of the Regulars, Reservists, and Guard) and without being liable to Federal commitments.

Posted by: Decurion | Oct 10, 2006 4:13:00 AM

Posted by: Jim

I think an all volunteer army would be extremely effective if Veterans of Foreign Wars would help train and organize middle-aged recruits and those recruites - like myself - would be willing to pay their own way if they had some vote in where to go and knowledge of why they are fighting. Darfur - to make an International Statement that other humans will not sit back and tolerate such crimes against humanity. Governments obviously - 5 years and counting in Darfur - have lost touch with the humanity they are serving.

Posted by: Jim | Nov 11, 2007 11:41:51 AM

Posted by: Thomas M.

I'm not opposed to the general ideas here (even if I don't think such a system would ever work in today's world) - but I am strongly opposed to the idea of conscription applying to males only. You speak of universal MALE conscription, but I can see no justification for the exclusion of the other gender in today's world. Women should be required to serve their country if men are, especially in this day and age. And if we force only men to participate in such service, we will cause women to lose many of the social gains they have made over the past thirty years. They don't have to serve in combat positions (and I think men should be given an easy option of performing an alternative service too, as there is in most other civilized countries that still have a system of conscription,) but to exclude women entirely is immoral. You speak of the "school of the nation", where we gain experience and learn to deal with each other. But shouldn't women also be made to learn these skills? You speak of the need for a large inactive reserve - but aren't there many other areas of the military, other than the combat positions, that would also need to be filled in times of crisis? Shouldn't women be made to fill these positions just as we require men to fill positions?

You can't speak of the obligation of every citizen to serve - and then exclude women. It's degrading to both men and women to do that. Equal privilege should also require equal responsibility. Yes, there are still gender inequalities (for both men and women), but a return to male-only conscription in an era where we should know better would only make those inequalities far worse (and justifiably so - if men are forced to give up a portion of their lives to go through military training, and possibly risk their lives, why shouldn't they also enjoy special privileges? And yes, women do get pregnant - but the government doesn't generally enforce that, doesn't punish them for not getting pregnant, just as it doesn't enforce (and in fact, tries to fix) most of the inequalities that face women. Men, on the other hand, would be punished for not fulfilling their duties of conscription. And I can't help but think that that's unfair. I personally like Israel's system. Where universal conscription is truly UNIVERSAL. Yes, women do serve less time than men, and it is generally easier for them to be exempted - but it's still a far better way of doing it then ours. And there's no reason we couldn't improve on Israel's system - require everyone, male and female, to serve, for an equal length of time.

And sorry to dwell on a seemingly small point, but I can't help but think that a return to MALE-ONLY conscription would be disastrous (and unjustifiable.) Yes, it does still exist in other civilized countries - and I think it's wrong there. But it's somewhat forgivable for them because they've had the system for decades, long before equal rights for women really came about. It would be far less forgivable if they were to end it, and then return to it and still include only men. (And still, places like Sweden and Norway have been strongly considering conscripting women.)

I think to still suggest a male-only universal conscription is merely an act of tradition - a tradition that is neither practical or moral. And an attitude that does far more harm than good. You speak of the joys of hazing and general brutality - as means of creating the most effective "killing machines", and of making people a "part of the tribe." Well, I'd like to think we're a bit past the tribal era, but perhaps I'm wrong. I would also like to say that I think defending the brutality of hazing is simply destructive and evil (and yes, I feel this about college hazing too.) Hazing lowers our morality, it makes us more primitive than we ought to be, even in the military. Call me a weak "chicken" hawk (who "obviously" hasn't had the experience) but I'll still state that you're very wrong in stating hazing's perceived benefits.

I'm not necessarily opposed to conscription, or a militia in general - even though I don't read the second amendment as a suggestion that men should be forced to serve, (and whatever it may say about that is rather contradicted by the 13th amendment's ban on involuntary servitude, which conscription unequivocally falls under). But if it is ever again implemented it must be truly universal. And it should take place in both wartime and peacetime. And the conscript should always be given options as to what area they serve in (and you may say that that defeats the purpose - but I strongly believe that if everyone were required to serve their country for a year or two after leaving high school, they would be far less apathetic and would be far more civically aware. And more willing to serve their country in times of true need.) It's always struck me that the American method of conscription - using it as a means to build the army when not enough people join voluntarily - has always been somewhat immoral and un-American. Actually robbing the people have their say in the government, robbing them of choice. And since it's so random, and since it only applies to men - it doesn't really have the effect of keeping the country from going to war unless it really needs to, which is often claimed as one of the benefits of conscription. There are far, far better ways of handling it - just look to most of the modern European countries that still practice it, and Israel. Their systems of conscription still have major problems, but they're a fair bit better off than ours.

Posted by: Thomas M. | Apr 26, 2008 6:23:27 PM