I personally would say that many affluent in America support our corrupt regime for all it's 'tax breaks to the wealthiest' while supporting world dominance starting with the Iraq war, yet not willing to send their own teens off to that war. This seems to be partly the cause for today's military recruiters seeking new human cannon fodder.


[He pulled up to a house with American flags displayed in the yard. The mother came to the door in an American flag T-shirt and openly declared her support for the troops.

But she made it clear that her support only went so far.

"Military service isn't for our son," she told Rivera. "It isn't for our kind of people."]




http://crawfordpeace.nfshost.com/node/1345

Military's Recruiting Troubles Extend to Affluent War Supporters

washingtonpost.com
Military's Recruiting Troubles Extend to Affluent War Supporters

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Monday, August 22, 2005; 8:00 AM

There was an eye-opening article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a few days ago that explored the increasing difficulty the military is having recruiting young people to enlist. As has been well reported in many newspapers, including The Washington Post, the Army and Marines are having a particularly tough time meeting recruitment objectives, in part because of Americans' concern about the war in Iraq.

When you dig deeper into the reason for this phenomenon, it turns out that parents of potential soldiers and sailors are becoming one of the biggest obstacles facing military recruiters. Even top military officials acknowledge this and unveiled a new series of ads this spring targeted at "influencers" such as parents, teachers and coaches.

But the Post-Gazette raises another issue. There has been much talk about the relationship between race and ethnicity and military recruitment. But what about social and economic class? Are wealthier Americans, who are more likely to be Republicans and therefore more likely to support the war, stepping up to the plate and urging their children and others from their communities to enlist?

Unfortunately, there has been no definitive study on this subject. But it appears that the affluent are not encouraging their children and peers to join the war effort on the battlefield.

The writer of the Post-Gazette article, Jack Kelly, explored this question in his story that ran on Aug. 11. Kelly wrote of a Marine recruiter, Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, who went to an affluent suburb outside of Pittsburgh to follow up with a young man who had expressed interest in enlisting. [He pulled up to a house with American flags displayed in the yard. The mother came to the door in an American flag T-shirt and openly declared her support for the troops.

But she made it clear that her support only went so far.

"Military service isn't for our son," she told Rivera. "It isn't for our kind of people."]

The Post-Gazette piece focused on parental disapproval of military recruitment efforts, and dealt only tangentially with the larger question of class. What we do know is that recruiting is down across the board and that both the Army and Marines have fallen significantly behind their recruiting goals.

This is what the Army's hired advertising company, Leo Burnett, had to say about the ads targeting influencers that it began running in April: "Titled 'Dinner Conversation,' 'Two Things,' 'Good Training' and 'Listening' (Spanish-language ad), the commercials portray moments ranging from a son telling his mother he's found someone to pay for college, to a father praising his son who has just returned from Basic Training for the positive ways in which he's changed. They capture the questions, hopes and concerns parents have about a career serving the United States of America and include families from many different backgrounds."

I asked Army spokeswoman Maj. Elizabeth Robbins for further explanation on the intent of the ads.

"Clearly it was to talk to influencers," she said. She said studies have shown that today's young people yearn to serve their country in one way or another. The problem is that today the people who influence their decisions "are less likely than they were in past generations to recommend [military service]."

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/112...005-515546.html

Iraq, parents & recruiting
By JASON HARRIS
Burlington County Times

The Army isn't struggling to attract young people who want to be soldiers. It's struggling to convince parents that becoming a soldier is a good idea.

U.S. Army Capt. Gregory Williams won't discuss hard numbers about how successful the members of his recruiting company have been in attracting new soldiers, but he admits the numbers are short of perfect.

Family opposition

Williams became commander of the Army's Central New Jersey recruiting company - which includes parts of Burlington, Monmouth, Ocean, and Mercer counties - in December. He said his company had yet to make any of its monthly recruiting goals since then.

He tells of one young woman who was in the Willingboro office preparing to take the entrance pretest when she called her family and told them what she was doing. Williams said the family immediately came to get her.

He's had parents hang up on him. The No Child Left Behind Act mandates that high schools release student information such as contact information and grade-point average to recruiters or lose federal funding. The law allows parents to opt out. Some have decided against allowing that information to be released.

Part of the problem for the Army is the unpopularity of the Iraq war. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released in June found that 56 percent of Americans disapprove of how President Bush is handling the war. The same poll reported that 53 percent said the war was not worth fighting.

Sgt. Richard Jackson graduated from Willingboro High School in 1992 and joined the Army a few years later. He joined the Army's Willingboro recruiting office, the same office where he enlisted, in April after a tour in Iraq. Since then, he's seen the parents of a number of potential recruits prevent their sons or daughters from enlisting.

Monique Maxwell, of Lindenwold, said she doesn't support the war and would discourage any of her sons from joining the military. Taking a break from a shopping trip to the Moorestown Mall one day, the mother of four sons, the oldest two 18 and 15, said she has told her sons to file for conscientious objector status.

"I object to what we're doing in Iraq," she said. "We do not belong there."

Like Maxwell, many of those parents say they disagree with the president or the war. Jackson tries to use his experiences in Iraq to convince skeptical parents that war in Iraq is worthwhile.

"I say there's a lot of things we don't agree on, but we can agree on freedom," Jackson said. "This war is about preserving freedom. I can tell you from firsthand experience that this war is about freedom for the Iraqi people."

Organized 'counter recruitment'

Recruiters also face opposition from those who discourage young people from joining the service.

For example, the Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee conducts what it calls "counter recruitment" to talk possible enlistees out of joining the military.

There are other organized efforts.

Sue Niederer of Hopewell, Mercer County, is a member of Military Families Speak Out. She joined after her son, 24-year-old Seth Dvorin, was killed while leading a combat platoon in Iraq. After his death, she said she needed to speak out against the war in general and against recruiters in particular.

Niederer talks at schools, to families, at meetings - "Anyplace they'll have me," she says - warning potential enlistees not to trust their recruiters. She says recruiters care only about maintaining their numbers and advancing their careers, not honestly assessing the recruit's military future.

"Our kids are all given the same b---t by recruiters," she said. "I use that word because it's a pretend game with them. They will tell these young, impressionable men and women just about anything to get them to enlist, because it helps their careers."

Hear what Marines have to say about their experiences before, during and after Recruit Training.

"Before I came to boot camp there were things that I've done here that I never thought I'd be able to do in my life. It is tough, and it is hard. They do demand a lot out of you, but everything they do is for a reason."
-Andrew T.

"I was really nervous when I first got here. I was scared. Before I didn't have any confidence at all. It was the greatest experience I ever had in my life. I'm a lot more confident in myself than when I first came here."
-Heather C.



There are no limits to what you'll find. In yourself.

"I knew that once I did finish and complete I'd have something that no one could ever take away from me."
-Alan B.

"It was a bit more than I expected. Easily the hardest thing I've ever done from start to finish, and I'm thrilled to death that I got through boot camp."
-Matthew F.

"Before I came here I'd always second guess my abilities. Now I'm given a task, I just go out and do it and I know I can do it well."
-Kevin O.

"If you can get through this training, you can get through anything."
-Karli R.

"The first couple of weeks - that's when I knew that I was changing. And the more I changed, the better it felt to me to be here and get through it...In my mind, I just made it through the toughest thing there is. Now I have so many different values instilled in me, and I went through it 100%. The change I see in myself, my attitude in life about everything - the way I look at things, and feel that they need to be accomplished and I'm going to accomplish them..."



Confidence no one can question.



http://www.marines.com/enlisted_marines/in...sp?format=flash

http://www.youthrights.org/oppressed.shtml

Young and Oppressed

Other government institutions practice ageism as well. There is little argument on the Left that the US military — any military, for that matter — uses severe forms of indoctrination, coercion and invalidation, whose effects overshadow even those of the most thorough scholastic "education." The recruitment practices of the armed forces are diabolical in their use of propaganda and outright lies, as well as their focus on young people, not so much for the acquisition of strong, young bodies as impressionable minds. Save for professional criminality, the military is often seen by America's poor to be the only way out of poverty, a fact illustrated by disproportionate numbers of Latino, Afro-American and working class recruits. And again, the military complex instills the same biases and psychological effects as the education system, only with much greater severity. The broad effects of military service on the individual young person, not to mention whoever s/he is manipulated or forced or bribed into killing, are clear and disastrous.

As our world becomes more and more technologically advanced, it has become increasingly difficult for individuals to maintain any sense of individuality. As humanity is herded and oppressed as a whole, it is the young who receive the most trampling. As if the isolation felt by adults is not enough, their needs are often fulfilled by the state (over which adults at least have some power) far prior to the needs of their children. We live in a system where even those adults whose voices are allowed hearing receive very little from the power structure which holds them down. So how can we (especially those of us on the Left) have gone so long without recognizing that young people, whose voices are seldom heard if ever, are even more severely oppressed by that same, inherently violent system of authority and subordination?

http://www.mdgreens.org/montgomery/blog/2005/06/18/44/

Groups Unite Against Military Recruiters
by nat bahn

washingtonpost.com
Groups Unite Against Military Recruiters

By MARYCLAIRE DALE
The Associated Press
Friday, June 17, 2005; 12:57 PM

PHILADELPHIA — Nancy Carroll didn’t know schools were giving military recruiters her family’s contact information until a recruiter called her 17-year-old granddaughter.

That didn’t sit well with Carroll, who believes recruiters unfairly target minority students. So she joined activists across the country who are urging families to notify schools that they don’t want their children’s contact information given out.

“People of color who go into the military are put on the front line,” said the 67-year-old Carroll, who is black.

A provision of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to provide military recruiters with student phone numbers and addresses or risk losing millions in federal education funding. Parents or students 18 and over can “opt out” by submitting a written request to keep the information private.

But critics say schools do not always convey that message. In New Mexico, the American Civil Liberties Union chapter sued the Albuquerque Public School District last month, charging it does not adequately inform parents of the opt-out provision.

Some critics oppose the federal law on privacy grounds, but others say it provides an unfair opportunity for the military to sway young minds _ especially in economically depressed communities.

“They’re not going to all the schools. They’re going to the schools where they figure the kids will have less chance to go to college,” said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash. “It’s an insidious kind of draft, quite frankly.”

Carroll, who is raising three grandchildren in a working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia, agrees that the practice is unfair. “I wouldn’t want them to join,” she said of her grandchildren.

