The last draftee

CSM Mellinger demonstrates one of the most compelling virtues of the mixed, drafted/volunteer Army personnel model. Here is someone who has made myriad contributions across our Army in the Adjutant General Corps, Infantry and now, the Medical Command.

He entered the Army involuntarily (or grudgingly) as a unit clerk but after being exposed to the service and its array of opportunities, he reenlisted and pursued some of the most challenging duty assignments available in the entire Army. I found this among many Special Forces Senior NCOs I knew on active duty. Although they initially enlisted as Mechanics, Chemical Specialists or MPs, once inside the Army they selected the SF lifestyle. Something is lost when you recruit "off the street" for these positions (like today's 18X program) and you wind up with a self-selcting cohort that may not include the best innate talent to staff a force of "quiet professionals."

There is something about this "serendipitous" nature of the draftee or the ROTC commissionee seeking to avoid the enlisted draft (discussed in Chapter 2 of Colin Powell's "My American Journey"), that our Army is missing. Sometimes you just wind up with a Joint Chiefs Chairman or a Sergeant Major of the Army that you never would have found otherwise. Most often, you wind up with a citizen exposed and attuned to military affairs and the notion of shared responsibility and service.

There are many talented individuals who could contribute greatly to our Army, but given its current Lowest Common Denominator and micro-targeted recruiting efforts (essentially 20% of our zip codes while ignoring the rest), will never be exposed to the Army or receive a compelling and culturally/regionally/educationally appropriate "sales pitch" on what the Army has to offer and they to offer it.

Bottom Line: Today's recruiting posture is a problem. Ditto for the Army's "Point-of-Sale MOS job reservation" system. We allow young people (or increasingly 41 year old losers) to enlist for a career field without a single day of exposure to the Army. In this supposed era of the "strategic corporal", is this how we should be staffing our infantry? I would love to see a study on the attitudinal, educational, regional and political traits of our self-selecting entry cohorts of new Infantrymen between 1999 and 2009.

A self-selecting/culturally isolated Army is bad enough, but an Infantry or SF entering cohort disproportionately filled with GWOT "true believers" is something that needs attention/scrutiny.

Wow ... not sure where to start with this. I'm curious where you get your information, because I'm in a position to know that a great deal of what you've just posted is inaccurate, to say the very least. 20% of our zipcodes targeted and the rest ignored? That would come as quite a surprise to Congress considering the amount of money they have approved for national marketing campaigns such as "Army Strong," "The Few, the Proud, ..." and "Accelerate Your Life," all of which are among the most successful ad campaigns in history. It would be difficult to find an 18-21 year old anywhere in this country who was unfamiliar with at least one of the military's ad slogans.

And where are you getting the idea that the group of "41 year old losers" is "increasing" in any way? (Other than the fact that the military will now allow a 41 year old to enlist). The vast majority of enlistees are in the military's target market, which is 18-24. And yes, most of them come from areas of the country where there are high population-densities. So what? That's almost a tautology ... of course most of them come from urban areas. Why would that surprise you since that's where most Americans live?

The POS system allows Recruiters to offer a career training guarantee to a young person. Why on earth would that be a bad thing? Think of yourself as a parent ... would you rather put your faith in the government bureaucracy to see the worth of your child and put them in a job that will be fulfilling and one they could be successful in?

Clearly ... you do. Otherwise, you wouldn't be advocating for a draft. Thankfully, the only people right now discussing a draft system are doing so only to score political points in Washington. Nobody is really serious about it, because there are enough people still around who remember what a total disaster the military became under the draft. You have a problem with the all-volunteer system? I suggest you consider living elsewhere. There are plenty of places left in the world where the government leaves you no say in your future ... although, ironically, those places have steadily dwindled in number since the all-volunteer system debuted. Gee, I wonder if there is a connection there? The United States military is the single most powerful force of its kind in human history.

The last time we had a draft, it would have been hard to make that statement without laughing out loud at the drug addicts, convicts and reprobates who made up a great deal of the force.

No thanks. Keep your draft, please. I'd rather be fighting alongside men and women who actually want to be there.

Duckwriter,

Where do I begin. For starters, I've been following this issue (recruiting/military personnel) for over a decade to include uniformed service in USAREC itself. Based on the tone of your response, I sense that I touched a nerve.

