The volunteer military is in trouble

For 33 years we have relied on service to come from an innate sense of duty, and many people of honor have stepped up. I am proud to call many of them family and many more of them friends.

An all-volunteer force carries an implied bargain. I will give my service to the nation and in return the nation will not misuse and abuse me. I will volunteer to serve; and in exchange you will agree to only send me into harm’s way when it is a last resort.

The bargain has been broken. Tour dates have been extended. I can not express how sacred that exit date is. I have circled that date on my calendar and marked the days off one by one. I tremble with rage as I think about those people who have circled that date only to have it snatched away.

The services are quick to tell you how they exceeded recruitment goals by a couple of hundred per branch. What they aren’t telling you is that the regular Army is missing 3500 officers throughout the ranks. They are not telling qualified recruits that OCS is an option because they need those numbers among the enlisted ranks.

The Army Reserves is missing nearly 11,000 Lieutenants and Captains in the ranks. But recruits with degrees are not being informed that they qualify for OCS. Missing so many officers and passing up the opportunity to groom new ones, who exactly is going to lead these new waivered troops?

They are not telling you that 17% of the recruits that are being accepted are getting in on waivers for psychological, character and medical reasons. Recruits who would never have been accepted five years ago are being aggressively recruited. Cheating is happening and recruiters are lying. (Do I need to make my Honor Code speech here, or do you know it by heart at this point?)

I had a run in with a recruiter recently that ended with me showing my ID, demanding to see his and me calling his commander.

Retired (Four Star) General Barry McCaffrey laments the lack of political support for the war effort. Politicians aren’t rallying the troops. He laments that the closest any politician has come to calling to arms was the president at Fort Bragg a year ago saying that if you chose to serve, it’s an honorable career.

“We need people to fight.” says McCaffrey.

Perhaps General, more people would be willing to step up and fight if they were not being lied to by recruiters, and if they were not being sent off to fight and die for more lies. People tend to catch on to the bullshit sooner or later, and then you end up compromised in order to perpetuate the lie. And if you compromise too much, you destroy yourself in the process. When you ride the tiger, you dare not dismount.

We have about two years to turn this ship around, and since we have a civilian led military, we need civilian input. We need retired officers and NCO’s and ordinary citizens like you to band together and form citizen advisory panels. These panels need to pressure congress to keep the governments end of the bargain that is made with the troops who volunteer. Those troops give up their voice in order to protect ours. We have a responsibility to them to speak on their behalf (the military defends democracy but it doesn’t practice it) and demand they not be misused and abused. If someone is willing to get shot at for me, just try to shut me up on their behalf!

Citizen involvement and discussion of mandatory national service needs to take place. If Joe and Jane Mini-van Split-Level have to think about the possibility of Tiffany or Brooks suiting up and getting shot at; we would see a hell of a lot higher standards applied before engaging in hostilities.