LESSONS LEARNED
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James Joyner | Wednesday, June 4, 2003 |
Victor Davis Hanson has some excellent reflections on the Iraq war. The thing that struck me most was this passage:
Rumsfeld was also slurred for remarking on the superiority of professional troops over draftees. But his point remained valid. The new American military proved lethal beyond its numbers, as near-adolescents without combat experience showed themselves to be more adept at street fighting than the so-called Saddam fedayeen. What has become clear from the war is that, from year to year, the American military has increased its lethality geometrically, not incrementally. What has also become undeniable is the moral character of our forces. Neither bloodthirsty nor triumphalist, American soldiers came across on our television screens as idealists eager to liberate the unfree and return home, content that they had defeated killers and saved innocents. One will long remember the sight of Marines in ray-ban glasses, their radios blaring rock music and their tanks emblazoned with slogans like âAnger Managementâ: this really was something new in history, a strange marriage between contemporary American mass culture and 19th-century concepts of heroism, patriotism, and humanitarianism.
This point can’t be repeated often enough. While there are some excellent arguments for a revival of the draft, they mainly center around the social good that would come from mandating national service, inculcating discipline, mixing the social classes, and all the rest. These are all wonderful goals and I believe a draft would be a good means of acheiving them. But a draft would also undermine the professionalism of our military. Constantly churning through young soldiers that don’t want to be there is counterproductive. As has often been noted, the purpose of a military is to fight and win wars; it is not a social program.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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