But Pentagon officials say the military deserves the same access to students that schools give to colleges and employers.

“In the past, it was all-too-common for a school district to make student directory information readily available to vendors, prospective employers and post-secondary institutions while intentionally excluding the services,” Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

“Having access to 17- to 24-year-olds is very key to us,” said Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, commander of the Army Recruiting Command, said at a news conference Friday at Fort Meade, Md. “We would hope that every high school administrator would provide those lists to us. They’re terribly important for what we’re trying to do.”

Iraqi Army gets a step closer to working independently
Submitted by: 2nd Marine Division
Story Identification #: 200599115111
Story by Pfc. Christopher J. Ohmen



CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq (Sept. 9, 2005) -- With every week that passes, the members of the Iraqi Army get closer to their goal of operating independently and creating a free Iraq with the help and guidance of the United States Marines.

First Battalion, 4th Brigade of the Iraqi Army, has been working side-by-side with the Marines and Sailors of 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment trying to accomplish that objective.

“The Iraqi Army has come a long way since last year, when 2nd Marines were clearing the insurgents out of Fallujah,” said 1st Lt. Nathan P. Dmochowski, the executive officer for Company E. “They take over more responsibilities as the weeks go by.”

The Iraqi Army had been working hand-in-hand with the Marines of 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines to hone their skills. Now it is time for the Marines of 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines to combine Marine determination with Iraqi Army knowledge to continue to suppress the insurgency’s ability to fight.

“The group of Iraqi Army we are working with at Camp India are learning very quickly and have no problems taking the lead when we search houses on daily patrols,” Dmochowski stated.
Since the Iraqis of 1-4-1 learned most of the basics from the Marines of 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, tactical integration with the 2nd Marines was easier.

Conducting daily joint patrols (with the Marines) of their areas of operation, the Iraqis seem to get more confident as time goes by. The Marines are trying to instill the idea that the Iraqi Army’s primary mission is to stop the insurgency from being able to wage war. But because the Iraqi Police are still somewhat in their infancy, the Iraqi Army continues to deal with matters the police would normally handle. The Marines are working to focus the Iraqi Army effort toward stopping the insurgents.

“We are helping the Iraqi Army to just deal with the insurgency as their primary mission and leave the common criminal things to the police,” Dmochowski stated.

The Marines’ primary mission is to support the Iraqi Army when they do patrols and other operations throughout this area. They are trying to let the Iraqi Army do as much of the work as possible so they can start doing more and more on their own.

“The Iraqi Army is able to run their own patrols and get their own intelligence about what is going on in the area,” Dmochowski said. “They are working very hard to get everything on their own.”

With determination on their faces, together the Marines and the Iraqi Army of the 1-4-1 will push forward to stop the insurgents at every turn to create a free Iraq and defeat terrorism.

http://www.marines.mil/marinelink/mcn2000....97?opendocument

Lafayette Marine team's vigilance saves lives of hundreds
Submitted by: 2nd Marine Division
Story Identification #: 20059804828
Story by Cpl. Mike Escobar



FALLUJAH, Iraq (Sept. 8, 2005) -- Whether made of artillery shells or triple-stacked anti-tank mines, insurgent-made improvised explosive devices continue being a leading cause of casualties throughout the country – including innocent civilians.

The members of 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, North Carolina-based Marines and Sailors who are conducting counterinsurgency operations in western Iraq’s turbulent Al Anbar province, have themselves suffered four losses at the hands of these terrorist devices.

On the desert battlefield’s frontlines, young men like Lance Cpl. Robert A. Belaire work to ensure that no more of their fellow warriors perish at the hands of a roadside bomb. For hours on end, this Lafayette, La. infantryman and his teammates with the battalion's 2nd Combined Anti-Armor Team, Weapons Company, broil underneath Iraq's raging summer sun observing insurgent activity on a perilous roadway leading into Fallujah.

Since April, one month after arriving here, Weapons Company personnel have pursued an aggressive campaign to curtail insurgents' ability to emplace IEDs. As Iraqi Security Forces and the battalion's infantrymen patrol the city streets and rural surroundings, Marines like Belaire set up observation posts to watch for suspicious activity. Meanwhile, concealed snipers lie in wait to kill terrorists and their hopes of setting an explosive.

Additionally, Marines erect signs along frequently transited routes that warn local residents not to stop there for extended periods of time or set down anything on the side of the road.

Belaire’s 2nd CAAT platoon has stopped several insurgents from laying explosives throughout several months of roadside vigilance. Armed with their wits, weapons, and a small ice chest full of bottled water and sports drinks, these Marines would often sit in one spot for up to 16 hours, sweating out liters worth of water while staring out at an unchanging, barren landscape.

"It gets really boring out here, so we usually just talk to each other about anything and everything," Belaire stated. "We run out of things to talk about after a long day."

As exhausted and bored as they are after conducting hundreds of these types of missions, the Marines continue realizing the vital role they play in helping secure Iraq.

"When we first got here, there were IEDs being placed all the time," Belaire explained. "Now, we see hardly any. It makes what we do all worth it in the end."

http://www.marines.mil/marinelink/mcn2000....45?opendocument

9/11 recruits: They enlisted when USA was under fire
By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY
One year ago, Cpl. Kevin Mincio stood before his platoon at an Army base in the Iraqi desert and tried to explain why a 31-year-old Goldman Sachs vice president had upped and enlisted in the infantry.

'You learn not to take for granted what we have in this country,' says Kevin Mincio who served a year in Iraq.
By Jeff Reinking, USA TODAY

The short answer: 9/11.

"Three years ago," he began, reading what he'd written down, "I stood in disbelief on the corner of Liberty and Church streets and watched as just a half a block away, a Boeing 767 flew into the south tower of the World Trade Center."

Mincio was an unusual recruit in more than age and background. Contrary to popular belief, there never was an upsurge in military enlistments as a result of the attacks that killed almost 3,000 people four years ago.

But in a time of retreat and collapse, when Americans were urged to maintain their routines and get on with their lives, a few people stepped forward and did just the opposite. Although statistically insignificant, they epitomized a raw patriotism that bolstered the nation's spirit in the bleakest days since Pearl Harbor. (Related story: A few good men report for duty)

They were people like Kevin Mincio, people for whom the military has no exact count — the 9/11 recruits.

Four years later, USA TODAY spoke with about two dozen 9/11 recruits or their relatives. Most are still in active service or the reserves. Some are in Iraq or Afghanistan. A few never made it into the service. A few have been discharged. A few have been killed.

Most of the 9/11 recruits say they did the right thing and would do it again. They largely defend the war in Iraq but are far more enthusiastic in their support for the troops. Because many remain in the service, however, it's hard to know how free they feel to speak.

Many see a link between the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the war in Iraq, although there is little evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

Above all, they say they're better for having served — that they grew personally through their military experiences. "You learn not to take for granted what we have in this country," says Mincio, who spent a year in Iraq. "And you learn to handle pressure."

The most famous 9/11 recruit was Pat Tillman, the NFL star who gave up a big contract to join the Army and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

But there were others.

Mincio, who worked next door to the Trade Center, gave up his six-figure income, boat and beachfront house. He wound up in Iraq, where for a time he lived in his Army vehicle, showered once a week and dodged mortar fire. Why did he do it? Partly to do something different, to get out from behind a desk. Partly to do something about the crime he witnessed.


By Helene Seligman, AFP/Getty Images
World Trade Center

Spurred to act

Mincio wasn't the only 9/11 recruit who was galvanized by a personal connection that Tuesday morning.

In Manheim, Pa., Patrick Troccoli, a financial-planning intern, was on the phone with his cousin in Brooklyn, who said he could hear the roar of the jetliners and the rumble of the towers collapsing.

In Hempstead, N.Y., Tom Duffy was visiting a friend at Hofstra University whose high-rise dorm room had a view of the smoke rising from lower Manhattan.

In Washington, PricewaterhouseCoopers senior associate Kyle Conley was driving to work over the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge when he saw black smoke rising from the Pentagon.

Until that day, Duffy was planning a career in law enforcement. Conley, married with a young child, had just begun training to swim the English Channel. Troccoli didn't even believe in the military. Within the month, each decided to enlist.

Some didn't even wait that long. On the day after, Sept. 12:

• Actor Sean Huze walked into the Marine recruiter's office at Sunset and La Brea in Los Angeles, expecting a line. Instead, he was the only one there. He signed up on the spot.

• Josh Hyland, who already had completed a four-year hitch in the Army as an enlisted man, signed up for ROTC at the University of Montana, where he was working on a degree in business. "He wanted to make a difference in the world," his mother would recall. "He was excited about it."

• Jim O'Shaughnessy, a philosophy major at John Carroll University in Cleveland, had been going summers to officer candidate school. But after 9/11, he decided not to wait and enlisted as a private in the Marines.

He told a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter at the recruiting office he was "sick to my stomach angry. ... If they need people now, this would be the time to go. I just didn't want to look back when I was 50 and everybody else did their share and I didn't."

Over the next week and month, as Americans discussed how much life had or hadn't changed, 9/11 recruits made life-altering decisions.

Steven Gill of Round Rock, Texas, was so intent on signing up that his parents had to persuade him to finish the semester at Concordia University in Austin, where he was studying to be a youth minister before enlisting in the Marine reserve.

Bryan Hancock of Lebanon, Ohio, a former paratrooper, made two big decisions within 72 hours of the attacks: to re-enter the Army and to marry his girlfriend so she and their month-old son would be provided for. They married that Friday; the groom wore army boots.

Chris Petite of Lake Arrowhead, Calif., took the attacks personally — he was a volunteer firefighter, and his girlfriend's aunt was an American Airlines flight attendant. He enlisted a month to the day after the attacks, saying that the war on terrorism "is too big for me not to get involved in." The first thing his father, an Air Force officer during Vietnam, knew about it was when Chris came home and told him, "I joined."

No surge in enlistments

They were brave, they were altruistic, and they were aberrations. In the weeks after 9/11 military recruiters got more calls, more visits, more Web site hits, but the upsurge in enlistments was an urban myth.

Many who volunteered were too old — the Kentucky National Guard got a call from a 48-year-old teacher. Others were disabled or unbalanced or unqualified. Jonathan Ridlin volunteered at the Marine recruiting station in Pasadena, Calf.; he was rejected because of a charge of driving under the influence.


