Are Americans Seduced by War?

Andrew Bacevich seems to think so. Or he seems to think that what he thinks in the heat of a unique political moment defines the whole of human experience.

He wrote a book ten years ago called The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. (Oxford, 2005).

As OEF concludes this week, it is instructive to look back on critics of U.S. war policy during our longest war. Bacevich is foremost among them. Clearly, the Iraq War left scars on the body politic that will take a long time to heal. Maybe generations. And while My Public Affairs isn't a political blog, the military often bleeds into politics, and one's take on a military issue exposes one's political biases.

Bacevich's biases come blazing through in The New American Militarism. One thought that just recently occurred to me is that, as a Veteran of the Vietnam Era, perhaps he harbors a tinge of envy of the Soldiers who serve today amid overwhelming public plaudits.

In short, his thesis is that Americans have fallen in love with warfare, soldiers, and the military-industrial complex that feeds it all. He adds Hollywood into the mix of evil causes, and submits that whole arrangement is bad for the Republic.

There is, of course, a lot to substantiate his indictment. But in his zeal, he overreaches clumsily. One of his favorite targets is the All-Volunteer Force. Those like him who spoke and wrote so disparagingly about the AVF a decade ago should be mightily embarrassed now. Not because they were wrong, but because they were so self-assured in their error.

It was no monument to courage to speak ill of the AVF during the nadir of the Iraq War. In The New American Militarism Bacevich wrote:

Four years after 9/11, the reserves are close to breaking-- both recruiting and reenlistment are in free-fall. Active duty forces are finding it increasingly difficult to replenish their ranks. Last year the U.S. Army experienced its worst recruiting year in a quarter-century.

Well what a shock that in the middle of two wars it became slightly harder to recruit! At around the same time California (and probably the rest of the country) was in a teacher recruiting crisis. I don't recall anyone advocating a nationwide conscription of engineering students to begin mandatory teacher credential education.

But that's exactly what Bacevich prescribed to man the Armed Forces. He relied on pure hyperbole too, describing a cyclical shortage as a "free-fall." In 2005, the worst year for Army recruiting, around 73,000 young men and women enlisted, leaving the largest branch of the military about 7,000 short of it's goal. Recruiting rebounded the next year.

Today the military is shedding Soldiers. Where is the outrage?

Maybe Bacevich reserved it for the reserves. One of his prescriptions for reversing the dangerous militarization of American culture and politics is to "revive the moribund concept of the citizen-soldier." His penchant for lambasting and ridiculing reservists betrays his wilful ignorance of the fact that Guard and Reserve Soldiers are just that.

But he can't admit that the reserves are up to the task. He shamefully blames the Abu Ghraib scandal on the ill-preparation of reservists. Bacevich slandered the nearly one million Guard and Reserve Soldiers and Airmen who have served overseas since 9/11.

Scandals like Abu Ghraib are inexcusable. To excuse them because the perpetrators had civilian jobs in the communities they lived in before deploying is a bigger scandal. How a conscript Army would perform better is left unexplained.

Bacevich has no need for a reserve force to fight overseas.  What he wants is a World War II-style mobilization of "citizens" conscripted into the Army. Does anyone who believes that a total war model is the right one for today's small wars really think that the country would get behind a mass mobilization, or that any credible politician would propose it?

While The New American Militarism is thoughtful and sometimes circumspect, its author made the mistake so common among anti-Iraq War commentators a decade ago of projecting his attitude toward that particular war at that particular time to a sweeping denunciation of the military for all time.

At the close of OEF, we can see what a mistake it was, and we know that Americans certainly are not "seduced by war."

(Photo by SPC Nevada Jack Smith)

Remembering Fallujah Part 4: The Aftermath of Victory

his is the final part in a four-part series commemorating the Second Battle of Fallujah, which took place in November, 2004. Read Remembering Fallujah Part 3: Urban Combat Is Hell.

Chaplain Ric Brown knew when he first enlisted that he’d probably go to war. He didn’t realize he’d be in the most savage urban battle U.S. forces had seen in a generation.

Photo by 1LT Kimberly Snow

Ten years ago this month, the American-led task force that smothered the city of Fallujah to retake it from insurgents had mostly accomplished its mission. Operation Phantom Fury had begun by the end of the first week of November. Within a month the Marines, Soldiers, and Iraqi troops had secured every corner of the city that its previous masters had described as the “cemetery for Americans.” 

Brown was there from the beginning. 

