Posted on 09/08/2001 9:36:27 AM PDT by areafiftyone
Renowned military sociologist Charles Moskos says the quality of recruits entering the all-volunteer force is too low, citing an increase in desertion rates and rising use of the illegal drug Ecstasy -- contentions disputed by the Pentagon.
"It's the input rather than what happens to them in the system," the Northwestern University professor told United Press International in a telephone interview.
"When they say they want the military to look like America, OK, let's get some more college kids in there then. Not that Ecstasy is absent on college campuses," he said.
For more than three years, Ecstasy has been the drug of choice among young military personnel, according to many recent news reports, including some Defense Department outlets. This follows a long decline in drug use among uniformed personnel.
But Army Lt. Col. George Rhynedance said these reports don't tell the whole story. The military has tested for Ecstasy only since 1997, he said, and had no reliable data until 1998, when 93 service members tested positive out of 2.3 million.
(Since 1991, the military has been recruiting at the rate of about 200,000 personnel per year. Almost 1.4 million men and women are on active duty. Some 873,000 others form the "selected reserve." An additional 378,000 make up the unpaid "individual ready reserve" of veterans subject to call-up in national emergencies.)
In the year 2000, 1,070 service members came up positive for Ecstasy out of 2.3 million tested. Although the rise from 93 to 1,070 over two years is a dramatic 1,500 percent, absolute numbers are very low, involving less than one-half of 1 percent of the armed forces.
"Ecstasy use among military members does not even come close to paralleling the rise in Ecstasy use in civilian America," Rhynedance said. "It's not a rise that we consider to be out of control.
Even so, 18-year-old civilians don't stand wheel watches on aircraft carriers, a responsibility greater than any other with which they may be entrusted in their lives.
A fatal crash in 1991 on the carrier Nimitz led the Defense Department to institute random drug testing. Although the crash was not caused by drug use, autopsies showed that six of 14 sailors and Marines killed had recently smoked marijuana.
And, of course, the hike in desertion rates cannot be attributed to a lack of self-discipline in the general youth population, where hyper-achieving Ivy League students -- among others -- plan their days down to the minute.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice defines desertion as an intent to remain away permanently, making it difficult to prove in courts martial. The Defense Department classifies as deserters those absent without official leave for 30 consecutive days. Without regard to the length of absence, the DoD sees indications of desertion in apparent flight to avoid hazardous duty or shirk other important service, especially to a foreign country.
All the services report a rise in desertion from 1999 to 2000, the last full year for which data are available: the Army from 3,112 to 4,119; the Air Force from 45 to 46 (with AWOLs rising from 239 to 330); the Navy from 2,485 to 3,255; and the Marine Corps from 1,689 to 2,019.
But a Pentagon document obtained by UPI suggests an explanation other than lower recruit quality. "While there have been some increases in desertion rates, the overall attrition rates for all services are declining," it said.
The cause of this apparent paradox is that the military has become stricter about holding service members to the terms of their enlistment contracts. Fewer administrative discharges are being granted for such reasons as "failure to adapt" or "unsuitability." Although this policy can cause desertion rates to rise, it also contributes to overall retention of personnel, said a Pentagon source, who asked for anonymity.
But it's a demographic reality that the U.S. birth rate was low in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Moskos believes the absence of elite youth in the small and declining pool of potential recruits deprives the military of much-needed talent -- including intelligence and self-discipline.
Moreover, he sees the recruitment of what the services call "high-quality" youth (physically fit high school graduates with no disqualifying police record who score in the top half on the Armed Forces Qualification Test) to be a moral as well as a practical issue.
"I want Jenna Bush to join," he said, referring to one of the president's twin daughters.
Once he asked a convention of recruiters, "Would you prefer to have your advertising budget tripled or have Chelsea Clinton join the Army?"
"They said unanimously that Chelsea Clinton would give a much bigger boost."
For those of us who remember President John F. Kennedy as a dashing, if unlucky, World War II PT boat commander, the biggest tragedy of his son's short and tragic life was his failure to set an example for his generation. One photograph of the handsome JFK Jr. in uniform would have revitalized the concept of military service among young Americans.
