Posted on 04/26/2005 9:44:10 AM PDT by strategofr
Soldiers For the Truth, SFTT.org 04-04-2005
Recruiting: Put the Warrior Back into Society
By Michael S. Woodson Recent news reports say that the U.S. Army is not meeting its current recruiting goals, while the Navy and Air Force are filling their slots. One explanation for this is that the Army requires sales techniques to get people in the door because the country has scant trust for the political rationales used for sending troops into foreign combat. One technique the Army uses is the fantasy sale (formerly “Be all you can be,” now “An Army of One”) to get enough people in the door. However, such a fantasy approach either insults the recruits’ intelligence and makes them appear gullible to their peers, or sets them up for disillusionment if they actually believe the Recruiting Command’s ad copy. The Navy and Air Force attract recruits with a high-tech emphasis, implying that they will learn something useful for their post-military careers. This does not insult their intelligence and actually receives more respect from their peers. Navy and Air Force officers cultivate the image of involvement in science, physics and engineering, representing applied academic achievement in uniform. The Army and the Marines, however, do not have similar latitude in the scientific and academic disciplines taught in schools today. Where people are both gun-shy and lawsuit-shy, you will not find a curriculum in the arts, history or disciplines of war. The absence of martial learning in schools today leaves a vacuum filled by disordered mutations of the instinct: gangs, lone shooters, clique fights or contact sports. Army recruiting’s premise is that the service must select and turn civilian-oriented recruits into a new soldiers within a year. The most that can be made of this fast food approach has been made, and is remarkable as far as it goes. And yet this quick turnaround is a minimalist approach to the profession of “warriorcraft” that our society does not use in other professions such as medicine, law or ministry. There has to be a better way than crippling our warriors with a mixed dedication that treats their profession as a “paraprofession.” The young person contemplating military training and service out of high school faces a rapid personal revolution lacking the depth of a gradual steeling over time. A martial tradition beginning in early childhood would change that. While our society expects a military that will quickly and efficiently sharpen its recruits into formidable warriors, it expects these warriors to have civil rights awareness, cultural sensitivity and creative individuality to customize democracy projects all over the neocon map. How can this happen in public schools and universities from which military tradition and the art of war are estranged? There is no psychological trick, hat change, badge, moniker or advertising campaign that can improve recruiting. The only way to improve Army recruiting is to improve the quality of recruits over the long term. It can only happen if recruiting dies and martial training and tradition rises in U.S. public elementary school curricula. The qualities and skills of warriors should be built up gradually over time if our soldiers and Marines are to fulfill the nearly superhuman expectations society imposes: to kill their enemies while equipping the relatives and neighbors among whom their enemies live with the tools and mindset of democracy. Each of the armed services ought to use recruiting and research funds to pay accomplished former armed service members to train children in key areas that will develop their warrior talents: physical and mental toughening, orienteering, martial arts, marksmanship, swimming, outdoor and survival skills, negotiating terrain, mechanical skills, endurance, field medicine, problem-solving workshops and the like. The best approach would establish integrated martial art, sports and academic programs in elementary schools and take martial curricula out of the storefront sales paradigm (like military recruiting) and into a prep school curriculum. Such an emphasis would not be just for developing future commissioned officers, but for enlisted soldiers as well. Young students would benefit from a samurai-like program in service to constitutional democracy. Such a program would provide a much larger contingent of military-ready recruits and candidates when they come of age without having to put them through a sudden assembly-line process after high school, which actually forces the appearance of fanaticism that civilian sensitivities ironically create. At any time, we would be able to raise a credible military force out of our peacetime population. The warrior prep programs should eclipse JROTC programs. They would not indoctrinate the children to think in terms of “officer” or “enlisted,” but would emphasize mastery of hands-on leadership and teamwork in martial skills before rank ever became an issue. The goal and reward would be mastery of martial skills, not attainment of rank. The virtues of warrior traditions would deepen the warrior profession beyond a corporate career concept in more and more children over time. American culture must help our children replace the toy-store fixation with plastic war heroes and enable in them the empowering realization that they can defend their people, their country and their freedoms. Men are not plastic and life is no game. Yet for some interests, it has been profitable to treat them like plastic game pieces at expense to life and limb. As our population ages and immigration increases, we will need a mainstream warrior cohort integrated into civilian schooling that blends new immigrants with established citizens dedicated to the common defense of our nation. We cannot afford to allow ourselves to develop into a nerdy, yuppie techno-class that is protected, fed and clothed by a perpetual immigrant force of people who must take lower pay simply because they are newer and less educated. To accept the status quo is to increasingly make military recruiting just another commercial industry, and that is an art that democracy cannot afford to make mercenary and factional: the art of war. Michael Woodson is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at singingmountains@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
Anything else is just wishful thinking.