Ten years later, the toll is both easier and more difficult to measure. 

Launched on November 7, Operation Phantom Fury achieved its objectives rather quickly. The Regimental Combat Teams swept through the city and exterminated most of the remaining insurgents within a week. By November 14, the Marines-led task force occupied Fallujah.

By then, as Marines conducted final clearing operations in the eastern part of the city, a message had been painted in black on the infamous green trestle bridge:

This is for the Americans of Blackwater murdered here in 2004
Semper Fidelis 3/5 Dark Horse

The Americans had won, but it came with a price. Brown lost four of his Soldiers in the battle, 19 during his tour.

“Six months after getting back from Iraq I’m in church one day and it hits me like a ton of bricks that I lost those guys, I lost my best friend who’s a sergeant major,” recalls Brown. 

Families and friends of nearly 100 American troops would go through the same process. 

Besides the deeply personal effect the heroic loss of service members has, there were institutional and political repercussions for the military. 

Immediately, the result was a candid and sobering reevaluation of the Iraq campaign. Politically, support began to deteriorate for the war at home. 

In June 2005, a New York Times columnist declared, “The All-volunteer Army isn’t working.” 

“The problem now,” Bob Herbert argued, “is that most Americans have had plenty of time to digest the images of people being blown up in Baghdad and mutilated in Fallujah.” 

Fallujah, and similarly terrible battles in Iraq, made continuing to fight the war nearly impossible without reinstituting a draft, according to the author. 

Meanwhile, the Army looked at innovative ways to win with the Soldiers it had.

During the Second Battle of Fallujah, then-Lt. Gen. David Petraeus served as the first commander of the NATO Training Mission-Iraq and the Multi-National Security Transition Command, charged with developing Iraqi security forces. Within a year he would assume command of the Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he would, along with Marine Lt. Gen. James Amos, supervise the authorship of a revised counterinsurgency field manual.  

The new field manual would be released and adopted theater-wide by February 2006. 

In the medium-term, updated COIN doctrine and a troop surge would help Petraeus, named commander of all coalition forces in Iraq in early 2007, turn the tide against the Iraqi insurgency. 

For the next few years, U.S. service members continued the fight in Iraq and surged against a growing insurgency in Afghanistan. It has been the longest sustained period of combat for America’s Armed Forces. The volunteers have proven up to the task, after all. They had outlasted the naysayers. 

Now, exactly ten years after that landmark battle in Iraq and three years after all U.S. forces withdrew from the country, the military is reducing its presence in the other major theater of the War on Terror. 

When I first met Chaplain Brown in Kandahar, I wondered about the parallels between Iraq and Afghanistan. As security deteriorated in the former, what would happen in the latter once we withdrew? 

Brown didn’t have an answer. 

Given that Fallujah was under the control of the same type of thugs who had gone against the Marines and Soldiers in 2004, I asked him if the men of Phantom Fury died in vain.

“No,” he replied without hesitation. “Their sacrifice wasn’t meaningless because they did what they were sent there to do.”

Indeed, with a hard-won victory in Fallujah, their legacy is a more powerful and resilient force. To suggest that the U.S. military can’t fight with volunteers now sounds absurd. 

Brown, too, is more resilient, and he continues to help his Soldiers, who are far away from combat. Now serving at a division level, he reminds himself that there are Soldiers outside the wire who have it worse. He tries not to lose sight of who is fighting. 

Before his men went into Fallujah, he took aside a squad leader and prayed,  “Lord, give this young man the strength and wisdom to protect his soldiers. Give him the courage and conviction to deliver them from the unknown. Give him the faith and guidance to know your path, Lord. Give him the perseverance to stay on it.” (From House to House: An Epic Memoir of War) 

I asked him what he would pray for the young Soldiers ending their mission in Afghanistan. 

“About the same thing," he replied. "It is about the leaders leading their Soldiers and giving their Soldiers confidence. It’s about having the strength and faith and assurance to give it, to pass it on.”

Don't Call Us "Nasty," or the Superiority of the National Guard

We are the “Nasty Girls.”

I don’t hear that indignity much these days, but I understand it used to be quite popular among the warrior classes.

Nasty sounds kind of like "national," you see. So the National Guard Soldiers were disparaged as "Nasty Guard," which quickly morphed into a sexualized insult.

Anyway, I really haven' heard that honorific on deployments. Why isn’t it a sentiment anymore? Probably because so many active duty types have served alongside National Guardsmen that they know we kick ass.