Family photo
Mincio

For some, 9/11 was not the only motivation. Some already had been thinking about military service, often for the usual reasons — to learn a skill or earn college money. They were waiting to jump; the attacks just gave them a push.

Dan Greeley was a freshman at the State University of New York at Albany. On 9/11 he had an uncle in Rescue One, a New York Fire Department company in Manhattan. His uncle survived, but two other firefighters whom he knew did not.

Later that month, Greeley enlisted in the Marines. But it wasn't only the attacks, he admits: "I was bored in school."

Today, the 9/11 recruits are scattered across the country and the globe. Duffy, who saw smoke that morning from the dorm room, will leave the Air Force this year and go into business with his brother back home in New Jersey. Troccoli is still in the Navy, waiting for his first overseas posting. Conley, who served seven months in Iraq in 2003, is back at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

O'Shaughnessy, the philosophy major, served seven months in Afghanistan last year. Now he's the Marine recruiter in Wheeling, W.Va. He's nostalgic about the days after 9/11: "There was just blanket 'Go, America' patriotism. Now, there's not as strong a belief that what we're doing is right anymore."

Hyland, the Montana Army veteran who joined ROTC, got his officer's commission and went to Afghanistan in March. He was killed last month when a bomb exploded under a bridge his convoy was crossing.

Petite, the volunteer fireman from California, is with the Marines in Iraq.

In an e-mail, he writes that enlisting "was the best thing to do. Looking back on it now, out here in Iraq, I find a new reason every day. Mostly for my nephews, so that they don't have to grow up in a world filled with people hell bent on destroying everything that the U.S. stands for."

Hancock, the ex-paratrooper who got married as a prelude to re-enlisting, was eventually rejected because of back problems. He's a state prison guard in Ohio.

Gill, the future youth minister, was killed July 23 in Iraq when an improvised explosive went off during an operation near Zaidon. He was 24 and had been in the country since March.

Greeley, the bored college student, has completed two tours in Iraq. He says 9/11 gives meaning to those who fight there.

Mincio was discharged from the Army in May, two months after appearing with the secretary of the Army at a congressional appropriations hearing. He has a new job in Seattle, where he lives with his wife. He's not moving back to New York. He won't comment on the wisdom of the war in Iraq, other than to say: "There are a lot of soldiers over there trying to do the right thing. I'm with all those soldiers."

He stands by what he told his platoon one year ago. He's still trying to understand 9/11 and its role in where he is today:

"I am not proud of everything I have done since then, but I am proud to be amongst people who have done something, people who care about our way of life. People who haven't forgotten."

Contributing: Associated Press

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-0...its-cover_x.htm

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:9SNVC...ters+2005&hl=en

Peace Press, February – March 2005

Cracks in the Wall
by Rebel Fagin

There are cracks in the walls of the war machine. The empire is breaking down
from the inside. This does not mean that we can quit; au contraire, our work must
intensify. We must work harder for we are starting to garner results.

I’m a union teacher at a public high school. In the late 1990's military recruiters
trolled the halls, lunch quad, library, and career center up to sixteen days a month looking for victims. Kids come to school trusting adults. Recruiters are paid to lie. Thus the students are victimized through their known vulnerability.
Three years ago the Progressive Club of Healdsburg High, with a great deal of help
from the Peace & Justice Center, began counter-recruitment tabling. Every time the Army, Marines, or Navy set up a recruitment table, we offer alternatives at our table. For the past two years the military limited their presence to once a month. This year it has been semi-monthly so far. I’m inclined to think that our presence has had some influence on their decision to seek fresh meat elsewhere.
And it’s not just us. When resistance is imperative, rebellion becomes divine.
Soldiers across the board are resisting the war in Iraq. Many have seen the war, and
they’re not going back. The Iraq Veterans Against the War say the best way to support the troops is to demand the withdrawal of all occupying forces. A 2003 Gallup Poll revealed that 20% of the soldiers felt that going to war in Iraq was wrong. Their families ranked the same question at 54%. Since then feelings against the war have only increased. Vietnam Vets Against the War have been aiding war resisters fleeing the country for Canada. Legal channels have been jammed with delayed entry recruiters attempting to change their status. The lies these young men and women were told and the reality of Shock & Awe Warfare have created a psychological gulf. What they were told, liberating Iraq, and what they are doing, blowing up children doesn’t match. The wounds people are receiving are
not flesh wounds; people are losing limbs. In Fallujah, napalm, nuclear weapons (DU),and poison gas were used against civilians. My friend’s son just came back from Iraq with tales of multiple suicide attempts amongst the ranks. With the psychological disconnect going on over there, Delayed Stress Syndrome will be the Agent Orange Syndrome of this Iraqi War.

We must support the troops. To help in the resistance, start with Iraq Veterans
Against the War www.ivaw.net, Military Families Speak Out www.mfso.org or the GI
Rights Hotline at 800-394-9544. The sources available here at the P & J are excellent. We can not allow the Bush Junta to sacrifice our children on an oily altar of profit.

Sources: Mother Jones, November/December 2004, Project for a New American
Century, personal experience and interviews. Rebel Fagin is a long-time peace & justice activist and a member of Radical Ions and the Progressive Club.

Screening team recruits recruiters
Submitted by: MCB Camp Butler
Story Identification #: 20055361634
Story by Lance Cpl. T. J. Kaemerer



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP HANSEN, OKINAWA, Japan (April 29, 2005) -- A Headquarters Recruiter Screening Team from Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington, spoke with Marines thinking about recruiting duty here April 14.

The purpose of the HRST’s visit was to explain the benefits of recruiting and encourage Marines toward a potential career-enhancing job, explained Master Sgt. Keith A. Kinney, an instructor at Recruiters School, Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and a member of the HRST.

This past January, Marine recruiting fell short of its monthly enlistment contract goal of 3,270 for the first time in 10 years, and things haven’t been getting any better since, Kinney explained. One of the biggest factors affecting enlistment has been Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“It’s tougher times,” Kinney said. “The war in Iraq is affecting recruiting (in both positive and negative) ways. Marines are doing phenomenal things over there and people see that. But at the same time they’re seeing Marines dying, and that puts fear into them.”

Recruiters are the public face of the Marine Corps, Kinney explained. With the Marine Corps only debuting a new commercial every five years, it’s up to the recruiters to show the public the benefits of enlisting.

To counter falling recruitment numbers, Marine Corps Recruiting Command has increased the number of recruiters in recruiting stations. In order to do that, they need to find more qualified Marines to send to recruiting school.

Many Marines don’t know what qualifies or disqualifies them for recruiting duty. Most of their experience with recruiting was as a poolee, explained Sgt. Kevin A. Gleason Jr., a platoon sergeant with Company A, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment.

The HRST informed the Marines about the many benefits of recruiting duty, which include meritorious promotions, professional development, marketable communication skills, the Marine Corps Recruiting Ribbon after the successful completion of recruiting duty, and the family stability that comes with a three-year, non-deployable tour.

“Three years of not being deployed will be a great break,” said Gleason, who recently returned to Okinawa from fighting the war on terror in Iraq. “Recruiting seems like it’s going to be my next big challenge, and I want to go tackle it. A lot of the impressions people have of the Marine Corps are false. I want to try and let people know that it can really turn you into a better person.”

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf...ht=2,recruiting

I think it would be good to know where you really stand.

What if we developed Terminator-like robots (of course, they'd remotely-controlled rather than AI to avoid the eventuality of them turning on us):

Then, would you be ok with the Global War on Terror (GWOT)? Do you oppose our efforts because you really fear harm will come to our Soldiers, or do you hate the use of military force under any circumstance, no matter how justified? Would you have been opposed to the GWOT if 9/11 happened on Bill Clinton's "watch" and he responded in the exact same manner?

What it is all about is this:

Duty
Honor
Country

The politics are an excuse, given the election results... I'm supprized this is an issue at all....

how ever using the mass media campaigns of WWII as an example (not that I was there mind you) it would seem that even then people needed a little coaxing to get behind things.

SFC White

In WW 2 the issue was clear. There were no excuses to be made. Iraq is a thirld world country that did not attack the US. What we are doing there is now pointless with loss of life on all sides. Every month the people of the US are comming to realize this in greater numbers. I just hope you survive and return safely to your family. Do not stick your head up to make a point and get it blown off. That will not help anyone and will cause much pain to the people who really care about you. Bush could care less about you and would not even attend your funeral.

Lie wars do cause a little bit of obstruction for recruiters.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/28/State/Co...Iraq_hamp.shtml

Conflict in Iraq hampers recruiting

The Army expects to fall short in recruiting soldiers, partly because of a lack of support for the U.S. invasion.

By MARCUS FRANKLIN, Times Staff Writer
Published March 28, 2005

In one sentence, Wayne Fields can tell you why he refuses to enlist in the military: "I don't see any point in this war and I don't want to lose my life over it," the 20-year-old said, referring to the conflict in Iraq.

Two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, views like Fields' are hurting efforts by one branch of the military to recruit enlistees at a time when military officials say they are badly needed.

The Army last week said it likely will fall short of its recruiting goals in March and April. As of February, it had missed its national recruiting goal by 2,500 people, or 6 percent, for fiscal 2005.

In the Tampa recruiting region - which covers Naples to the south, Brooksville to the north and Orlando to the east - new Army enlistments plunged 20 percent between 2000 and 2004.

One reason for the decline: a lack of support for the invasion of Iraq among women and young people, particularly black Americans, a segment the Army has long relied on to fill its ranks. An Army spokesman also cited what he described as an "improving economy" for the decrease.

"More African-Americans identify having to fight for a cause they don't support as a barrier to military service," concluded one of several studies commissioned by the Army.

"The war has caused apprehension on the part of some prospects and their families," Army Recruiting Command spokesman Douglas Smith said in an interview with the Times.