The NRA should get involved, really, do they anything better going on than to be a booster club for the military? Civilian deaths are always a problem, it's so easy for the media to call them from the bench. There are few psychos in the Marines anymore, the training is too hard for mentally disorganized people. That said there are extenuating circumstances in nearly every case. There are a few suicides but no Akbars so far.
Iraqi recruits are generally very raw, they don't have near the bringin' up our kids do, and most join to eat and have clothes. Patriotism and discipline is a bit thin. It will be years before their troops are professional (trained in America) enough to operate effectively.
Finding the enemy is like bagging up smoke. Our force is converting to security for civilian affairs and supply transport. We will have rapid response teams for raids and reinforcement. Not much need for armor, ours won't fit down their city streets anyway.
One technique the Army uses is the fantasy sale (formerly “Be all you can be,” now “An Army of One”) to get enough people in the door. However, such a fantasy approach either insults the recruits’ intelligence and makes them appear gullible to their peers, or sets them up for disillusionment if they actually believe the Recruiting Command’s ad copy.
The Navy and Air Force attract recruits with a high-tech emphasis, implying that they will learn something useful for their post-military careers. This does not insult their intelligence and actually receives more respect from their peers. Navy and Air Force officers cultivate the image of involvement in science, physics and engineering, representing applied academic achievement in uniform.
The Army and the Marines, however, do not have similar latitude in the scientific and academic disciplines taught in schools today. Where people are both gun-shy and lawsuit-shy, you will not find a curriculum in the arts, history or disciplines of war. The absence of martial learning in schools today leaves a vacuum filled by disordered mutations of the instinct: gangs, lone shooters, clique fights or contact sports.
Army recruiting’s premise is that the service must select and turn civilian-oriented recruits into a new soldiers within a year. The most that can be made of this fast food approach has been made, and is remarkable as far as it goes. And yet this quick turnaround is a minimalist approach to the profession of “warriorcraft” that our society does not use in other professions such as medicine, law or ministry. There has to be a better way than crippling our warriors with a mixed dedication that treats their profession as a “paraprofession.”
The young person contemplating military training and service out of high school faces a rapid personal revolution lacking the depth of a gradual steeling over time. A martial tradition beginning in early childhood would change that. While our society expects a military that will quickly and efficiently sharpen its recruits into formidable warriors, it expects these warriors to have civil rights awareness, cultural sensitivity and creative individuality to customize democracy projects all over the neocon map. How can this happen in public schools and universities from which military tradition and the art of war are estranged?
There is no psychological trick, hat change, badge, moniker or advertising campaign that can improve recruiting. The only way to improve Army recruiting is to improve the quality of recruits over the long term. It can only happen if recruiting dies and martial training and tradition rises in U.S. public elementary school curricula.
The qualities and skills of warriors should be built up gradually over time if our soldiers and Marines are to fulfill the nearly superhuman expectations society imposes: to kill their enemies while equipping the relatives and neighbors among whom their enemies live with the tools and mindset of democracy.
Each of the armed services ought to use recruiting and research funds to pay accomplished former armed service members to train children in key areas that will develop their warrior talents: physical and mental toughening, orienteering, martial arts, marksmanship, swimming, outdoor and survival skills, negotiating terrain, mechanical skills, endurance, field medicine, problem-solving workshops and the like.
The best approach would establish integrated martial art, sports and academic programs in elementary schools and take martial curricula out of the storefront sales paradigm (like military recruiting) and into a prep school curriculum. Such an emphasis would not be just for developing future commissioned officers, but for enlisted soldiers as well. Young students would benefit from a samurai-like program in service to constitutional democracy.
Such a program would provide a much larger contingent of military-ready recruits and candidates when they come of age without having to put them through a sudden assembly-line process after high school, which actually forces the appearance of fanaticism that civilian sensitivities ironically create. At any time, we would be able to raise a credible military force out of our peacetime population.