How much ass do we kick? Up to 400% more than an active duty Soldier, depending on which formula you use. But there are still some hard heads in the regular Army that refuse to deal with reality. And the reality is this: National Guardsmen are better Soldiers in almost every way. We are smarter, we have a broader skill set, we are more adaptable, and we are better looking, generally. That last part is pretty easy to verify by doing a few minutes of people watching at any major Army post.

Not only do some regulars not realize how superior we are, but they still think they are better!

This post is a big dose of tough love for my active duty friends. Just the other day I heard a colleague in the public affairs world disparage the National Guard. She is a perfect example of the truth of the reality mentioned above (and, as immature as it sounds, especially with regard to the last point).

It would take a monumental effort to develop a metric to measure Soldier effectiveness, since there is no single ideal Soldier. And there are no "industry standards" with which to compare. The American military does things no other can or will do, and so the American Soldier stands alone in his own category.

So it’s kind of problematic to measure Soldier effectiveness, but here are a few metrics that could be combined in an index that we can call—and I’m just spit balling here—the Soldier Performance Index. Go ahead and consider it copyrighted:

• Cost: what does it take in dollars and time to train a Soldier?
• Longevity: what is the burn-out rate?
• Value-added: what additional skills and capabilities does a Soldier bring to the military mission above what she is trained to do by the Army?

Ultimately, we want to measure a Soldier’s performance in operations. Sometimes that means combat, but most of the time it does not. In the three main domains described above, the average Guard member exceeds his active-duty counter part. Some variables would be easy to measure, like cost and longevity. The third domain is supported by plenty of anecdotal evidence.

Think for a moment what would motivate someone to join the National Guard. Think of me, for example. I was 29 when I enlisted, with a master's degree and a secure job. I certainly didn't join for employment. And though I knew I was volunteering during war time, I wasn't eager to go to combat. Nevertheless, I brought my whole background of teaching and learning experience to the fight.

I am not extraordinary for a Guardsman.

Of course the regulars would say that they, as full-timers, have much more training and operational experience thatn we do.

Yes, they might be more familiar with Army organization and paperwork, but we train regularly, and we deploy nearly as much as they do. Besides, operations and battlefield requirements change quickly and frequently, and Guard members are more flexible.

We can do everything an active Soldier can do, plus more, and do it more cheaply and efficiently. This is because we have jobs and lives that don’t foster a reliance on Big Brother, jobs that often enhance our warrior skills. We undergo the same training that active Soldiers do, but we cram it into several weekends a year. We go on the same deployments.

In fact, the main difference between us and the regulars is that we don’t get paid for sitting around between overseas tours.

We might be nasty, to be sure, but we all know that Soldiers love nasty girls. 

Bob Herbert Is a Moron, and the All Volunteer Army Rocks

"The all-volunteer Army isn't working."

That's how Bob Herbert, a former distinguished columnist for the New York Times, opened one of his distinguished pieces in June 2005. Herbert is now a distinguished senior fellow for the left-wing think tank, Demos. "Dinstinguished" is the kind of modifier that lacks valence. William Safire distinguished. But so is Jason Blair. 

I assume Herbert earned the title for making provably false assertions to support his ideology masked as a legitimate critique of defense policy. One of his favorite assertions is that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on a false pretense. Whatever the merits of that claim, the doozy that, "The all-volunteer Army isn't working" makes it sound laughable by comparison. 

Herbert picked the most perilous time in the Army's volunteer era to make his proclamation that it was dysfunctional. He was in lock step with the anti-Iraq War movement impugning civilians in charge of the military with an eagerness to send American kids of to die for oil.

According to him, "hawks want their wars fought with other people's children." 

Self-righteous journalists write their headlines at the expense of those children. Did Bob Herbert ever report from a combat zone? No. But he didn't mind trying to attract readers with feigned empathy for those who did. 

It's interesting how I came across his piece. Not in the habit of reading the NYT for contemporary news, I nevertheless turned to the Paper of Record to get some facts about the Second Battle of Fallujah for a series I am composing on the ten-year anniversary of that campaign. 

What I didn't find was any solid reporting about the battle. No stories of specific actions, troop deaths, progress on retaking the insurgent stronghold-- you know, things you might expect to find in a newspaper. It seems that the NYT's main contribution to that important era in our military's history was to second guess the politics and make the case that volunteers couldn't cut it.

