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Ed W999's avatar

Kind of reminds me about Vice President Al Gore lecturing his kids while pointing at his Secret Service Agents and and saying do you want to grow up to be like them.

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Jeffrey L Minch's avatar

I served during the Vietnam War Era when the draftee army was phased out and the volunteer army came about. It was a dicey transition and it was a difficult transition. It did not happen overnight and we almost lost the army in the experiment, but there were a dozen generals who bore down and got the job done. Wartime armies are different than peacetime armies.

It is important to know that even when we had the draftee army, the vast majority of soldiers were volunteers. Draftees start as riflemen and everybody above him from a three stripe buck sergeant and higher was a volunteer. This is an important fact.

It takes a year to train a soldier and to assimilate him into a unit so he can contribute. This includes Basic Training, Advanced Individual Training (MOS specific, military occupancy specialty), and unit training when assigned to a field unit.

That VN Era army was much, much larger than today's army -- 7-8X larger.

The draft was good for the country as it spread the burden without as much favoritism of who shared the burden -- except for the well heeled draft dodgers such as Clinton, Cheney, Trump who were able to game the system to avoid service. They were all cowards and punks, but mostly just cowards.

An added benefit was draftee soldiers knew what the military was and was not. They returned to civilian life knowledgeable about soldiering. That was very good for the country.

I was an officer, a volunteer, an Abn/Rgr combat engineer, and a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, the son of a professional soldier, and my mother served in WWII. In a lot of ways, it was the family business and I wanted to serve. It never crossed my mind I would not serve.

It was the greatest honor of my life to be entrusted with the lives of America's mothers' and fathers' sons and I took it very seriously and I'd like to think I did a good job of it. I learned a lot and I worked my ass off. It made me a better person. I grew up in the Army.

We need to return to the concept of national service -- not everybody has to go in the military -- we have plenty of national parks that need work or you can empty bed pans or you can program computers -- but some should. It is a duty of a citizen to serve the republic in some way.

If we are to have a professional, lethal, modern volunteer army in a heightening technology environment, then we need to pay our soldiers -- officers, NCOs, and enlisted soldiers -- in a competitive manner and to ensure they leave with skills and more benefits than the current GI Bill and a VA loan. We have to make it an attractive profession. Modern weapon systems require smart, well-trained people.

The military is currently run by a breed of officers who are politicians. In my day, generals did not have press officers and speak to reporters. This is where all the wokeness nonsense is coming from -- political objectives. The army is not a social petri dish.

We have only two real missions:

1. Increase the lethality of the force -- ready to fight tonight; one fight, one win, right now

2. Safeguard the lives of our soldiers

Every decision and program should be measured by those two objectives. If using certain pronouns is not going to increase the lethality of the force or safeguard the lives of our soldiers then it is not the right program. Our enemies are not going to be defeated by pronouns.

We should have a modern military capable of fighting two wars simultaneously -- the US national security doctrine until Obama abandoned it -- and win.

If the country needed me, I would serve again, but I probably couldn't serve in an airborne unit.

JLM

www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

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