Posted on 04/12/2007 8:59:57 PM PDT by PAUL REVERE TODAY
WASHINGTON, April 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army is struggling to convince recent West Point graduates to make the military their career. Recent graduates of the U.S. Military Academy are exiting active duty at the highest rate in more than three decades, the Boston Globe reported Wednesday. Many military specialists say repeated tours in Iraq are driving out some of the Army's best and brightest young officers.
Of the 903 officers who graduated from West Point in 2001, nearly 46 percent left the service in 2006. More than 54 percent of the 935 graduates in the class of 2000 had left active duty by this January, Army statistics showed.
In most years during the last three decades, between 10 percent and 30 percent of West Point graduates opted out after their mandatory five years of service, the newspaper reported.
Many disaffected former officers feel the same way. The bloodless Bosnia operation that used only airpower to bring Milosovich and the Serbians to the table was an attractive and deceptive result that lulled GWB and Rumsfeld into a sense of hubris in the Iraq operation. Neither had the intellectual ability to see the enormous differences. They thus insisted in conducting the Iraq war and post conflict peace keeping and reconstruction contrary to the advice of those much wiser than they (meaning, practically anyone with an IQ above their shoe size and the experience of a junior NCO). The dull normal idiot they installed as Provision Governor as a political plum exacerbated the minor insugency into the debacle we’ve been imbroiled in since the late Spring of 2003. The Bush and Rumsfeld malfeasance in office is more than astounding; it’s beyond anything since the James Buchanan admiistration preceeding Lincoln.
Tedious, unimaginative drivel.
Every generation has its carpers and complainers about how the president is running the military. I've heard such noise with repsect to every president of my lifetime, including Reagan.
It's fully deserved in the case of Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. The rest? Give me a break.
I distinctly said the Clinton failure was not force officer competence or effectiveness of the officer corps, it was a failure to grasp the importance of supply depot logistics and the necessity for spare parts when need to conduct training opserations and work-up for combat certification. Clinton deserves that hit but he didn’t misuse the force as Bush has done continuously since the beginning of the Afghan and Iraq operations. Clinton did not destroy the reserve and guard. In fact, his peace dividend concept moved many officers and enlisted troops to those non-active billets to maintain readiness but pursue a civilian occupation.
Nonsense...USMA cadets are not poilitcal appointees...while each Congressman, Senator and the President can nominate potential cadets it's a highly competitive process and only the best are selected (not appointed).
For the most part (there may be a rare exception) they enter the Academy to get an education and serve their country. To say that the Army is better off without them only displays your ignorance.
Attacking the messenger in a place specifically for candid posts is an admission of nothing substantive to add to the conversation. Thanks for the non-contribution, perhaps it’s time for you to return to watching American Idol or Jerry Springer.
No problem, North Georgia College will carry their load for them as we always have.
What data do you have to support this, that most drop out after the first two years?
I run into quite a few who choose to work for DoD contractors. They bring field expertise to the table along with other specialized skills. They aren't active duty military anymore, but they continue to provide valuable service to keep our military technically superior to our adversaries.
Military life is meant to be tough, disciplined, and based on sacrifice. That's what Bush has required and the soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines who who still have their warrior souls deeply respect it.
You moan like a Clinton Democrat.
What an ignorant and sexist statement.
Just what qualifications do you have to denigrate the women who serve our country with honor and pride and distinction?
My nephew that graduated from West Point last year. He did the FULL 4 years. Most of those that entered WP with him left at the two year mark.
“He tried to destroy the warrior soul of the military, he feminized it and made it soft.”
I remember that there were rumors that there was some rebellion among Special Forces in Haiti where the Special Forces were not aggressively executing the Clinton policy in all cases.
You assert the facts you fervently wish were true as to the force levels and troop TO&E readiness. In fact, the TO&E of units engaged in work-up for combat readiness certification was up to proper inventory and manning levels.
The reductions were, in fact, to the minimum number of operational units that met the National Strategic Plan and doctrine. Mechanization to change from a war plan on the Plains of Europe at the Fulda Gap and the Baltic Plain to smaller assymetrical conflicts was underway in an orderly fashion at he National Training Center and at Doctrine Command.
Small conflict field and trianing manuals were in the revision process as was large unit home readiness repetive training for the quick response brigade, especially at the 82nd Division and Special Forces locations. Sea lift contracts were under revision, the civil air fleet contract were being revised to change from massive division deployments, as in the annual exercises, to the smaller brigade and even battalion transportation needs and prepositoning of war fighting supplies.
As the war fighting doctrines were undergoing changes commensurate with the realities of geopolitical events the Bush crowd chose to fight a major nation-state conflict with the wrong force, the wrong force levels and the wrong equipment and no post conflict plan. The effort violated practically every tenet of senior military educational war planning and execution that we studied extensively at the air, land, sea and national senior professionally military educational colleges.
Why was that anomaly forced on the American public and brought us to the brink of a lost war and unnecessary casualties? The answer is found in the impetuousness and rush to strut his role as CinC and majestic operational planner. That's a role every failed dictator has attempted and landed on his ass in the effort. While we still have an ostensible Republic, and even as the GWB crowd chews it away at every opportunity, our glorious CinC has fared no differently than those other failed toy soldiers in civilian dress. Actually, I'm surprised he didn't create a special military-like uniform for himself and Rumsfeld like a Hatian tin-pot for use in pointing at a topographical map in the White House Situation Room; the ridiculous purported leader that he is. Bush and company alone, no one else bears the responsibility for what we have now and the inevitable result ahead.
“What an ignorant and sexist statement.
Just what qualifications do you have to denigrate the women who serve our country with honor and pride and distinction?”
Wow! no wonder you were an O6.
The vast majority of those who leave are washed out. It's not voluntary.
Which one will get cut when with a democrat President..
AND we WILL have a democrat President in 2008..
American Women are basically socialists..
Brain washed in High School and College..
other American women do what they are TOLD by Oprah..
Hell, the military must be way over sized...the Air Force has been “force shaping” or throwing huge numbers of officers out by Selective Early Retirement Board and Reduction in Force.
I don’t have statistics. I’m just going by what my nephew said. There is a period of time where you have to tell them if you’re going to be there for your 3rd year. My nephew even considered it because all his friends were leaving. They certainly were not failing and neither was my nephew.
“When we have less than total war, when warfighters on the battlefield have to call back to CENTCOM and play “mother may I” with a JAG before they can kill a terrorist, when we prosecute Marines for killing the enemy on the battlefield, I don’t want my kids involved in that. “
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“When we have less than total war...”
That pretty well sums it up.
The dogs of war were never unleashed and it appears they never will be at this point.
“Hell, the military must be way over sized...the Air Force has been “force shaping” or throwing huge numbers of officers out by Selective Early Retirement Board and Reduction in Force.”
It isn’t that the “military is over sized, it is that the Navy and Air Force are over sized, while the Army and Marines need men.
The “Blue to Green” program where Air Force and Navy people were offered the opportunity to transfer to the Army didn’t get many takers, but it was tried (I don’t know if it applied to officers).
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