Blasting the All-Volunteer Force has lately been a favorite past time of the Left. Ironically, it was the same anti-war factions that condemned the Vietnam-era draft as "unpatriotic"and "unfair." It took a republican president and a conservative brain trust to dismantle conscription.

Since the draft was ended in 1973, the American military has been unmatched in combat effectiveness. 

Ten years after the Second Battle of Fallujah, it is easy to see that. So what was Bob Herbert thinking? Well, six months after Fallujah, it wasn't a stretch to say the war was "going badly." But then Herbert made a dangerous logical leap:

...a backlash is developing that could cripple the nation's ability to wage war without a draft. 

That assertion has been proven totally indefensible on factual grounds. 

I've made very bad predictions, and I don't fault Herbert for getting it wrong. The mistake Herbert made was to insert his distaste for the Iraq war into a discussion about whether volunteers were up to the task. 

Fallujah was terrible. And Iraq certainly took more manpower and resources that experts planned. But those who volunteered to fight did so exceptionally, and to insist that a draft would have produced a better Army is lunacy. 

What Herbert and his ilk really wanted was the kind of outrage over the war that inspired them during Vietnam. 

But it's hard to muster a bunch of outrage on elite college campuses when students are left to study. And the Army is better without hoards of Soldiers who don't want to be there anyway. 

In other words, the all-volunteer Army is working just fine. 

Needless Irritants

Who can I complain to?

The Army is adept at throwing wrenches in the smoothly turning gears of war. Actually, I'm going to blame support elements. This is a story about what GEN William Westmoreland called "needless irritants."

First, a bit of background. In the early 1970s, Westmoreland, as the Army Chief of Staff, was staring an all volunteer force in the face. Before then, the Army filled its ranks with conscripts. Those who volunteered often did so because they might otherwise have been drafted. So the draft gave the Army the luxury of treating its peronnel like chattel.

I sometimes wonder how much has changed.

You see, we had to move yesterday. I'm talking about a the furniture, lugging, dust-sweeping, clothes-organizing, kind of barracks move.

Two days ago, we arrived at our room, greeted by a notice to vacate the premises within 48 hours.

Not cool. When something is not cool, lodge a complaint, right? Except the guy kicking us out is only following orders. He has no authority, nor any desire to pass any feedback up the chain.

This, from an Operation Ready leader's handbook, describes my feelings well:

How would you feel if your next commander changed the tapes? Then the next commander comes along and changes them back? We do this to soldiers in the barracks all the time, for no better reason than to prove to them (and ourselves) who is in charge.

As their appointed leader you have great power to create misery and little power to reduce it, for you will be blind to its existence—unless you vigorously seek it out.

As with the moving imperative, whoever got the idea up his butt for us to move three buildings down the road excercised "great power to create misery."

It was an irritant, to say the least.

Westmoreland understood that the needless irritants (colloquially known as Mickey Mouse, or chickenshit, according to scholar Beth Bailey) were particularly deteriorating to readiness, for several reasons.

First, irritants take away resources for doing actual Army work. Second, they dminish the pool of willing violunteers. Third, they drive people crazy, often tipping the scales in favor of getting out of the service sooner.

I hear quite frequently from Soldiers on a deployment that they're getting out. Not because they had to move needlessly, but because of that plus 1,000 other petty tyrannies.

And cna we complain? Nope. The sergeant in charge of the circus is doing the bidding of some major probably, who doesn't give two spits about how maddening it is. But he'll never hear about it, because his sergeant wouldn't dare give him negative feedback-- the very type of feedback that helps good organizations make real-time adjustments to its practices.

Needless irritant? Yep. Need not complain, because it never does any good in the Army. 

They The Builders of a Nation

How similar are pioneers of American West lore and deployed US Soldiers?

I've never crossed a vast plain pulling a handcarrt, so I can't for sure say. I've driven through Colorado and Kansas on the I-70, though, which was definitely a trial of my faith. It felt like a three-month journey.

But the question is a serious one, and I've been posing it to Soldiers over here who have ties to Utah or know the story of the generation of '47. Many seem to think there are comparisons to be drawn, and I agree. But for a different reason.

The old Mormon hymn, which gets sung but once a year, might give us an idea:

They, the builders of the nation,
Blazing trails along the way;
Stepping-stones for generations
Were their deeds of ev'ry day.
Building new and firm foundations,
Pushing on the wild frontier,
Forging onward, ever onward,
Blessed, honored Pioneer!

