Warthen column of 5/15/05
Posted on Sun, May. 15, 2005
The Army should try stressing what it’s all about: service
By Brad Warthen
VP/Editorial Page Editor
THE COME-ON seemed to evoke the scene in “The Matrix” in which Morpheus offers Neo a choice between the red pill and the blue one — an effect that was most likely intentional. It said:
“This time last year, I was where you are now. Then I opened the envelope.”
It was from the Army Reserve, and it was sent to my 16-year-old daughter. She’s a sophomore in high school, so there was a bit of a disconnect between her and the message contained within: “Step up. Stand out. Stay in college.”
(It probably happened because she’s taken some dance classes at USC. Still.)
“Soldiers in the Army Reserve come from all walks of life,” it said. “They know that becoming a soldier does not mean giving up their day job, or their college studies. They know that doing both helps them out financially and gives them a head start on their peers.”
This head start would include up to $22,000 for college while serving, up to $20,000 to pay back student loans, an enlistment bonus of up to $10,000, as much as $4,500 a year tuition assistance while in the Reserves, and “an extra paycheck every month.” Oh, and you can get a free Army cooler with no commitment at goarmy.com/info/dm/19. Not to mention job skills, from “broadcast journalist” to “fabric repair specialist,” whatever that is.
All of which fit with that execrable slogan, “An Army of One” — in other words, here’s what’s in it for you, personally. Precisely the opposite message from the one recruiters should be sending.
It seems these are desperate days for recruiting. Last week:
• The Army ordered a one-day stand-down for all its recruiters, so they can brush up on ethics. Some of them have gotten so anxious about missing quotas that their methods have become... unsound. Example: feeding a potential recruit laxatives to help him get below the weight limit.
• The general in charge of Army recruitment predicted that 2006 could be the worst year since the all-volunteer force was established in 1973.
• Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle also announced that the Army will now offer a 15-month hitch, rather than the usual enlistment of three to four years.
Fifteen months is one tour of duty; one short tour. Who in the world has an opportunity to get good at any kind of job that quickly? One reason tours in Iraq have been extended is because battle-seasoned troops are more valuable than green ones.
This is crazy. Obviously, another approach is needed.
Last Sunday, The New York Times explored the issue from a marketing perspective, offering various views as to how the military (even the Marines are coming up short) might bring in more recruits. It said “historians, military officials and brand strategy experts see possible solutions, some of which are being discussed in public forums, e-mail chains and private Pentagon meetings.”
One approach held that the peacetime practice of pitching the military as a job with “competitive salaries and money for college as well as adventure” doesn’t really work in wartime. “(H)istorically, wartime recruiting has emphasized appeals to moral values like patriotism and service to others.”
Experts were cited as saying “the Pentagon must find every imaginable way to uncork youthful idealism and the desire for ‘meaning’ that appears in surveys of both Christian and liberal teenagers and twentysomethings.”
Setting aside the odd implied assumption that one cannot be both Christian and liberal, that makes a whole lot more sense than the Ayn Randian “Army of One.” Of course, almost anything does. If military recruiters are not asking young people to set aside their personal interests for something larger than themselves, then who is?
Nobody, apparently. Not recruiters. Certainly not Madison Avenue or Hollywood. Not even the president of the United States, who can’t so much as bring himself to ask us civilians to do our part by consuming less foreign oil.
The end of the draft in 1973 — or the degradation of it into a mockery of universal service during the Vietnam years — isn’t entirely to blame for this, but it played its part. I first realized this in the early ’90s, when draft-dodgers reached an age to be running the country. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich seemed much the same. One personified the politics of self-centeredness on the left; the other was his mirror image.
You notice how politics started turning really nasty and polarized about the time the World War II veterans left public office? That’s because those guys had learned early in life that Republican or Democrat, we’re all in this together. Those who followed missed that lesson.
I don’t know if a draft is the answer, to either our immediate force needs or our national character. The military, I know, doesn’t want it, because it doesn’t want reluctant soldiers. But I know that we’d be a better people if some form of service were a feature of our formative years.
That goes for me, too. I was 19 and had just recently been assigned a lottery number when the draft ended. Of course, in my case, it didn’t matter anyway. They wouldn’t have taken me because of my asthma, which is ridiculous. Surely I could have done something for my country. And I’d be a better citizen if I had.
The NYT piece ended with a reference to Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi novel Starship Troopers. Actually, it was more of a political proposal than a novel, having little plot but lots of explication on one basic idea that shaped his imagined future: That you couldn’t vote or even be a citizen unless you had served in the military.
Heinlein was pretty radical, but he had a point. And the best part about it was that under his system, anybody willing to serve would be given a useful job to do, whether hale and hearty or quadriplegic.
I don’t think we have to reorder our democracy along the lines of a space fantasy. And maybe we don’t need a draft, either — yet. But I can’t help thinking that the cause of service would be better advanced if we appealed less to personal advantage and more to e pluribus unum.
