THE INTERESTED SOLDIER

In response to this editorial:

 

 

Go ahead, read it. It's short, I'll wait here.

 

We don't need a draft. The current US military is not broken. Some small number of its people are broken (see SSG Bales, others), but the military, its systems, and overall, its personnel are not broken. Tired, sure (see my previous post), but we do not need to start pulling unsuspecting young men (and women, but we'll get to that later) out of their homes and into our various wars.

 

I will refer throughout the following two posts largely to the US Army, but much of what I speak of will refer to the entire US Military.

 

The Army's strength is in its values. Many of those values are held by a large section of America, but the Army is better for having people self-select into it. For having people who enter the Army understanding and sharing those values. Most importantly, people who want to be in the Army. A professional, competent engaged military is not built by compelling people at random into it, training them a minimum amount (because you only have them for a limited time), and sending them, unwilling, into combat.

 

When I was a Platoon leader, I had any number of soldiers who were looking forward to getting out. Who had not anticipated getting extended into a 15-month deployment. But I never had to worry that any of them were there at (what amounts to) gunpoint. We all chose to get into our predicament, and that choice, that fellowship helped us get through and accomplish what we had to do.

 

The last remaining draftee retired from the Army last year in 2011 after 39 years of service. He was the senior enlisted advisor for an Army Corps - that's a big damn deal. He proves that there is no inherent corelation between draftees and bad Soldiers. He was forced into the Army, but he stayed in and rose to his position by choice - and it is that choice that makes the Army stronger.

 

The following sentence from the editorial,"Sergeant Bales would not have served more than two tours in Iraq and certainly would not have been sent to Afghanistan." is patently false. SSG Bales was still in the Army because he made the decision, likely two or three times, to stay in it. Sure, that decision was likely affected by economics, as well personal choice and the inputs of his family, but it was a decision he was allowed to make, knowing the consequences and benefits.

 

Of course, nothing in this post is meant to argue against the utility, and potential necessity of a draft. Were the Chinese to take Alaska and start marching south across the Yukon, we would need to, and should, reenstate a draft. But the draft should only be used when needed - when the man-power needs of the military cannot be met another way. Generally, against an existential threat, or at least in a situation that warrents it. We didn't need (nor can we afford) a standing Army of 1 million to fight the wars in Afghanistan and (previously) Iraq. We increased the size of the Army (slightly) by recruiting to meet our needs. And we met them.

 

 

The second issue I'll address, in my next post, is only tangentially related to the editorial. Why don't women have to register with Selective Service when they turn 18?

 

 

 

 

 

I was asked to respond to the idea of "Destruction as occupation"... I suppose I had never thought of it that way.
 
I have any number of good justifications.

 

When I was a PL - I think my best one - was this: I, as a brand new Lieutenant, have no ability to change the strategic mission, no ability to change the direction of a conflict (or prevent/end one, for that matter). I do, however, have to the ability to change the face of the conflict, on a small scale. Almost all of the major war crimes, the horrific things done by American soldiers (My Lai, Abu Gharib, the kill squad from a couple years ago), were done because of terrible leadership (the exception being this most recent murder spree done by one man). Abu Garhib was a lack of leadership and accountability. Ditto the kill squad. My Lai was one terrible, psychotic leader (2LT Calley) and a lack of leadership above him ensuring he wasn't ordering his men to do murder. By being present, being a leader who enforces the laws of war, who ensures accountability, I prevent one small unit from doing terrible things. Plus, by the end of that first deployment, I had actually been able to do some good. We cleared Baqubah of a violent organization that put IEDs in the road and kidnapped people for ransom to raise funds. On a small scale, when we left, we had (it seemed, and I hope) reduced the overall level of violence, and restored some normalcy to the Iraqis living there.
 
As I move higher and higher in rank, further from a tactical role, and on to staff, that is less and less applicable. My last job was to ensure we had the things (food, fuel, construction materials, contracts, water, euqipment, etc., etc., etc.) that we needed to do whatever mission we had. It's fairly removed from the fight, and removed from the local populace. I ensured, the best I could, that my fellow soldiers were safe and comfortable. I tried not to break any procurment laws. Internal justification came from helping my comrades.
 
Now, still on staff, this time as an inteligence officer, I try to keep my guys safe again. I try to figure out who the enemy is so that we can separate him from the population he hides in. Again, trying to minimize the destruction. Capture him so he can be interrogated (in accordance with fairly strict humanitatian guidelines - no one with more than half a brain is messing around interrogations after the post-Abu Garhib reforms), and find more bad dudes. This time my job is to keep my guys, my unit, safe from harm (by anticipating it and warning them of it), and to help them limit the harm they do (by telling them where, when, and to whom to apply violence/money/etc.).
 
Sure destruction is part of the job - it is one the main tools at our disposal. But we, as a military, have spent the last 10ish years figuring out what works better than violence - and it turns out a lot of things do. David Kilcullen (retired Australian Army officer and military theorist) once described Counterinsurgency as "armed social work." Our aim isn't to do violence - it's to "build capacity of Afghan security forces" and "show the afghan people the legitimacy of Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan." The phrasing may sound forced, but they're legitimate goals. We have a lot of tools - money and knowledge being two primary ones. Violence is rarely the first tool we go for. In this war, a platoon or company's mission is rarely "attack that compound," it's more often "secure this village while the commander tries to convice these elders not to cooperate with the Taliban." Often times we've tried too hard to model Afghanistan after the US (strong central government and counter-narcotics come to mind as two bad ideas), but on a small scale, we try to do good and, I think, tend to help people.

 

On a large scale, on the whole, I don't know if any of the places we've been are better off today because of US military intervention.

 
The wars themselves.... The Iraq war was a mistake. Probably not illegal - just stupid. It was a bad idea to do it in the first place, and it took the height of arrogance to believe that the war would turn out well after the inital invasion. Most of that blame, I think lays on the political leadership of the time (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheny). Some blame should go to the Pentagon - we had plenty of Generals and Colonels who either bought into their own "optimistic plans" or were too afraid (especially after the Administration's reaction to the comments of GEN Shinseki) to speak up to say that the plan was bad.
 
I think a more legitimate case can be made for the invasion of Afghanistan - as long as you avoid mission creep - which we've not been able to do. If we had limited our goals to, "prevent international terrorist groups from using Afghanistan as a base from which to launch spectacular attacks against the United States and its allies," we could have packed up our toys and gone home in 2002 or 2003. As long as we left some CIA and SOF folk behind to keep an eye on things, we would have been done. But, like gamblers, politicians can't quit while they're ahead. Since the Commander in Chief said we were all in, we were all in, and we've been trying to make a go of Counterinsurgency/Foreign Internal Defense ever since.

 

I'm sure I'll have more to say about this as my war drags on.

 

A couple of pieces that I've read this week come to mind while I've been writing this:
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/world/asia/disconnect-clear-in-us-bafflement-over-2-afghan-responses.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
 
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/19/more_on_command_and_control_structures_it_is_difficult_because_it_is_inherently_pol

 

 

 

Please, respond in the comments. Suggest topics for further bloviation.