Many service members see a parallel between military service and what the Utah pioneers did because of the work ethos and willingness to sacrifice.

I see an analogy between us for the reasons we work. Military members in Afghanistan are nation building. The effort here is nothing less. Kandahar Airfield and the dozens of other NATO bases sprang up because people worked their butts off to build them. Why? Well, setting aside the motivation gap between strategic planners and tactical elements, the short answer is to put Afghanistan on a path toward inclusion in the world.

It's not always popular of course in elite circles-- which might include multi-culturalists, academics, right-wingers, and anti-militarists-- to claim a right to build a nation, but that's what we're doing. And Afghanistan wants us to-- overwhelmingly.

The massive counterinsurgency enterprise here is armed nation building, and I am proud to be a part of it. The people I serve with do so voluntarily. Afghan churchgoers might one day sing, "blessed, honored, Warrior!"

Is the Army a Socialist Paradise?

Naturally, when a major news site poses the above question, I get intrigued. 

Now, as a Soldier on active duty, I can assure you that it most definitely not a paradise. Either that or the word coupled with the modifier "socialist" takes on a completely different meaning.  

But my hat is off to Siegel for writing about it. In fact, he probably got the idea from me:

The Paradox of Military Ideology

Siegel's piece is of a different flavor from mine, though. Whereas I was being sarcastic and a bit satirical, Siegel seems dead serious. His argument, if it can be called that, is that modern leftism is almost completely fulfilled, surprisingly, in the US military: single payer health care, government housing and food, and a rigid hierarchy that is task-focused and community-centered. 

At least he knows of what he writes. Siegel, whose bio in the Daily Beasts notes that he is an Iraq and Afghanistan War Vet, decries so-called experts comment on military life without a proper frame of reference.

Nevertheless, in the spirit of contrarianism, I must raise some objections. 

First, Siegel asserts that every liberal program has been instituted successfully in the military. Well, not quite. Unionism, for example, is anathema to the military way. The military also maintains strict gatekeeping, famously relaxed during the height of the Iraq war, which is now getting much stricter. Drugs, sexual assault, mental illness, physical shortcomings-- all will keep you out or get you kicked out. 

There are parallels between military standards and socialist states eliminating reprobates, gays, free thinkers, the sterile, capitalists, and other various "enemies of the party," but even the most hardcore liberal wouldn't dream of categorizing those phenomena as indicators of paradise.

The piece also called the military "one of the country’s last engines of social mobility." Siegel claims that "A young enlistee from a poor background with no higher education can rise through the ranks," which is true to a point. Even for NCOs, though, it is getting tougher to advance in rank without college. So though it may sound like a quibble, it raises the larger issue that the military is not as insulated from the larger population and culture as some think or would hope.

That last bit raises a larger misrepresentation. Siegel implies that the strengths of military communalism come from its members' shared ethos and sheer bureaucratic efficiency. While I certainly agree that an organizational ethos is important, it misses the fact that the military is competing with other employers in a vast labor market. 

Many men and women join for the material benefits, not because of some allegiance to a cause. The military understands this well and continually adjusts its compensation packages to meet the demands of the marketplace.

In all, Siegel's piece is provocative and insightful. But maybe he should have just read "My Public Affairs" and let well enough alone. 

In Defense of the AVF: Giving Dana Milbank Some Flak

Reliably, every year or so some smarter-than-the-rest-of-us journalist brings up the idea of a conscripted Army. This time, it is WaPo's Dana Milbank, and he is as wrong as every other person who suggests that a volunteer force robs the nation of some much needed perspective. Amazingly, he correlates Congress's low approval rating with the fact that so few in the legislature have served in the armed forces. Before I dismantle his argument, let me present it as fairly as I possibly can. (I encourage you to read his piece and judge for yourself, though).

Mandatory service would reduce social inequality, and develop leaders for our leader-starved governing class, which "has forgotten how to put country before party and self-interest."

Sounds logical. But it falls apart quickly upon the thinnest scrutiny. I have dealt with this topic several times before, so I won't rehash all of the points or go through the history of the All-Volunteer Force. Instead, I'll deal with Milbank head on.

The United States has built the finest fighting force ever known to man precisely because it abandoned the draft just over 40 years ago. Sure, we would still have top-notch weaponry in a conscripted force, but would we have the professional manpower to use it? Would we have the judicious leaders who know when and how much force to use in a variety of contexts? Would we be able to even approach a strategy of counterinsurgency with a drafted military?