Write to Mr. Warthen at bwarthen@thestate.com.
THE COME-ON seemed to evoke the scene in “The Matrix” in which Morpheus offers Neo a choice between the red pill and the blue one — an effect that was most likely intentional. It said:
“This time last year, I was where you are now. Then I opened the envelope.”
It was from the Army Reserve, and it was sent to my 16-year-old daughter. She’s a sophomore in high school, so there was a bit of a disconnect between her and the message contained within: “Step up. Stand out. Stay in college.”
(It probably happened because she’s taken some dance classes at USC. Still.)
“Soldiers in the Army Reserve come from all walks of life,” it said. “They know that becoming a soldier does not mean giving up their day job, or their college studies. They know that doing both helps them out financially and gives them a head start on their peers.”
This head start would include up to $22,000 for college while serving, up to $20,000 to pay back student loans, an enlistment bonus of up to $10,000, as much as $4,500 a year tuition assistance while in the Reserves, and “an extra paycheck every month.” Oh, and you can get a free Army cooler with no commitment at goarmy.com/info/dm/19. Not to mention job skills, from “broadcast journalist” to “fabric repair specialist,” whatever that is.
All of which fit with that execrable slogan, “An Army of One” — in other words, here’s what’s in it for you, personally. Precisely the opposite message from the one recruiters should be sending.
It seems these are desperate days for recruiting. Last week:
• The Army ordered a one-day stand-down for all its recruiters, so they can brush up on ethics. Some of them have gotten so anxious about missing quotas that their methods have become... unsound. Example: feeding a potential recruit laxatives to help him get below the weight limit.
• The general in charge of Army recruitment predicted that 2006 could be the worst year since the all-volunteer force was established in 1973.
• Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle also announced that the Army will now offer a 15-month hitch, rather than the usual enlistment of three to four years.
Fifteen months is one tour of duty; one short tour. Who in the world has an opportunity to get good at any kind of job that quickly? One reason tours in Iraq have been extended is because battle-seasoned troops are more valuable than green ones.
This is crazy. Obviously, another approach is needed.
Last Sunday, The New York Times explored the issue from a marketing perspective, offering various views as to how the military (even the Marines are coming up short) might bring in more recruits. It said “historians, military officials and brand strategy experts see possible solutions, some of which are being discussed in public forums, e-mail chains and private Pentagon meetings.”
One approach held that the peacetime practice of pitching the military as a job with “competitive salaries and money for college as well as adventure” doesn’t really work in wartime. “(H)istorically, wartime recruiting has emphasized appeals to moral values like patriotism and service to others.”
Experts were cited as saying “the Pentagon must find every imaginable way to uncork youthful idealism and the desire for ‘meaning’ that appears in surveys of both Christian and liberal teenagers and twentysomethings.”
Setting aside the odd implied assumption that one cannot be both Christian and liberal, that makes a whole lot more sense than the Ayn Randian “Army of One.” Of course, almost anything does. If military recruiters are not asking young people to set aside their personal interests for something larger than themselves, then who is?
Nobody, apparently. Not recruiters. Certainly not Madison Avenue or Hollywood. Not even the president of the United States, who can’t so much as bring himself to ask us civilians to do our part by consuming less foreign oil.
The end of the draft in 1973 — or the degradation of it into a mockery of universal service during the Vietnam years — isn’t entirely to blame for this, but it played its part. I first realized this in the early ’90s, when draft-dodgers reached an age to be running the country. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich seemed much the same. One personified the politics of self-centeredness on the left; the other was his mirror image.
You notice how politics started turning really nasty and polarized about the time the World War II veterans left public office? That’s because those guys had learned early in life that Republican or Democrat, we’re all in this together. Those who followed missed that lesson.
I don’t know if a draft is the answer, to either our immediate force needs or our national character. The military, I know, doesn’t want it, because it doesn’t want reluctant soldiers. But I know that we’d be a better people if some form of service were a feature of our formative years.
That goes for me, too. I was 19 and had just recently been assigned a lottery number when the draft ended. Of course, in my case, it didn’t matter anyway. They wouldn’t have taken me because of my asthma, which is ridiculous. Surely I could have done something for my country. And I’d be a better citizen if I had.
The NYT piece ended with a reference to Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi novel Starship Troopers. Actually, it was more of a political proposal than a novel, having little plot but lots of explication on one basic idea that shaped his imagined future: That you couldn’t vote or even be a citizen unless you had served in the military.
Heinlein was pretty radical, but he had a point. And the best part about it was that under his system, anybody willing to serve would be given a useful job to do, whether hale and hearty or quadriplegic.
I don’t think we have to reorder our democracy along the lines of a space fantasy. And maybe we don’t need a draft, either — yet. But I can’t help thinking that the cause of service would be better advanced if we appealed less to personal advantage and more to e pluribus unum.
Write to Mr. Warthen at bwarthen@thestate.com.
posted by Big Daddy @ 4:05 AM
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