"It doesn't mean failure," Smith said of the projected shortfalls. "It does mean we're going to be working harder to make our mission

Two Noted Civil War Recruiting Camps


"The Story Of Camp Dick Robinson"

from the Louisville Courier-Journal, 1895

"Camp Dick Robinson, Garrard County, the first of its kind organized south of the Ohio River after the Civil War became imminent, and perhaps, the most important that had existence in the state, is not unlike its former self today. Some improvements have been made within the past two years, but soldiers stationed there during the sectional strife of the 1860s could never fail to recognize it as their original place of military instruction. The farm upon which the home is situated contains about 335 acres and is one of the very best and richest tracts of land in the Bluegrass. Its fertile soil has proved an ideal spot for the cultivation of everything Kentucky can raise. The dwelling house, containing 10 or 12 rooms, is in a fine, attractive state of preservation. Its battle scars are few, though the walls hold secret memories of numberless adventures related in the councils there congregated. Some never-failing springs, near the dwelling, furnish an absolute inexhaustible flow of water, and its locators certainly had this partly in view when they selected that place, now famous for its services to the Union.


Location of Camp Dick Robinson and Camp Nelson, Ky.

It was in the summer of 1861, after the order of the War Department (June 27) was issued forming the states of Kentucky and Tennessee into a military district, under command of Brig. Gen. Robert Anderson, that Lieut. Wm. Nelson, of the United States Navy, having been designated by Gen. Anderson for such duty, went to Lancaster to organize troops for the Union. He conferred with prominent loyal citizens of adjoining counties and determined to locate his camp of instruction in Garrard on the farm of Mr. Richard "Dick" Robinson, six miles from Lancaster at the crossroads leading to Danville and Nicholasville, the pike to Lancaster making Cumberland Gap easily accessible through Crab Orchard; the other giving a splendid outlet for Western Kentucky, via Perryville. Nicholasville, eight miles distant, was a southern terminus of the Kentucky Central Railroad, connecting it with Cincinnati; while only 12 miles north, on the line of the same road is the city of Lexington. Between the camp and Nicholasville is the Kentucky River, the precipitous banks and deep gorges of which afforded many good positions for successful resistance. All in all, it was the very best selection possible for the location of a camp. It extended about a half-mile out each of the pikes leading to Lancaster, Danville, and Nicholasville. This did not cramp the drilling grounds or sleeping or eating quarters.


A roadside history marker telling of Camp Dick Robinson is located just north of Lancaster in Garrard County, Kentucky.
To establish a camp and recruit a brigade of soldiers on Bluegrass soil in opposition to the judgment of avowed Union men was a task delicate and difficult to perform. It was a period of turbulence; murder and unwhipt of justice stalked through the land. Even after organizing the camp it was by no means certain that success would crown his efforts in mustering in the regiment. Several companies of State Guard, under the leadership of Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner and finely disciplined, would have responded readily to the call of the commander to disperse the new camp.

When Gen. Nelson was chosen by General Anderson to organize Camp Dick Robinson, he was a lieutenant of the United States Navy. Ten weeks later he was made a brigadier general, and on the following July 6, 1862, was promoted to major general. He resisted the efforts of the prominent state politicians to remove the force beyond Kentucky's limits and succeeded in adding to the Union Army four of as good volunteer regiments as ever marched beneath the Stars and Stripes. The government wisely recognized the skill and courage of Gen. Nelson in intrusting to him this important enterprise. Full of tireless energy, he seemed to require neither sleep nor rest.
The sentinel, pacing his beat, was often startled long after midnight by the colossal form of the commander looming up in the darkness and approaching the camp from a direction from whence he was least expected. He was always an early riser, and consequently, ready for the day's duties long before the camp was astir. The troops that enlisted under Gen. Nelson remember him as boisterous and impetuous, impatient of restraint and contradiction, and utterly intolerant of the slightest infraction of discipline.

Though a firm adherent to the government, Dick Robinson never enlisted. His title to the land upon which the camp was situated was acquired through marriage; Mrs. Robinson being a daughter of Wm. Hoskins, Sr. and sister of Col. Wm. Hoskins of military fame. During the war's progress he went South and preceded Grant's invasion of Mississippi. A partnership had been formed with Jas. McMurtry, Sr., also of Garrard, and as the army advanced the two bought cotton from the planters, paying them either in Confederate scrip or greenbacks. They made considerable money by shipping their purchases north. Robinson proved too liberal-hearted, however, and lost much of his means settling security debts. At his death his widow (who yet survives) came into possession of the property, but sold it to Mr. Lynn Hudson about 11 years ago. Mr. Hudson has since resided there. He has advertised the home and adjoining land for sale, and for the first time in the old camp's history the auctioneer's hammer will fall there next week, September 18th.

On Tuesday, after the first Monday in August (election day) 1861, one regiment of cavalry and three of infantry went into camp at this place. These were raised, respectively, by W. J. Landram, of Lancaster, and Theophilus T. Garrard, Thos. E. Bramlette, and Speed S. Fry, who had been issued commissions by Gen. Nelson, bearing date of July 15, 1861. While the work of recruiting was in progress previous to the August election an effort was made, upon the part of several prominent politicians in different parts of the state, to postpone the whole movement, alleging inexpediency as their ground for action, but Gen. Nelson, who had gone to Cincinnati, after the preliminary meeting at Lancaster, to make arrangements for camp supplies quickly squelched the idea by writing Col. Landram, July 28th, as follows:

"The expedition is neither postponed nor abandoned. So far from suspending operations, I earnestly desire that they may be urged on with the utmost energy. I shall assemble the brigade and muster it into service as soon as possible."

Consequently, the troops began to arrive at Camp Dick Robinson early in August. Bramlette, Fry, and Garrard were on hand to take command of their regiments, while Landram, preferring the infantry to the cavalry, concluded to turn his regiment over to Lieut. Col. Frank Wolford, and to raise an infantry regiment at Harrodsburg. The first officer to take charge of the camp was Col. Landram, who assumed command by virtue of his rank in the absence of Gen. Nelson. Messrs. W. A. Hoskins (brother-in-law of Dick Robinson), G. C. Kniffen, and Geo. L. Dobbins were subsequently commissioned as staff officers. Headquarters were established in the two-story frame building partially described above. When Gen. Nelson arrived Landram acted as his adjutant general. Nelson was superseded by Gen. Robert Anderson and Anderson by Gen. W. T. Sherman. By the middle of August the required number to fill each regiment were in camp ready to be mustered into the service, which was done in September and October by Brig. Gen. George H. Thomas, United States Mustering Officer, who relieved Sherman and continued in command as long as the camp was located there. He drilled and disciplined the men and further prepared them for the field.
Bramlette's was the Third Regiment Kentucky Volunteer Infantry, the First and Second having been previously mustered in at Camp Clay, Ohio, in June 1861, by Maj. S. Burbank. It was one of the first to respond to the call of the government for troops to guard munitions of war to the Unionists of east Tennessee. Fry's was the Fourth, which did gallant service at Mill Springs. Garrard's was the Seventh and as soon as organized was ordered to Wild Cat and participated in an engagement with the enemy at that point; which was the first engagement fought on Kentucky soil. In this battle it won distinction for the manner in which it stopped the repeated attacks of the foe. As is well known, Wolford's was the First Regiment Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry. Wolford gave out two orders: "Huddle up" and "Scatter out;" the first when entering a fight, the last when he retreated, a command always given with reluctance. Bramlette was elected governor of the state during his colonelcy. It was Company A (Samuel McKee, Captain), of Bramlette's regiment, that was detailed at Lexington to escort Hon. James B. Clay to Louisville, as a prisoner of war. He was captured in the mountains of Kentucky, near Cumberland Gap, en route to the South and was taken to the Falls City, where they placed him in the old medical college.

The regiments of Wolford, Garrard, and Bramlette were recruited largely from the counties adjacent to the northern line of Tennessee. This was due to a desire on the part of the citizens from that section to engage in an enterprise which promised relief to their loyal neighbors across the line.

The next two regiments mustered at Camp Dick Robinson were the First and Second Tennessee Infantry, composed of refugees from the eastern portion of that state. One thousand of these troops were first organized at Barbourville, in Knox County, 30 miles from Cumberland Gap, under Lieut. Samuel P. Carter, whose widow married the Hon. Milton J. Durham, of Danville. After failure to secure arms, clothing, or camp and garrison equipage, Carter decided to move the companies to Camp Dick Robinson, which was done, forthwith.

The First was placed under command of Col. R. K. Byrd and the Second under Carter. An artillery company under command of Capt. Abram Hewitt was mustered into service at this time. Every regiment that left "Camp Dick" exhibited the traditional courage of Kentuckians and the mountaineers of all countries in their subsequent careers. They participated in nearly all the battles fought by the armies of the Cumberland and the Tennessee, and whether with Rosecrans at Stone River and Chickamauga, with Grant at Black River Bridge and Vicksburg, or with Sherman through 100 days to the capture of Atlanta, they were everywhere complimented for courage and endurance.

The establishment of Camp Dick Robinson, the gathering of a nucleus of Union soldiers on the soil of Kentucky, naturally provoked a vigorous protest on the part of the governor of the state, Hon. Beriah Magoffin, who made a simultaneous appeal to the Presidents of the United States and the Confederate States to aid him in averting the catastrophe he believed inevitable if the camp were allowed to exist. Messrs. Wm. A. Dudley and Frank K. Hunt were accredited as commissioners on Kentucky's part to visit Washington City and confer with President Lincoln in regard to the removal of the troops at Dick Robinson. Lincoln replied that this force consisted of Kentuckians exclusively, in the vicinity of their own homes and was raised at the urgent solicitation of Kentuckians adding:


"Taking all means to form a judgment, I do not believe it is the popular wish of Kentucky that this force shall be removed beyond her limits, and with this impression I must respectfully decline to so remove it."
On the same day (August 19,1861), Gov. Magoffin dispatched Geo. W. Johnson to Richmond, Virginia as Commissioner to the Confederate Government, with a like request that the neutrality of the state be not invaded from that direction. President Davis replied in most courteous and respectful terms:

"In view of the history of the past, it is barely necessary to assure your excellency that this government will continue to respect the neutrality of Kentucky so long as her people will maintain it themselves. If the door be opened on the one side for the aggressions of one of the belligerent parties upon the other, it ought not to be shut to the assailed, when they seek to enter it for the purposes of self-defense."

At the organization of Camp Dick Robinson, Hon. John M. Harlan, now Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court; Col. Joshua F. Bell; and many other noted speakers delivered addresses. When the oratory had closed a conference was held at which all the officers were present and also a number of private citizens. The meeting was presided over by Hon. James Harlan, of Frankfort, father of Justice Harlan; Boyle; Bramlette; Wolford; and others favored coercion, while Fry, Bell, Landram, and others preferred proceeding with getting the troops in working order and awaiting events. The meeting finally adjourned without accomplishing anything, and the camp was not further disturbed, the public being made to understand that the soldiers were Kentuckians on Kentucky soil, and that they had a right to be there without consulting the people of the North or South.