Of course not. But an effective military doesn't seem to be a priority for those like Milbank who are interested in mandatory service. (Curiously, he includes retired General Stanley McChrystal as a philosophical comrade on the subject; Jazz Shaw at HotAir deals with McChrystal's "calls" for a draft renewal). Instead, Milbank wants to use a successful military as an instrument of social policy.

Milbank's model country is Switzerland. It is a wonderful place, but so different from the United States in so many ways. He conveniently left out the most important component of their requirement for service. Every fighting age male in that country is required to own and maintain a firearm at home as part of his militia service. I doubt Mr. Milbank thinks gun ownership is as important to the cohesiveness of a citizenry as the Swiss do.

Supporters of the AVF understand that the social benefits of institutions like the military are incidental, because they are the effect of virtue, not the cause. For example, gun rights advocates generally want to see more legal gun ownership, as Milbank points out, not because it would result in an enlightened and responsible citizenry, but because it would be an indicator of one.

He bashes the easily-bashed "chickenhawks" in Congress who are inclined to send young men and women into battle without good reason. Or at least, reasons that Washington Post columnists think are good.

And Milbank and his ilk would surely regret more military vets in Congress if it didn't result in their legislative preferences. If Congress was composed of mostly former military leaders, "Don't ask, don't tell" would probably still be in force, and women would surely not be allowed in combat roles.

If vets in Congress voted to send troops to a place that the Post's editorial board considered ill-advised, Milbank would be the first to cast them as cowboys too willing to use military force.

Then there is the problem of what to consider "service" in lieu of fighting. Police work and firefighting, presumably. Incredibly, Milbank mentions teaching, and "providing day care" as viable substitutes, no kidding.

Look, child care is immensely important, but it is qualitatively different from fighting our nation's enemies. The framers of the Constitution didn't grant Congress power to raise an army in order to "bind us together" or to allow kids from the South Bronx to get to know kids from suburban Kansas City, but to repel invasions and put down insurrections. (My critics might point out that our government long ago drifted away from an original intent vis-à-vis the military, with which I'd agree. But to those critics who lean left, I'd say that the government is further afield from the original meaning of the Constitution on a host of other matters that they would not be willing to reconsider. The constitutional arguments are for another day, though).

Milbank refers to the cohesivesness that imbues vets with a sense of shared purpose. The reason military vets are so closely bonded is because they fought alongside one another. They saw their buddies give all they had, get wounded, and sometimes die for them.

How would day care-- or any other service in lieu of-- result in the national unity that Milbank yearns for? We all do something to contribute. In fact, that was one of the main arguments considered by the Gates Commission, the group that formally recommended abolishing the draft to President Nixon. The best way for any individual to serve the country, the commission concluded, is the way that he or she deems fits and to which he or she devotes his or her total energies and passions. In time of war, we need grocery store clerks and taxi cab drivers, not just combat medics and day care providers.

Young people should serve. The fact that they don't isn't proof that they ought to be forced to, but rather that they haven't been taught the ethos of service. And that's the puzzling, but revealing, thing about McChrystal, who comes from a family with a heritage of military service. He obviously wanted to serve, and laments the fact that so many people do not share his desire. Compelling them to serve by force of the state's police powers would not instill that ethos any more than garnishing the wages of dead-beat dads makes them father of the year candidates.

And if Milbank is so gung-ho about the benefits of military service, I'd like to see his DD-214.

The Textbook on Enduring Freedom

If Jake Tapper never does another significant thing in his life, he will go down in history as having done a great service to the United States Army for telling the story of the war in Afghanistan.

Listening to The Outpost during my long road trip across the western United States is an exercise for the range of emotions. Exhaustive in its depth and detail, Tapper's book is inspiring, funny, angering, and sad.

Lessons abound in the story of Combat Outpost Keating, which was nearly overrun in October 2009 and abandoned a few days later. They fit quite well the themes of this blog: the power of the All-Volunteer Force, the Army organization and bad-assery, and funny soldier stories.

For me, the main lesson was how little the American public knows about the War in Afghanistan, a symptom, I suppose, of how poorly the civilian and military authorities have articulated its rationale.

Tapper, ABC News's former White House Correspondent, does not avoid the politics of the war, but he certainly emphasizes the ordinary soldier. Trouble is, a place like COP Keating isn't home to ordinary soldiers. These guys were refined by fire. As angry as Tapper's account made me toward some military leaders (like those who insisted on building a COP in a "death pit") and the Afghan soldiers who routinely abandoned their positions, it made me immeasurably proud of the men and women who volunteer to fight.

