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.

Yes. Folks in North Dakota tend to be helpful, but I want the girls to be self-sufficient. Imho, the more they know, the better off they are. Just basic survival skills, and something they can build on if the need arises.

How is the program Spartan? The article called for integration of the warrior role into civil society instead of its estrangement or separation.

I would rather that the federal government approve martial training and tradition in school on an elective basis than that they force it. The author isn't talking about a compulsory curriculum. The existence doesn't require attendance any more than shop class is required in high school. However, the warrior profession would finally be given the proper respect and value it deserves in society.

Some, not all, utopian thinkers wish away the necessity for warriors, and until it is possible, they wish to minimize their importance and stuff them in the background of the national soul. This is hypocritical and possibly dangerous for the same reason that abusing any person or creature is dangerous.

The author of the posted article doesn't even seem to be calling the idea a 'new program' but the establishment of martial skill mastery, discipline and tradition.

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