The warrior prep programs should eclipse JROTC programs. They would not indoctrinate the children to think in terms of “officer” or “enlisted,” but would emphasize mastery of hands-on leadership and teamwork in martial skills before rank ever became an issue. The goal and reward would be mastery of martial skills, not attainment of rank. The virtues of warrior traditions would deepen the warrior profession beyond a corporate career concept in more and more children over time.
American culture must help our children replace the toy-store fixation with plastic war heroes and enable in them the empowering realization that they can defend their people, their country and their freedoms. Men are not plastic and life is no game. Yet for some interests, it has been profitable to treat them like plastic game pieces at expense to life and limb.
As our population ages and immigration increases, we will need a mainstream warrior cohort integrated into civilian schooling that blends new immigrants with established citizens dedicated to the common defense of our nation. We cannot afford to allow ourselves to develop into a nerdy, yuppie techno-class that is protected, fed and clothed by a perpetual immigrant force of people who must take lower pay simply because they are newer and less educated.
To accept the status quo is to increasingly make military recruiting just another commercial industry, and that is an art that democracy cannot afford to make mercenary and factional: the art of war.
The excessive fire endangered other Marines responding to the engagement. This Marine officer was clearly not in control of the battlefield as he should have been. It is very unusual that an officer was the only one to engage fire, very unusual.
Frankly the Russians got most of their intel from our public libraries and government construction contracting offices. Unbelievable what I saw and where I went in the 70's and 80's with a minimal security clearance.
I really feel bad for the CIA. Their technical proficiency was completely betrayed by bureaucratic bungling. Russian fear of outsiders is endemic and historical, they scared themselves into paranoia of us. Fear of the U.S. was trumped up as an organizing and control tool for the Kremlin. The rest of them were Marxists that never really believed in communism anyway after the mid 60's.
Where in the article did you see it said that the author's idea meant mandatory or compulsory warrior training at an early age?
I don't see it. Therefore, the analogy to Sparta or Hitler youth is disingenuine and a red herring.
When we old farts were kids, we played army with toy guns, cap guns, (even BB guns), dirt clod grenades and slushballs, and practiced sneaking up on each other.
Schoolyard differences were settled fisticuffs, but when the fight was over, the winner helped the loser up.
The average feisty 7 year old was more of a warrior than a lot of the feminized or videogamed kids in high school today.
Counseling and conflict resolution and all the candy assed crap is turning a large number of our children into a nation of wimps. Now parents call their lawyer if little Johnny comes home with a bloody nose.
That said, there are some tough kids out there, who don't (as a rule) grow up in Yuppie Mansionettes, who go to schools which are far more brutal then the pantywaist ideals. They may be tough, but are their surrogate institutions a warrior culture, or simply one of exploiting those weaker?
What we need is a midline between brutality and pantywaists, where the concept of Honor is taught, and Chivalry is renewed, at least as much as modern paradigms will permit.
Feminist Doctrine not only does not understand, as a rule, diddley squat about young men and being a warrior, but has generally sought to eliminate the warrior culture from our young men.
Those who are aggressive enough are not channeled into programs which permit them to work off that vigor, but are feminized or drugged instead of disciplined. Our very culture has become one which teaches many to take advantage of those less capable, (and that not face to face), rather than defend them.
It is not about esteem, but respect, self respect, respect for others, respect for authority, and the respect of your community for doing tough tasks, and doing them well.
IMHO, the Boy Scouts were then a great organization, and may still be, but they suffer the onslaught of a society which belittles and belabors them for everything once considered right and honorable by the mainstream.
When I was a scout, we cut down trees, wound baling twine into rope, and used those trees and that rope to build things, including a tower in a lake.
We did not need permits, we did not need an environmental impact statement, we just did. We accepted orders from those we respected, and in turn, learned respect for ourselves and others, and earned others' respect. It was great, and is something we need to get our young men back to.
The warrior prep programs should eclipse JROTC programs. They would not indoctrinate the children to think in terms of “officer” or “enlisted,” but would emphasize mastery of hands-on leadership and teamwork in martial skills before rank ever became an issue. The goal and reward would be mastery of martial skills, not attainment of rank. The virtues of warrior traditions would deepen the warrior profession beyond a corporate career concept in more and more children over time.
I don't see it. Therefore, the analogy to Sparta or Hitler youth is disingenuine and a red herring.
