An unrelated discussion in the comment thread of another article got me to thinking (yeah, I hear ya \u2013 \u201cOh crap, here he goes again . . . . \u201c).\u00a0 But I do that sometimes, though it\u2019s gotten me in trouble more times than I care to remember.\u00a0 And I guess maybe Zero’s question earlier today also played a role.<\/p>\n
Anyway:\u00a0 Jonn lets me post here, so until he comes to his senses and kills my account, well, here I go again.\u00a0 (smile)<\/p>\n
And this time, I\u2019ll ask for help too.\u00a0 \u2018Cause sometimes when I think I come up with a question or six for which I can\u2019t find a good answer.<\/p>\n
For most of its history, America has had an arm\u2019s-length relationship with its Army (and the military in general).\u00a0 Before the Civil War \u2013 and indeed afterwards, up until World War I, basically \u2013 \u201cout of sight, out of mind\u201d was pretty much the norm when bullets weren\u2019t flying.\u00a0 And even then, except for the Civil War the military only tangentially impacted most of America.\u00a0 The Army was mostly on the frontier, and the Navy was at sea or in a few ports.\u00a0 America and it\u2019s military were only passing acquaintances.<\/p>\n
World War I was scarcely different.\u00a0 Yes, we ramped up hugely for World War I \u2013 but we ramped down just as quickly.\u00a0 The military very nearly disappeared again until around 1940.<\/p>\n
World War II and the Cold War afterwards changed things.\u00a0 Korea (the first real flare-up of the Cold War) rubbed our noses in the fact that we couldn\u2019t assume we were safe and largely dismantle the military.\u00a0 And since then, we\u2019ve retained a sizeable military in both war and peace.<\/p>\n
However, society was somewhat \u2013 well \u2013 schizophrenic in what it wanted in its military.\u00a0 For years after World War II, the US had a peacetime draft.\u00a0 That led to a military that was relatively a mirror of the society from which\u00a0 it came.\u00a0 And the military experience was widely shared.\u00a0 This was generally considered a \u201cgood thing\u201d for a democracy.<\/p>\n
Then came Vietnam, and complaints about the draft arose.\u00a0 The inevitable casualties were dispersed across the nation and throughout all layers of society.\u00a0\u00a0 The war itself was engineered stealthily and deceitfully by LBJ, and quickly became unpopular.\u00a0 \u201cRich people\u2019s kids go to college, not war\u201d became the cry, with perhaps some justification.\u00a0 So the draft became toxic, and was terminated \u201cwith extreme prejudice\u201d at the tail end of Vietnam in favor of a volunteer, professional Army.<\/p>\n
At the same time, military structure changed after Vietnam.\u00a0 LBJ had been able to engineer a stealthy entry into Vietnam because the existing force structure \u2013 active and reserve \u2013 didn\u2019t require him to mobilize the reserve components to do so.\u00a0 The force structure in the Army was changed to force reserve involvement in future major conflicts.<\/p>\n
In a relatively short time, that\u2019s led to a divergence between the US military and the society it serves.\u00a0 Fewer in the civilian population have knowledge of, or a clue about, the military \u2013 because relatively few now serve.\u00a0 And through reduced turnover, the military has become somewhat of a society apart from the society it serves, with different norms, beliefs, and attitudes than its parent society.\u00a0 The only time many have a military experience is when there\u2019s a relatively large conflict.\u00a0 And even then, that experience is largely confined to a self-selected group of professionals plus those considering the profession as a career.\u00a0 No draft means there just isn’t a large trained manpower pool to support rapid ramp-up in a crisis.<\/p>\n
In short, we’re now back pretty much where we were before World War II – largely “out of sight, out of mind” when there’s not a shooting war going on.<\/p>\n
This dichotomy has been addressed in the various \u201csheep and sheepdog\u201d articles that have been written during the last few years, including a poetic version by our own Russ Vaughn (Poetrooper).\u00a0 All are good.\u00a0 My personal favorite is the version found here<\/a>, but which version one prefers is largely a matter of taste.\u00a0 All express the same basic idea.<\/p>\n Now (finally!), the questions with which I\u2019m struggling:\u00a0 is our current situation a good one?\u00a0 How closely should our military mirror the society from which it\u2019s drawn?\u00a0 Can it do so and remain effective?\u00a0 If not, where is the limit beyond which divergence is counterproductive?\u00a0 Are we approaching that limit?\u00a0 Have we already passed it?<\/p>\n The sheepdog worries the sheep because he looks and acts different from the other sheep.\u00a0 But how much can the sheepdog look and act like a sheep and still remain a sheepdog capable of protecting the flock from wolves?\u00a0 And how far removed from the sheep can the sheepdog get before he turns on the flock?<\/p>\n Comments solicited, even those of the \u201cWTF?\u201d and \u201cThat\u2019s absolute gibberish!\u201d variety.\u00a0 (Well, maybe not really the latter kind \u2013 but Momma always told me to be polite anyway [smile]).<\/p>\n Seriously:\u00a0 what do all of you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"