William Grant, of Covington, first cousin of the late lamented Judge M. H. Owsley, Captain of Company J, Wolford's First Kentucky Cavalry, had the contract for furnishing the company in beef. Several reports were started that the soldiers had been poisoned by eating pies and cakes sold by neighboring peddlers, but no deaths are known to have occurred from such an agency, though several small fortunes found a starting point for the retailers of these pies and cakes, together with watermelons. One prominent citizen, who still lives within ten miles of the camp, began his rise to wealth in this way. A few of the "boys in blue" died during the measles epidemic for want of attention in September 1861.

The largest number of troops at the camp at one time was about 10,000. Some of this number were from the Carolinas and Georgia, independent of the Tennessee refugees. In the summer of 1862, Bragg's whole army of 60,000 men passed by the camp. Col. Andy Johnson, of Tennessee, prior to his election to the vice-presidency and subsequent service as chief executive, frequently visited the camp and once made a speech to a vast concourse of people there. Gen. Sherman, previous to the Battle of Mills Spring, visited the camp and inspected the troops. The room he used and in which Gens. Nelson, Anderson, and Thomas had their headquarters, is still in existence. Gen. Fry, besides being himself made brigadier general, had the satisfaction of seeing one of his men, John T. Croxton, promoted to a similar position; Capt. R. M. Kelly, of Company K, ex-Pension Agent of Louisville, given a colonelcy; and J. Burgess Hunt, now United States Marshal of Texas, made a lieutenant colonel. Many others who enlisted at Camp Dick Robinson have won fame, also in both civil and military service.

Gen. Nelson, who was killed at the Galt House in Louisville in the fall of 1862 by Gen. Jefferson C. Davis, was buried at the camp, and on July 4, 1865, a large pole floating the Stars and Stripes was erected over the grave. Three years later the pole was cut down at night by unknown parties, but as this was the only indignity against the camp or its memories the occurrence was not investigated. After this Nelson's body was disinterred and carried to the cemetery at Maysville, his former home."



Camp Nelson, Kentucky

Among the great Federal camps maintained during the war, none was more important, and few as noted, as "Camp Nelson." It occupied an almost absolutely impregnable position in the Kentucky River cliffs on the old Lexington Pike, six miles south of Nicholasville, eight miles north of the famous old "Camp Dick Robinson," and 16 miles from Danville. When "Camp Dick Robinson" was abandoned, except as an outpost, because it afforded no great natural barriers to the approach of the enemy and might at any time fall into the hands of the Southern armies, Gen. Fry was ordered to look about for an available site for a camp that would afford protection and become a base of supplies for the troops in Kentucky and Tennessee.


A rare view of Camp Nelson, Kentucky, in 1864. Recruits pause for the photographer at their workshops. Webmaster Note: This appears to be a saw mill.

Gen. Fry selected the spot which became famous as "Camp Nelson." It was named for Gen. William R. Nelson, who was appointed to recruit troops in Kentucky during the early years of the war. No more available site could possibly have been selected. The camp was fully ten miles in circumference, and the surrounding country provided most of the means of defense. The Kentucky River makes a horseshoe sweep from southeast to northwest, and from its banks rise abrupt limestone cliffs 300 feet high. "Big Hickman" Creek stretches almost square across one side of the horseshoe bend and is also guarded upon one side by precipitous cliffs. Across the country from cliff to cliff runs a high ridge, and this backbone between the two streams was skillfully fortified under the direction of Gen. Burnside, Gen. Fry, and Capt. Hall, a down-easter, who had charge of the improvements for a long time. It was impossible then for hostile troops to enter the camp upon the three sides because of the fortifications that nature had provided, and the only approach from the south was a road which ran through a narrow gorge until it reached the river, where it presented one wide open side to the full play of a dozen batteries and thousands of rifles. The scenery within view of the camp is magnificent and its rugged beauty was well in keeping with the harsh equipments of war which frowned in all directions.

The camp was splendidly supplied with acres of barracks, storehouses, stables, and other things, and served by a system of waterworks which cost thousands of dollars. The old reservoir, overgrown with weeds and briars, is now one of the few remaining marks of the camp. Of the houses, a single one remains; a little one-story frame. Fences have been changed and new lines run by farmers, and the veteran who might return to view the spot would see little except the "everlasting hills" to remind him of the busy camp he once knew.


A group of Negro soldiers stand at attention in front of their barracks at Camp Nelson, Kentucky, in 1864.

Camp Nelson became from the start an important point. From it ran wagon trains through Cumberland Gap to Knoxville to supply the armies in the South, hundreds of thousands of cattle, mules, horses, and hogs were driven here and afterward distributed to the marching masses upon the Confederate front, and at one time there were millions of dollars worth of government stores in the camp awaiting transportation and distribution. As an evidence of the immensity of the operations from Camp Nelson, old soldiers have asserted that at one time during the war you could almost walk over the bodies of dead mules from Crab Orchard to Cumberland Gap; the mules being young and inferior animals that were unequal to the hard tasks imposed upon them and which fell by the wayside.


Large buildings were constructed at Camp Nelson, Kentucky, to hold the many horses used by the recruits. (1864). Webmaster Note: Note privy in foreground and additional large buildings in background.

Regiment after regiment of raw recruits rendezvoused at Camp Nelson and after being disciplined and equipped marched on to battle. It was the one point in Kentucky where Negro regiments were organized and drilled, and several regiments made up of ex-slaves went forth from the camp. It became a Mecca for fugitive slaves, and after the war at least 30,000 Negroes visited Camp Nelson to procure their "free" papers. It is unnecessary to say that many of these guileless individuals fell into the hands of sharpers who fleeced them right and left.

The Confederates ever looked with longing eye toward Camp Nelson, where rich forces of all descriptions were deposited, but no attempt to capture it was ever made. Now and then, when the detachment of troops at the camp would be small, rumors of the approach of the "Rebels" would put the place in a high state of activity, and sometimes the raw recruits would be scared half to death by a sudden summons to arms to defend the camp against supposed innumerable hosts; but very little powder was burned in conflict around Camp Nelson.

After peace was declared and the camp had lost its usefulness, the buildings were knocked to pieces and the material sold to Negroes and farmers for building cabins, barns, and fences, and speculators and junk dealers purchased the other trappings. Some wonderful tales are told of gigantic "divies" and fancy bills footed by Uncle Sam, incidental to his occupancy of the territory, but "that is another story."

There is now upon the site of the camp a Negro village of some 300 souls, which sprung from a settlement of ex-salves who had been employed at the camp during the war and knew of no more desirable place to move to when hostilities ceased. It is rather a thrifty village and has one of the best private schools utilized for Negroes in Kentucky. The buildings are large and substantial and the faculty is composed of graduates principally from the college at Berea. The dormitory is a large frame building containing 24 rooms; the chapel is roomy and comfortable and the outbuilding substantial. Here the Negro youth can get tuition at the low price of from 35 to 75 cents a month and board for only one dollar and a quarter a week.

The school is known as Camp Nelson Academy. It was established by the Federal authorities during the war and maintained by the government until 1867, when this support was withdrawn. Then John G. Fee, the noted friend of the Negro, who founded the famous mixed college at Berea, came to the rescue and secured endowments sufficient to continue it. From a Cincinnati man, Hathaway by name, Fee secured the income from $8,000 worth of property, and this, added to smaller donations, kept the school in a prosperous condition. At the death of Hathaway a law suit brought by the heirs caused the school to suffer the loss of the considerable income from his generosity, and it fell into straitened circumstances.

Fee again came to the rescue, and from another Cincinnati man, Simon Embry, procured a donation which purchased 123 acres of land near the academy. The income from this enabled the school to continue its good work. W. S. Overstreet, a Negro graduate of Berea, is the principal, and a Mrs. M. M. Robe, a white lady from Ohio, is the matron. For the past eight years she has given her time and attention to the general work of the institution without asking a thing in return. The buildings, aside from the 120 acres of land, are worth about $5,000. The Sunday School and Christian Endeavor Society, the choir, and the youthful musician all give evidence of the usefulness of the institution that has arisen from the dust of crumbling battlements."

Webmaster Note: The above article was taken from Kentucky Explorer Magazine (www.kentuckyexplorer.com)




HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CAMP NELSON

Camp Nelson has national significance under the themes of the American Civil War and African-American History. The site was a large quartermaster and commissary depot, recruitment and training center, and hospital facility that covered over 4000 acres in southern Jessamine County, Kentucky. It was a supply center for Union troops operating in Central and Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Tennessee, and Southwestern Virginia and was especially significant as the supply center for Burnside's 1863 Knoxville invasion and Burbridge's and Stoneman's 1864 Southwestern Virgina invasions.

The camp was also significant as a defensive establishment for central and eastern Kentucky. The fortifications and troops of Camp Nelson protected the quartermaster stores and discouraged assaults into central Kentucky. Troops from Camp Nelson were also critical in combating Confederate raiders and guerillas.

Although a number of Union Kentucky and Tennessee regiments were formed and trained at Camp Nelson, the camp is most significant as the largest recruitment and training center for African-American troops in Kentucky, the second largest contributing state for African-American troops in the country, and the third largest such center in the United States. Eight U.S. Colored Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery regiments were formed and trained at Camp Nelson and three others were trained and stationed there. Many African-American recruits also brought their families with them to Camp Nelson and the army eventually established a refugee (contraband) camp for these individuals. Thousands of family members lived at the camp and eventually attained their freedom there.

The research potential of Camp Nelson as a depot, camp site, and contraband camp is great. Archaeological investigations at the encampment indicate that the site has a high degree of integrity and has artifacts and features which can contribute to the understanding of army camp life, equipment, clothing, and arms supply; food and beverage consumption; architecture; army social stratification; army light industrial production; and African-American refugee conditions.