Perhaps you missed these statements. What do you think he is advocating being taught? Flower arranging? I also missed where I made an analogy to Hitler youth. Oh wait, I didn't. But good of you to bring it up to somehow discount my statement...
None of the bold emphases capture mandatory language. The concept is not a compulsory concept except by your desire to read it into the article as a straw man point the author never made.
That makes it easier for attacks, but they aren't based in reality.
You responded to another poster, or so I recall, affirming their suggestion on the hitler redux.
Boy, do I need a pagaraph!
Living in a blue area(Los Angeles)I find it hard to believe this could be implimented, but I'm sure my view is distorted from my 15 year exposure to this pit.
A childhood filled with this type of orientation seems ideal to me; martial arts, shooting, camping, etc., like boy scouts was when I was a kid. It takes EFFORT on the part of parents these days to let a kid grow up with that rich of a childhood. Oh, that's right, it did when I was a kid too.
I really only read this thread to brag about my son going into the Army on July 12th. ;^)
"What changed? After 9-11 the nation was united. Now we are not."
That unity lasted about 3 months. The whiney democrats I know ask that question, as though they don't know. Bunch of wusses, not a real man among 'em!
Well this is the only way according to the author. Those that advocate the only way believe their way should be mandatory.
That makes it easier for attacks, but they aren't based in reality.
Well they are if you look just a bit beyond the words. Considering how many faux conservatives are looking beyond the words in the Constitution to deliver new powers to the President, I would assume they could do it in a simple article as well. Guess not
You responded to another poster, or so I recall, affirming their suggestion on the hitler redux
Nice try. The poster I was responding to was in the affirmative for this solution and at no time mentioned Hitler. Nope, if you do a search using CTRL+F on the page, you're the first person to bring up the name or the ideal...
On a somewhat related note--
Army ROTC is meeting its requirements comfortably. Admittedly not every cadet expects to be a warrior, and they have large numbers of medical, business, administrative types, but some have no goal other than to lead a dogface unit.
Last years numbers were 4400 commissioned with a goal of 3900 annually. Some were assigned to other than active assignments. My son is eager to "get to the front" in spite of the constant pc make love not war drumbeat and frankly is tired of biding his time in ROTC.
Their Grandma can do all these things (and more!), and is a good influence there as well.
I'm not trying to make little boys out of them (hardly!) but see these as basic life skills.
Far too few people have skinned their own dinner, if you get my drift.
Just three generations ago, everyone did at one point or another.
It is good that you are raising your boys well, and I hope they will always be men you can be proud of.
Thank your son for me, I had a nephew in Saudi, and I know the desert can be a harsh environment.
Teaching the young ladies good marksmanship is time well invested. They often have more patience and turn out to be very fine marksman. The other "life" skills are pretty important too. Being competent to change a tire can be a lifesaver.
"The only way to improve Army recruiting is to improve the quality of recruits over the long term. It can only happen if recruiting dies and martial training and tradition rises in U.S. public elementary school curricula."
Billbears, "It can only happen . . " above refers to improving the quality of recruits over the long term.
". . martial training and tradition rises in U.S. public elementary school curricula" does not say mandatory curricula, and it presumes this will improve "recruiting" not "conscription." Nowhere is conscription advocated in the piece. I've read it, and it is not there.
By "recruiting dies," the author clearly means recruiting as we know it, i.e. the status quo, without any precursor training, because the author calls for change.
You wrote "Well this is the only way according to the author. Those that advocate the only way believe their way should be mandatory." I take issue with your assertion because you have not addressed the very real problem inherent in what our government has been asking members of the Armed Forces to do in the post-Cold War interventionist era.
It seems you are throwing dirt at the messenger regarding a real problem. The writer obviously states his opinion and is not a government agency or legislator making policy statements. The availability of martial training and tradition in the elementary schools is what the AUTHOR thinks is the only way to improve on the status quo. The piece doesn't say that everyone must hold the author's view.
Reading carefully and being sure to understand what is not said is almost as important in determining what has been said.
Just out of curiousity. If this is the author's view, exactly who do you think the author would have to go to achieve approval for such a 'wonderful' program? As the money for the school system comes from the national government, part of the approval would have to come from that organization. The federal government would be approving 'martial training and tradition rises in U.S. public elementary school curricula'. And not only at the high school level, but at the elementary school level apparently.
I understand fully that this is the author's view alone. But what the author is advocating would eventually become reminiscent of Spartan training of youth.
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