Thank you Jake Tapper. And thanks, too, to all the Cav soldiers who manned that hell hole despite abundant evidence that it was among the most dangerous places on Earth.

Remembering Casey Sheehan and all the other Volunteers who have Died

This is simply a repost from my Washington Times Communities column, but more than appropriate here:

Casey Sheehan RIP: Remembering a fallen soldier

Black Five is an excellent milblog that regularly has posts in honor of soldiers who have died in GWOT. Thanks for the reminder guys. 

Volunteerism at its Best

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of the death of the American military draft. Good riddance.

It's a favorite topic of mine, so I'll be posting quite a bit in the next few months on the topic. I've created a new category, called (appropriately) "All Volunteer Force." I've gone back and tagged the relevant "Pro-Army" posts too.

I still meet a surprising number of people (mostly old timers) who express regret that we don't force young men into military service.

The last man to enter his "obligated term" of service in the United States Army was Dwight Elliot Stone, who did so in June 1973.Since then, everyone who has joined the Armed Forces has done so of his or her own free will.

That's powerful stuff, in many ways. First, and not least of all, is the fact that it defied conventional wisdom to end the draft in the 1970s. When presidential candidate Richard Nixon publicly proposed abolition of the draft, nobody in the Congress or the Pentagon was, in any meaningful way, behind him.

It is hard for us to imagine a draft today. As with many facts of life, we often take for granted that the course of history was inevitable. But at the time Congress and the Nixon administration were contemplating alternatives to conscription, the U.S. was on a full offensive in Vietnam.

Second, the fact that the military has met its manpower requirements shows that the spirit of sacrifice and duty to country is alive and well among those of fighting age and ability. It disproves one of the main arguments against forced service.

Third, the American AVF is, by almost any measure, more successful than any of its earliest proponents could have imagined. See a column I wrote on the tenth anniversary of 9-11 for a brief synopsis.

Since the 1970s, when the American military was in the depths of poor public relations, strategic losses across the globe, and transitions in manning, equipment, and doctrine, the U.S. Armed Forces have steadily risen to the title, "greatest fighting force ever assembled."

After 40 years there are still a few who cling to the notion that a draft would somehow be better; that the military should be a service program charged with reforming citizens who don't adequately appreciate the idea of national service. But in a republic whose government, culture, and society the AVF has volunteered to defend, I suppose it's appropriate.

Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Leonardo Torres

The Best Argument Against the AVF

I have to get the last word in on the wisdom of the All-Volunteer Military.

It seems really odd that some people would still prefer conscription. For those of you younger than 25, that means that the military would draft young men and women into the armed forces involuntarily.

From both the left and the right, the prevailing logic is roughly the same: conscription compels the government to be more prudent in its use of the military, which becomes, in effect, a check against military adventurism.

Though two ideological opposites can have the same main argument, their motives would differ wildly. The left just doesn’t like the military, and they would prefer that the public at large share their disdain. In the late 60s and early 70s, popular support for the armed forces was at its nadir, partly because of the draft.

Folks on the right appreciate a capable military, but many would like to see our foreign involvements substantially reduced. They see conscription as an inducement to healthy dissent which would temper the government’s enthusiastic use of the military.

It is the best argument I have come across against the AVF.

Yet both versions suffer from two flaws. From a comment to a previous post:

“In earlier wars, the entire nation was expected to make sacrifices, but in the current situation, most of the nation blithely goes on enjoying the good life, not giving serious attention to the effects of these wars…”

The argument could be stated another way: we should make it harder to fight so that the government will be less likely to do it. Should we make other government functions less efficient for the same reason? Or should we make our weapons systems less safe so that the costs would be prohibitively high? The extension of the argument is as dangerous as it is laughable.

Moreover, it supposes an electorate that can’t properly calculate the costs and benefits of war. Whether or not you agree with our current wars, to think that the public can’t make such basic analyses at the polls is an indictment against our representative form of government, not against the arrangements for procuring labor in our armed forces.

The other flaw is the assumption that people would be protesting war if it affected them more. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. People may protest homeless shelters more if they were built in the middle of their neighborhoods, next to elementary schools. That doesn't mean homeless shelters are bad.