Since the end of conscription in 1973, the services (except for the Marine Corps) have tried to meet recruiting shortfalls either by lowering standards or increasing economic incentives.
This week the Army, the largest and most labor-intensive of the services, met its recruitment goal by lowering its benchmark from 80,000 to 75,800 new soldiers.
"They are trying to redefine the military as an occupation rather than as an institution -- or as an obligation of citizenship," Moskos said.
"The only way you can do without conscription is if the upper class volunteers," he observed. In the United States, this has not been the case since a large proportion of elite men shirked service during the Vietnam War.
"Citizens accept hardships only when they view their leaders as self-sacrificing," the sociologist said.
Moskos disagrees with those who say that Americans' toleration of casualties is strictly a function of the national interest they perceive to be at stake. (But the aborted and ill-defined 1993 mission to Somalia suggests this argument cannot be dismissed out of hand.)
He wondered whether Britain's Prince William, who turned 19 on June 21, would carry on the military tradition of males in Britain's Royal Family. He also mentioned Prince Andrew's hazardous service as a helicopter pilot during the 1982 Falklands War.
He asked, rhetorically, why men put up with the horrible slaughter of World War I. "If you get the nobility there, the country will die with you," he asserted.
Moskos illustrated his point by recalling his high school and university class reunions. Among the 750 men in his Princeton class of 1956, some two-thirds entered the military. His impression is that only about one-third of the men in his class at Albuquerque (N.M.) High School served.
"The conscription system of the 1950s was never seriously criticized because they were drafting from the top of the social ladder," he told UPI.
Among Moskos' Princeton classmates who wore the uniform were Harvard's immediate past president, Neil Rudenstine, and Pete duPont, heir to the chemical fortune, former congressman, governor of Delaware and contender for the GOP presidential nomination.
He believes Americans became intolerant of Vietnam combat casualties not because public opinion turned against the mission, but because U.S. elites were not doing their share.
Moskos told UPI that students at elite schools would have the propensity to serve if terms of enlistment were shorter.
"The Army has offered a two-year enlistment now, but they're not pushing it, although they say they get better soldiers with that one."
Today the federal government provides a wide range of programs aimed at assisting lower-income students attend college.
"I call this the GI Bill without the GI," he said. "In the old days, the GI Bill was about the only way you could get federal money to go to college. Now they're paying kids not to serve their country."
Those who want to be really military, who embrace the warrior ethos, tend to go for the Corps.
Tech types flock to the Air Force due to it's reputation of being highly technical and a great place to get training.
The Navy and the Army are having recruiting problems.
Part of this is a fairly good economy. But part is poor public image. If Soldiers and Sailors got more respect, more young people would join.
I agree - Young people nowadays couldn't care less if you have a uniform on or not. They are not interested in serving their country they are only interested in "ME". They are having a hard time getting people A neighbor of mine is trying to get into the Navy and he has a prior arrest record for stealing. The Navy is desperately trying to get him in (personally I am torn - In one way I think it would be better for him and in another way I don't really want the armed services going out of their way to get a convicted felon in).
And young men in their millions did just that in World War I. That was the tragedy of the Great War; the best of a generation died in the killing fields.
There's a real shortage of noblesse amongst the trust-fund babies of America also. But the spirit of high service required by impending historical crisis can't simply be invented; it must be summoned up.
America has been fortunate in the past in having men who stepped into the breach and prevailed over her enemies at crucial moments. I hope this great American heritage continues to deliver up men capable of great deeds when it counts.
The whole world is counting on you.
Well, in the sixties, the term of enlistment was two years and Bill Clinton still worked ardently to avoid it. And if you have a draft dodger as CIC, as well as one who openly uses his command functions to further his own political agenda, one has to question the value of serving in uniform under such circumstances -- which is one reason why there was such horrific attrition in the junior officer ranks during the 90's.
In the late '70s I served with several men who where given a choice between jail and service. They were WORTHLESS.
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