For starters, a national advertising campaign (TV Campaign) does not necessarily equal an effective recruiting strategy -particularly when it isn't accompanied with culturally-in-synch and regionally appropriate advertising. Does anyone seriously believe that the "Army Strong" TV ads are aimed towards enlistment eligible young people and "influencers" in places like Ridgewood, NJ; Newton, MA; Reston, VA; or Cary, NC? If you look at the allocation of the Army's recruiting resources, you will quickly see that many of the areas with the highest % of enlistment eligible young people (ie. affluent suburbs) have the lowest recruiter to eligible population ratio. The single recruiting station serving Bergen County, NJ (pop. over 800,000) is a good example of this and nicely supports my microtargeted recruiting argument. Here's an exceptionally affluent county with an 81% white 18-24 year old population. Surprisingly, this county's relatively small minority population comprises about 2/3 of its annual enlistments. Why? Microtargeting of a few high schools and towns while the rest of the county is left to lie fallow. This scene is repeated coast-to-coast.

To the Marines great credit, they have not done this in officer or enlisted recruiting. The USMC, while certainly more successful in some areas than others, really lives up to the ethos of "America's Marines." The fact that it still maintains an enlisted recruiting station in Ridgewood, NJ and had the courage/audacity to establish an OSO station near the Berkeley campus speaks volumes.

I think it's a bit silly to categorize the "Army Strong" campaign among the most successful in history. Considering the quality of the Army's entering cohorts has steadily declined over the last several years (small quality increases were seen in FY 2008, but much lower than FY 2003), "The Few, The Proud" - good campaign. Sure, it's hard to find someone 18-21 who doesn't know the slogans, but few are buying the product.

The relaxed standards and their impact on Army entering cohort quality are well documented and I don't need to rehash them here. The fact that we are taking felons, 41 year olds to man a 520,000 soldier Army from a nation of 300 million is problematic and an indicator that things aren't right. We have expanded the Army's enlistment-eligible pool by tens of millions going up to 42. Yes, many of these folks are losers in life. The fact that the other services - to include the USMC - aren't taking these folks is telling. Moreover, the Army Public Affairs community seems to think that we should highlight these sad sacks. They don't realize that it makes the Army look horribly unselective and desperate. Here's a link to my favorite 40+ recruit - PFC Cindra Smith. She was enlisted to be an EOD tech and was exposed as a craven, pathologically lying fraud:

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/07/outlaw-josey-wales-2006.html

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/10/you-wont-believe-this.html

Again, read the above articles I linked to. This is a great example of why the POS job reservation system should be relooked in wartime. It attracts people possibly unsuited to the task they enlisted for who may have enlistedin that career field for the wrong reason. In an era of the "strategic corporal", should our combat arms entering cohorts be comprised solely of those who "think" a blue cord and crossed rifles would be cool or "want" to see combat/kill hajis/avenge 9/11? The USMC doesn't think so. In your defense of the virtues of POS job reservation, you gloss over the fact that the Army is the only service with 100% pre-enlistment job selection. The USMC, Navy and USAF all use an undesignated enlistment option for a portion of their force.

Re the draft: You owe it to yourself to learn more about your own Army's history; for if you did, you would learn that your concerns are largely unfounded. Even at the height of the Vietnam era, draftees had a desertion/AWOL rate approximately 1/2 that of the "volunteers". Source: Chapter 3 of "United We Serve" (Brookings Press, 2003).

Furthermore, during Vietnam, Army draftees had a far higher educational attainment level than their "volunteer" peers. (Source: Moskos, 1978)

The "I don't want to be with those that don't want to be there" meme is getting tiresome. The motivation of "cooperating, graduating and surviving" among a draftee cohort is very powerful. The desired endstate of living (through combat or rigorous training) to ultimately be able to attend college, grad school or pursue civilian goals, is a very powerful motivator to "get with the program." I would argue a much greater one than that of a 41 year old, multi-waivered "volunteer" who has failed at every life endeavor prior to enlistment.

The system to execute a draft is called the SELECTIVE Service System (key word: selective). All indicators are that under current law, an entering cohort via selective service will be qualitatively superior than today's volunteer cohort. Some of them may stay to become CSMs.

2009's "volunteers" ain't 1999 volunteers in terms of quality.