Bounded on its southern and western sides by the deeply entrenched Kentucky River and on the east by Hickman Creek, the Camp Nelson location was much more easily defended than Camp Dick Robinson. The only exposed area of the camp was its northern edge. Along this edge a line of eight forts or batters, rifle entrenchments, and abatis were constructed by the Engineer Corps of the Army of the Ohio. (Bartnik, 1976:6; Simpson, 1864a)

These forts, from west to east, were named Forts Hatch, Nelson, Jackson, Putnam, Pope, Taylor, McKee, and Jones. All trees were cleared to the north of this line to a distance of 1500 yards except on the slope between the two eastern forts. (McKee and Jones) (Official Records, Series I, Vol. 39, Part III:772-774) The northern fortification line extended one and one quarter miles from Forts Hatch to Jones. Additional fortifications were also placed to the south along Hickman Creek (Battery Studdiford) and above the bridge and ford across the Kentucky River (Fort Bramlette).

The forts along the northern line were all of earthen and rock or timber construction, and all were battery (redan) fortifications except Fort Jones, which was a redoubt. The forts had six to twelve cannon platforms and all had powder magazines except Fort Pope. The forts were built in order from east to west and Battery Putnam, which is set back from the other forts, was constructed on a high point to cover the eastern line before Forts Pope, Taylor, McKee, and Jones were completed (Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 39, Part III:772-774). Fort Bramlette was also a redoubt with a powder magazine, bomb proof and cistern.

Within the camp, over 300 buildings were constructed which were associated with the functions of a quartermaster depot, recruitment center, and hospital. These buildings included dozens of warehouses to store rations, clothing, and equipment; stables, cribs, and sheds to house horses and mules and their feed; blacksmith shops; wagon shops; offices; mess halls; and barracks. The warehouses were placed in a sunken area in the center of the camp so they would not be visible from the road or other observation points outside the camp (Hall 1865). Other buildings and structures included the ornate camp headquarters, the large quartermaster offices, the bakery (which baked 10000 rations of bread daily), the saw mill, the Adam's Express Post Office, the woodworking machine shop, the magazines, and a prison with its provost office.

The Nelson Hospital consisted of ten large hospital wards, a laundry, offices, nurses quarters, dead houses, and a convalescent camp of tents. The hospital received running water from a 500 000 gallon reservoir on the hill west of the hospital. Water was pumped up to the reservoir from the Kentucky River 470 feet below. Water from the U.S. Sanitary Commission run Soldiers' Home. The Soldiers' Home was used "...for the accommodation of soldiers temporarily sojourning the Camp en route to join their Regiments at the front." (Hall, 1865) The camp employed over 1000 civilians in the occupations of laborers, carpenters, blacksmiths, wagon makers, teamsters, and clerks, among others. Many of these civilians lived in barracks or tents in the camp (National Archives, RG 92, E225, Box 270).

Period photographs indicated that most Camp Nelson buildings were of board and batten construction, had wooden shingle roofs, and were up on wooden piers. The camp headquarters was a more substantial building with horizontal weather boarding. The photographs and the map entitled "Camp Nelson and its Defenses" (Simpson 1864b) also illustrate numerous tents over the camp which were likely used for storage or housing. The photographs and maps indicate that the interior camp ground surface was in grass or dirt, with few trees left.

http://www.mbajungle.com/magazine.cfm?INC=...=1&date=Nov2001

| INSIGHTS | Adam Bryant |
U.S. Army Case Study: Calling the Cavalry
Facing a decline in recruitment, the Army drafted Chicago's Leo Burnett agency. The result? An Army of One.

You'd have to have been raised in a bunker not to know that the place to "Be All You Can Be" is the U.S. Army. The catchy recruiting slogan, developed in the late '70s by the ad agency N. W. Ayer, served the Army faithfully for two decades. Advertising Age named it the second-best jingle of the last century (Mickey D's "You Deserve a Break Today" topped the list; see Jingle All the Way). But in the late '90s, when the Army was increasingly having trouble meeting recruiting goals, the top brass thought it might be time for a change. After all, the slogan itself was older than many of the kids the Army was trying to recruit, and the tone was out of step with the times, sounding more like a nagging lecture than an invitation to greatness. "We had taken the finger off the pulse of young people," says Louis Caldera, a Harvard MBA who shook up operating and marketing structures when he served as the Army's 17th secretary, from July 1998 to January 2001. "It was clear that we needed to do business a different way."

Military recruiting ads are like any other advertising, but the stakes can be much higher. If a new fast-food entrée flops, Burger King will survive—but what's an army without soldiers? And so, determined to position itself on the edge of pop culture, the Army put its $150 million annual ad budget up for grabs last year. The Chicago-based Leo Burnett agency beat out Campbell-Ewald (the incumbent, Young & Rubicam, didn't participate in the account review) to win the task of burnishing the Army's image .

Burnett, whose client roster includes McDonald's, Walt Disney, and Coca-Cola, is no stranger to the military. For years, the agency has made a point of hiring employees with military backgrounds, coveting them for their whatever-it-takes-to-get-the-job-done approach. In all, the agency has about 25 ex-military staffers, and they often get together to watch Army-Navy games. But even with all that expertise on staff, the agency still spent thousands of hours researching the weaknesses of the old campaign and developing its replacement. After all, there was a lot on the line—the Army tied some of Burnett's compensation to the campaign's impact on recruitment.

Launched earlier this year, Burnett's campaign was built around a brand-new slogan: "An Army of One." The kickoff ad featured stirring images of a soldier running through the Mojave Desert, his dog tags gleaming in the morning sun. "I am an army of one," says Corporal Richard Lovett in a voice-over. "Even though there are 1,045,690 soldiers just like me, I am my own force. With technology, with training, with support, who I am has become better than who I was. And I'll be the first to tell you, the might of the U.S. Army doesn't lie in numbers. It lies in me. I am an army of one. And you can see my strength."

It's too soon to say whether the campaign will be a success, but the Army says that even before last month's World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, "meaningful leads" for potential recruits were up 24 percent.

In taking over the Army account, Burnett faced a number of problems beyond the faded-wallpaper feel of "Be All You Can Be." For years, a key recruiting strategy had been to lure kids with the promise of money, which they could use to help pay for college after their stint in the Army. The bucks-for-boots tactic worked for a while, but when the labor market tightened, other employers started offering cash for college, too. And the mercenary approach did little to bolster the pride of vets, who traditionally had been some of the Army's best frontline salesmen. Without anybody's touting the intangible benefits of service and patriotism, the Army started looking increasingly like the employer of last resort for those who couldn't cut it in the real world. "The youth that come in have not been coming in for the right reasons," says Staff Sergeant Patrick Earhart, a recruiter based in Oklahoma City, summing up the feelings of many of his colleagues.

Hollywood hadn't been much help, either. In interviews with teens, Burnett found that many of their ideas about the military had come from Blockbuster. Movies like The Thin Red Line and Hamburger Hill left an impression that life in the military is about crawling around in the mud, dodging bullets, and getting yelled at. "You're the lowest form of life on earth," screams the drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket. "You are not even human-"expletive deleted"ing-beings! You are nothing but unorganized grab-ass-tic pieces of amphibian "expletive deleted"!" Burnett interviewed hundreds of older teenagers who said they assumed people in the Army had different goals and values from their own. On top of that, they said they felt that joining the Army would mean years of lost time. Burnett researchers determined that kids today want flexibility and control over their lives, and they didn't expect to find those in the Army. "The two overriding themes for young adults are 'What's in it for me?' and a need for immediate gratification, or 'nowness,' " says Amy Palmer, a senior planner at Burnett. "Any notion that it's the right thing to do for somebody else or for your country wasn't going to resonate for them." The problems didn't end there. Burnett found that people were stumped as to what life in the Army would be like beyond boot camp. What, exactly, do you do in the Army? March?

Army Recruiting and the Civil-Military Gap
MATTHEW J. MORGAN

An interesting episode illustrating part of the civil-military dissonance in the United States occurred a couple of years ago. It escaped the attention of much of the major media, although some readers may be familiar with the 1999 case of US Air Force Lieutenant Ryan Berry. Lieutenant Berry protested against being in close quarters with a woman officer during his duty assignment at a missile silo at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. The lieutenant claimed that the close proximity to a member of the opposite sex over the long 24-hour shifts presented an intolerable temptation to break the precepts of his conservative Catholic faith. Berry's former commander had accommodated the lieutenant by adjusting the shift schedule so he would not have to work with any of the 83 female officers who served on watch duty at Minot. However, Wing Commander Colonel Ronald Haeckel responded to complaints of unfair treatment toward Berry and to the unfavorable unit morale climate by reversing this policy and refusing to afford Lieutenant Berry special consideration.

The scope of that controversy seems to reveal a classic Huntingtonian conflict between the armed forces and society: the functional imperative of maintaining readiness versus the social imperative of the freedom to follow one's dictates of conscience and religious conviction. Lieutenant Berry attracted the support of several prominent conservative advocates, including Cardinal John O'Connor, the Family Research Council (which undertook a "Saving Lieutenant Ryan" public relations campaign), and 77 members of Congress. While one officer's personal conflict with the military is not evidence of a civil-military crisis, of course, the opposition of Berry's supporters to functional military necessities is more disturbing. Even those conservative factions which have traditionally advocated the interests of military readiness appeared in this circumstance to be ignorant of or apathetic toward the nation's security needs.

This failure to adequately appreciate the requirements of military readiness--which have historically been prioritized by government authorities, as the Supreme Court record shows[1]--is characteristic of a growing trend of disinterest and unawareness among not only cultural and political elites, but also among the public at large. This broadening estrangement between the military and society has sparked interest among scholars. While some have focused on an increasingly hostile and politicized military, others charge that civilian culture is distancing itself from the military through a progressive deterioration of values, and still others emphasize the growing chasm among elite spheres.

Although occurrences such as the appointment of General Colin Powell, USA Ret., as Secretary of State would seem to suggest otherwise, the distance between elites in society and the military arguably is growing.[2] However, in a democratic society, trends among elites are inevitably related to developments in the general public. As Senator John McCain, a member of the Armed Services Committee, has pointed out, "Most Americans don't care that much about national security and defense issues anymore,"[3] and elected officials obviously take a greater interest in those issues their constituents believe are important.

The disconnect between today's armed forces and society may be aptly described as one of apathy rather than hostility.[4] The peacetime military seems to be often viewed as irrelevant to the major issues of popular life. This leads to less attention to military affairs and a reduced familiarity and comfort with the military, which may become a self-perpetuating trend.