Also, the analogy with Vietnam is a tiresome and inappropriate one. Protests against the war in Vietnam were exactly that: objections to the policy, not to the draft. Leftist protesters simply created a convenient straw man in the draft.

Finally, here is an interesting excerpt from the Gates Commission Report, which advised President Nixon in 1972 to abolish the draft immediately:

“Decisions by a government to use force or to threaten the use of force during crises are extremely difficult. The high cost of military resources, the moral burden of risking human lives, political costs at home and overseas, and the overshadowing risk of nuclear confrontation ~ these and other factors enter into such decisions. It is absurd to argue that issues of such importance would be ignored and the decision for war made on the basis of whether our forces were entirely voluntary or mixed.”

The debate between the AVF and conscription will never die, of course. I am just glad that, for now, there seems to be no movement back to involuntary servitude in the armed forces.

A Well Regulated Militia

The video from (part of) my presentation at CSU East Bay:

Also, check out the Prezi that I created and showed at the lecture. I must warn you, this is very cool, and if I may diverge from the point of this post, I would like to say, a very effective presentation tool.



I’ll give credit where it is due: several of my students at the University of San Francisco simultaneously tuned me in to this medium. Granted it was I who spent the seven hours building the darn thing, but I am nevertheless grateful for the tip.

Why Not a Volunteer Army?

Last week I delivered a lecture at Cal State East Bay in Hayward about the power of the all-volunteer military.

It was really a blast. Well attended, according to the organizers, it was part of a series of lectures on free-market ideas.

Naturally, I set out to ground my thesis—that the All Volunteer Force (AVF) is better than its conscript alternative—in economic arguments. I think I was successful to the extent that I was trying to make economic sense of something that really has more aspects.

In fact, I concluded that the AVF is more powerful and more appropriate than its alternative for five reasons:

• It is the natural byproduct of our national history.
• It is constitutional.
• It is more economical.
• It is more effective.
• It better represents our culture, tradition, and values.

During the course of my research, however, I was surprised to learn how many intelligent and well-meaning men prefer conscription. Yes! There are prominent folks who would like to see a draft reinstated! Charlie Rangel is in the latter category, but not the former.

They contend that theirs would be the more economic force, that it would be more equitable, and that it would act as a check on the government’s war making ability.

I won’t argue the economics, but neither do I concede. The equity is demonstrable, and in study after study, the military is about as representative of the U.S. population in key areas as any institution. The last point, that a conscript force would cause Congress to think harder about engaging in war, or to regain some of its authority over the executive branch, is hollow.

If anything, as I have argued before, a military composed of volunteers is a natural check on government abuse, simply from a free market labor standpoint. This deserves more treatment later, but in essence, if the public doesn’t like what the government is doing with the military, instead of burning draft cards in grandiose exhibitions of dissent, people simply won’t enlist.

My comments and answers to questions at the lecture reflected as much, but I wanted to make the point again here.

History of the Citizen Army

More evidence that change is not always bad...

"While the thinkers of the Enlightenment were destroying the intellectual justification for standing armies, the technological advances of the age were making it increasingly difficult for untrained noblemen to justify their possession of the officer corps.

That from Stephen Ambrose' Duty, Honor, Country: a History of West Point. To extrapolate from his point, one could say that changes in society and culture often undermine our assumptions about how to best organize an army.

Armed Forces are usually very well suited to fight yesterday's wars. This makes perfect sense-- battle-tested warriors go on to train the next generation. In most organizations, said generation usually infuses its own personality and approaches into achieving organizational goals.

In the Army, that is much harder to do. Mores are codified, norms regulated.

But we should beware of too much reliance on tradition, especially in war fighting. Ambrose goes on to explain that the armies of the French Revolution (1790s) were more successful than their adversaries.

This point has been made by many historians before. Some claim there was no logical explanation. Ambrose asserts that the revolutionary armies were superior because they were larger and made up of the citizenry-- taken from the ranks of the middle class.

I agree. It was the Europeanization of the American militia model, which contributed to the defeat of the British land forces during the American War of Independence.

Our modern forces are so superior because their ranks comprise citizens who volunteer to lend their skills to the defense of a common good. Every U.S. Soldier freely takes upon himself an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies.

Particularly powerful are those militia forces-- now known as the National Guard-- who work in their communities, serve them in uniform, and often deploy to fight for them abroad.

These forces bring a much more practical skill set to the fight. They represent the oldest component of our Armed Forces, and they demonstrate that change and adaptation is a trait that Americans display proudly, and with great success.