The significance of these developments to the military and to national security is that the quality of the association between the military and society affects numerous facets of military resourcing. The amount of funding and personnel provided by a democratic nation depends on the perceptions and will of the public. Much of the Army's reaction to the recruiting challenges posed by the strong economy of the 1990s, consequently, was to address extrinsic incentives. In the short term, at least, the Army's effort seems to be working. However, an effective long-term solution to military recruiting difficulties may be possible only if we can resolve the underlying divide in civil-military relations.

The Current Recruiting Situation

It is difficult to portray the Army's recruiting situation accurately in simple terms, without qualifiers. The perception in some quarters seems to be that the active Army is falling short of its recruiting goals year after year. But that is clearly not the case. In Fiscal Year 2000, the Army met its active-duty recruiting goal of 80,000 new accessions, and with a 22-percent increase in "high-quality recruits, defined as high-school graduates who scored high on the Armed Forces Qualification Test." In late January 2001 the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, Lieutenant General Timothy Maude, described the manpower situation as "healthy" and expressed confidence that the Army would meet its FY 2001 recruiting goals for both the active Army and the Army Reserve. And in terms of retention, the Army "continues to mystify the external audience," said Lieutenant General Maude, by continuing to exceed its reenlistment targets "during the entire drawdown, [despite overseas] deployments, and against a strong economy."[5]

Further, FY 2000 was not an anomaly. In the decade of the 1990s, the active Army recruiting goals were met--indeed, exceeded--in six years. In two other years the Army came within a few dozen recruits of meeting its goals--shortfalls of less than one-tenth of one percent. Only in FY 1998 and 1999 did the pattern change. In Fiscal Year 1998, active Army recruiting fell 801 short of the goal of 72,550, a shortfall of slightly more than one percent. And in FY 1999 the real anomaly occurred, with active Army recruiting falling 6,290 short of the goal of 74,500, a shortfall of about 8.4 percent.[6]

Despite this generally commendable recruiting record, however, the situation is not as rosy as the statistics make it seem. Some observers have called the Army's manpower situation "desperate" and characterized by "unprecedented recruiting and retention challenges."[7] The situation has even been identified as a "recruiting crisis for the volunteer force,"[8] and highly respected sociologist Charles Moskos has said that "no problem is more serious in our armed forces than recruitment shortfalls."[9] Another source indicates that youth interest in military service declined from 32 percent in 1973 to approximately 10 percent in 1999.[10] A 1999 RAND study found "indications that the current [undesirable] recruiting situation to some extent reflects ongoing and permanent changes."[11] In June 2000, a General Accounting Office report to the Senate noted "mounting problems in recruiting sufficient numbers of qualified enlisted personnel."[12] And for years, the perception of Army recruiting shortfalls has occupied a significant amount of attention both within the services and in the media. So where lies the truth?

One thing is certain: Meeting the Army's recruiting goals has not been cheap or easy. Recruiting standards have been changed to access recruits who are not high-school graduates, and the Army has placed increased emphasis on recruiting in order to meet its goals, incurring significant costs in the process.[13] The 2000 GAO report noted that "DOD is experiencing a recruiting challenge that has called for an extraordinary increase in the attention and the resources focused on this area." The report stated, "From fiscal year 1993 through 1998, the Army increased its number of recruiters from 4,368 to 6,331 and increased its advertising expenditures from $34.3 million in FY 1993 to $112.9 million in FY 1999 (in FY 2000 constant dollars)." The report also noted that there was a huge increase in the offering of enlistment bonuses.[14] Clearly, while the Army's success in meeting its recruiting goals is to be applauded, that success has not come without significant effort and cost.

Several RAND studies have indicated that the supply of potential recruits is higher than most observers might expect. Reports revealed that throughout the 1990s, there were actually more potential recruits available in the pool of high-quality youths than before the drawdown, relative to accession requirements.[15] This indicates that there are significant societal forces working against the recruitment effort.

The continued flow of young Americans through the armed forces is one of the most visible linkages between the military and its client population in a peacetime environment.[16] Increased difficulties in attracting young Americans is indicative of a weakened link between the armed forces and society. Andrew Bacevich has argued, "To the question `Who will serve?' the nation's answer has now become: `those who want to serve.'"[17] The significant fact here is that there seem to be fewer and fewer who want to serve. There is some evidence to suggest that the role of the armed forces has changed to such a degree that the structure of enlistment decisions has been "altered radically."[18]

An article by Don Snider in The Wall Street Journal in January 2000 argued that recruiting will continue to struggle and be dependent on economic fluctuations in the coming years.[19] A forthcoming study from the Foreign Policy Research Institute argues that the divergence between the military and society makes sustaining an all-volunteer military increasingly difficult.[20] Lieutenant General Maude also has spoken, albeit with optimism, about the difficulties the Army must overcome in attracting large numbers of high-quality recruits against corporate competition in a strong economy.[21]

Obviously economic concerns such as the job market and supply and demand affect the success of military recruiting; however, this article will focus instead on the sociological issues. These factors may be more widespread, more difficult to change, and ultimately more important in identifying long-term trends significant to successful recruiting. In March 2001, General John Keane, the Army's Vice Chief of Staff, noted "We did a lot of research and found that we were disconnected [from] the American youth." He suggested that American teenagers "do not see the military as a career or a way to get ahead," and are "more likely to view enlistment in the military as a last resort." That may be a somewhat consistent attitude historically in our country, but it's nonetheless troubling. As General Keane pointed out, "The absolute truth is that the American people . . . do not look at the military option as a choice for their youngsters, [but] raising and maintaining an army is a shared responsibility in which everyone has a stake."[22]

Several factors have contributed to the apparent sociological gap in civil-military relations. These include the end of the draft, changes in the Reserve Office Training Corps (ROTC), shifts in regional origin of military members, decrease in the size of the Army, increase in service-members' children making the military a career, rise in US Military Academy accessions (versus other commissioning sources), and significantly greater average length of service. The gap is a function of demographics, strategy, defense spending, and military policy.[23] Many determinants have led to the current relationship between society and the military.

The gap appears to be more severe now than it was in the past. General John Shalikashvili, USA Ret., has expressed apprehension: "I share deeply the concern that we are living through a period when the gap between the American people and their military is getting wider."[24] To determine how this civil-military gap may be making recruiting more difficult and to formulate practical solutions, it is appropriate to explore the several significant components that contribute to the civil-military problem and their relationship to attracting young Americans to military service. These factors include the relevance of the military to society, public opinion, a disparity of values, evolving military professionalism, the isolation of the military, and conflicting social needs.

Social Attitudes about the Relevance of the Military

The significant characteristic of the relationship between the armed forces and society is difference, not comparability. Rather than the growing disparity between civilian and military values, the waning presence of the military in the lives of most Americans has caused it to decline in prominence. Institutional presence is defined in terms of both a material dimension (social contact) and a moral dimension (normative ordering of priorities for what constitutes a good society).[25]

A discussion of the emerging multicentric world acquaints us with the latter dimension. In this world, the utility of military power for achieving political ends is diminishing. While military power is still important, it is less important than it used to be. Two reasons, both technological in nature, account for this change. First, the destructive power of modern weapons is so great that no one can imagine any benefit coming from their use, if they were used without restriction. Second, modern armed forces are so expensive that it represents a great burden on even the wealthiest societies to contemplate their use. Security concerns are consequently focused increasingly on questions of economic rather than military security.[26] Humanitarian missions, rather than warfighting, are increasingly becoming the Army's central focus,[27] and since these missions attract lower levels of public attention, they may adversely affect recruiting. Another indication of the degree to which military issues have become obsolete in modern life is the military's repeated appearance in debates on issues of social equality and cultural change. Political advocacy groups such as homosexual activists and radical feminists have chosen to use the military as "key terrain" to conquer in furthering their cultural agendas.[28]

"The US military is now more alienated from its civilian leadership than at any time in American history," were the first words of Richard Kohn's 1994 article "Out of Control," describing the crisis in civil-military relations.[29] One commentator in late 1998 felt that the "extraordinary efforts to avoid military service during the Vietnam War by top political and military opinion leaders in Washington (President Bill Clinton, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, columnists George Will and Patrick Buchanan)" were extremely significant in measuring the relationships and attitudes among political elites.[30] The House of Representatives had 320 veterans in 1970, but fewer than 130 in 1994.[31] Moreover, in 1997, for the first time ever, neither the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State, nor any of their deputies had ever been in uniform. Key leaders have become "increasingly devoid of military experience or understanding."[32]

A detailed demographic analysis of military experience among members of Congress from 1901 to 1999 had significant findings in this regard. What is unique about the contemporary decline is that in the late 1990s, for the first time in the century, there were fewer veterans in the House than could be expected given the distribution of veterans in the population.[33] This becomes a concern if it translates into a relative lack of congressional interest in defense issues.[34] And the trend suggests that fewer and fewer civilian political decisionmakers in the future will have military experience, as military participation by America's elite declines.[35]

One of the reasons for the military becoming increasingly distant from the elite segment of society is the smaller prevalence of military issues and training in higher education. The closing of many college ROTC units across the country, as well as successful bans of recruiters from campuses, indicates further divisions that are taking place between society and the military.[36] Dr. Kohn has stated, "Our best colleges and universities . . . neglect the study of war and the military, and abhor ROTC."[37]

Current trends suggest that the military is a political tool that is being regarded as less and less significant. One writer has contended that the military was prominent from World War II through Desert Storm, but predicted it would face the prospect of fading from public attention and experience manpower problems similar to those in Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand.[38]

The American Public

According to John Hillen, the American people as a whole appreciate traditional military culture.[39] Unlike the rest of government, the modern military perennially enjoys a high level of popularity.[40] James Burk has suggested that the mass media are reluctant to simply accept and report what military officials say they are doing (which is, of course, part of the media's watchdog responsibility).[41] This squares with much of the military's perception of the media (and a significant portion of the public's perception as well) that there is an active media bias against military institutions. A content study of the media found, however, that media coverage is not as negative as is commonly believed. This study examined the content of media coverage of military affairs over a period of time.[42] It is therefore plausible to conclude that public confidence might be high despite the civil-military gap because of the widespread misconception that the media underrates the military.

Despite the public confidence in the military institution, however, there appears to be a deficit of social capital to support the armed forces.[43] One reason for this may be a declining civic participation among Americans generally. As Andrew Bacevich has written, "In a society in which half of the eligible voters did not even bother to show up at the polls in the [1996] presidential election, the notion of an obligation to participate in the country's defense has become an anachronism, an oddity from another time."[44]

James Kitfield has referred to a "nearly unbridgeable cultural divide" between American society in general and the US military.[45] Some of this seeming social irrelevance of the military may flow from popular entertainment. Public demand for novels and movies that examine the contemporary military seems slight. The last large crop of serious works in this vein came in the wake of the Vietnam War. Subsequent American military involvements overseas were much shorter and more successful, and, whatever their ambiguities, did not lead to the kind of soul-searching that might inspire great novels and films, or to a rising public appetite for portrayals of the interventions in Grenada or Panama. Recent popular films which have focused on military affairs have been distanced in time (either in the past or in the future) such as Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Soldier, and Starship Trooper, or distanced in subject, such as The General's Daughter or the remake of Gone With the Wind, whose central focus is not the military, although military affairs are part of the plot. Those films that do focus on the military here and now emphasize social imperatives and the very forces which marginalize the military function at the expense of social interests, or they suggest that the armed forces are out of touch with social values, as in Courage Under Fire and G.I. Jane.[46] In time, it will be possible to better gauge the importance of such recent films as Three Kings and Rules of Engagement.

Kathy Ross, a civilian with the US Army's public affairs unit in Hollywood, emphasizes that films about the military life are "vital to recruiting sergeants."[47] The image of the military presented in popular entertainment affects how people think about the military.[48]

High levels of public confidence in the military do not necessarily indicate a healthy civil-military relationship; on the contrary, grouped with other evidence, it seems to be the result of an ultimately uninformed populace regarding a military that is becoming increasingly irrelevant to most citizens. And an increasingly distant and unimportant military surely will have more difficulty enticing the active participation of its citizens.

Values

Dramatic sociopolitical changes dating to the end of World War II (increased hedonism, greater personal expression, opposition to the military lifestyle, resistance to authority, and increased moral criticism), started the decline of mass armies in Western industrial nations, and over the past 30 years the process has become increasingly apparent. The end of conscription in most of the West is a response to these pressures. This offers an alternative explanation to the relevancy of the civil-military rift to recruiting: a decline in the acceptance of military authority, which is a factor frequently associated with youth attitudes against military service.[49]

In addition to changes in attitudes toward authority, changing political beliefs also are affecting the military's ability to attract new personnel. William Mayer's work has shown that a strong case can be made that there has been a trend toward more liberal positions on most social values.[50] American society may be more liberal and individualistic now than when Huntington's theory of objective civilian control was first formulated in The Soldier and the State.[51] This shift may have special significance for the civil-military gap, because while a plurality of civilian leaders are classified as liberals, only a small fraction of military officers are in that category.[52] A 1998-99 study of opinions across the armed services even found that military dislike for then-President Clinton was not a significant factor in these results. Even if the "studies had ended with the survey in early 1992, when George Bush [senior] was in the White House and a Clinton presidency seemed a very improbable long shot . . . the primary trends described here would already have been in place."[53]

On a more fundamental level, basic assumptions and values are influencing the propensity for military service. William Bennett has documented a "palpable culture decline" and an actual shift in the public's beliefs, attitudes, and priorities over the past decades.[54] This shift in popular values might affect the civil-military gap and military recruiting. For instance, a growing affinity for free will and individual expression damages both the ability of citizens to understand the military culture and the likelihood that they would become a part of it. Research has shown that young Americans who expect to serve in the military place a lower priority on personal freedom than do their peers.[55] As more and more Americans place a higher priority on personal freedom, fewer expect to find themselves in uniformed service.

Youth attitudes are shifting to take them further from the military perspective. Interviews with youths on the subject revealed several characterizations. "They don't like to be told what to do." "Most teenagers don't want to commit to anything." Teens "don't like getting up early."[56] Such attitudes don't comport well with a military career.

Professionalism and Citizen-Soldiers

The changing requirements of the military profession are also factors that affect the military's role in society. While the United States has a long tradition of citizen-soldier style service, today's active force entails more permanent and professional types of service. As one author has argued, "For the force in being, the mission of peacekeeping requires it to be permanently mobilized while its dependence on technologically sophisticated weapons of mass destruction means that the military division of labor is much more complex. Consequently, greater emphasis is placed on longer-service professionals instead of short-term conscripts."[57]

The consequences of this involve a sort of incubation of the military away from society that will reinforce isolation from more generalized values. For workers across different fields, a career-oriented workforce can be expected to produce more attitudinally distinct groups.[58] Jacques Van Doorn had earlier predicted that the gap between military and civilian sectors of society would broaden as a consequence of the declining size and legitimacy of standing armies that leads to less universal service or substitution of voluntary service, with a smaller and increasingly professional military becoming more isolated, inward-looking, rigid, and conservative.[59]

This isolated military will further exacerbate the civil-military tension due to the underlying distrust of the American society toward a standing military, a distrust that has been common in American history.[60] Indeed, John Lehman has suggested that one of the most important elements of the American civil-military dynamic is our tradition of citizen-soldiers. Our soldiers and sailors historically were expected to be drawn largely from civilian pursuits for limited terms, assuring a constant leavening of civilian cultural values within the military and in turn carrying back to the civilian world a respect for and understanding of military culture.[61] Any future failure to develop this respect and understanding will hamper efforts to recruit from the civilian society.

This "cross-fertilization" has been an important contribution to the military and society that the citizen-soldier has made throughout the history of the United States. Unfortunately, today's military cannot produce or enjoy the same benefits since the professional force is necessarily more isolated and disparate from the population at large. Professionalization is a response to pressures from both changing technological and security conditions, but its effects on civil-military relations and recruiting are not all beneficial and cannot be ignored.

The Isolated Military

James Burk has asserted that the "military is and ought to be isolated and institutionally different."[62] While it is true that the military--like any profession[63]--has distinctive values and beliefs, and while it is true that the military requires these differences for its functional mission, we must still assess the effects of its isolation on civil-military relations. More specifically, how does this isolation affect recruiting?

The separation between the military and society is not only the result of differences in values, but the result also of physical separation, creating limited military social and community ties.[64] Military bases, complete with their own schools, churches, stores, child care centers, and recreational areas, can be characterized as never-to-be-left islands of tranquility removed from the seemingly chaotic, crime-ridden civilian environment outside the gates.[65] Additionally, the increasing incorporation of technological functions that traditionally have not been part of the warrior role may in fact make the military less dependent on its parent society and therefore even more isolated from it and more inward-looking.[66]

In addition to physical and intellectual separation, the modern force is not demographically representative of the population at large.[67] John Lehman argues that "we have created a separate military caste."[68] He points out that while most American community leaders have had military experience, few of their children have. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that cadets and midshipman who are children of career military parents are present in record numbers at the service academies.

There is significance in these trends. An insulated military has reduced visibility in the civilian population, and a relatively invisible military is going to engender little support and understanding for its budgetary and recruitment needs in a population that expects lower expenditures on the military in peacetime. Increased involvement of military personnel in local communities would contribute to the integration of the Army into society more broadly, but base closures and increases in non-monetary benefits and base facilities are removing those opportunities for military contact with the society at large.[69]

Social Imperatives

Some have argued, to the contrary, that the gap is decreasing between military and civilian cultures, that the occupational model and politicization of the military indicate the armed forces are moving toward mainstream society. Indeed, "the post-Cold War period has witnessed a convergence of views on several issues."[70] Related work also has proposed that prospective soldiers should be encouraged to view military service more as part of the job market than in terms of a civic obligation, as the military has assumed more traits of a competitive entity in the civilian market for human resources.[71] Recent recruiting efforts have emphasized personal benefits to recruits such as education and character traits desired by civilian employers. These recruiting efforts and their results seem to have confirmed the trends outlined in that research. But as one writer has warned, "The danger to the republic does not arise from any military threat to liberal American society, but from the reverse: the civilianization of the US military ethos."[72]

In the modern military, pressure grows to incorporate women into all assignments, including combat roles. How far this movement should go has been a matter for intense debate, especially in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War.[73] Traditionally, the courts have been reluctant to extend the protection of constitutional rights to military personnel. They have deferred to the idea that the military is a unique institution, exempt from the usual standards of review based on established constitutional norms. However, the courts are yielding to the military less and less of this traditional authority.[74]

These developments do provide superficial evidence of a military that's converging with its larger parent society, but when we reconcile these pieces of evidence with our previous discussion, they seem to confirm that there actually is a civil-military gap based on indifference to the military. A lack of interest and awareness of the importance of the military's distinctive function has allowed what Huntington called "social imperatives"[75] to become more dominant than the military's functional mission.

The military has become less of an instrument for its traditional purpose, a protection device against external enemies, and more a vehicle for advancing any number of other societal goals. The military is a tool with a unique and defining mission of the exercise of coercive power. But in the process of creating an institution capable of exerting coercive power, society has necessarily, if unintentionally, created an instrument that has a number of auxiliary capabilities. The military has the ability to execute manpower-intensive state programs, notably construction and disaster relief. Civilians can use the military to redistribute wealth, via the defense budget, to particular regions or corporate interests. And the military offers a way for civilian leaders to address questions of social injustice, by leveling the playing field for disadvantaged social groups, strategically distributing wealth and opportunity, and even coercively changing individual attitudes through enforced sensitivity training.[76]

As society uses its opportunity to accomplish these various ends, thereby neglecting the military's main role, we can observe that the most significant trend is not a convergence of values, but evidence of the view that the traditional military is increasingly irrelevant to a growing segment of our society. This evidence in turn suggests that there will be fewer available recruits; because as most people seek meaning or significance in their lives, they will be less likely to become part of an institution whose main role is seen as increasingly insignificant and marginalized.

Recommendations

In advancing a position that the civil-military gap should not be closed, it has been pointed out that no criteria establishing an "acceptable" gap have been articulated.[77] However, it appears from the trends discussed above that the civil-military gap has actual and dangerous implications. The recruiting challenges that the Army faces are at least in part a consequence of our inability to establish strong ties between the military and society.

Many leaders, such as Congressman Ike Skelton, have advocated limiting the separation between military and civilian America.[78] Three broad approaches can support narrowing the civilian-military gap: (1) adoption of mandatory national service; (2) curtailing on-post facilities that enable military personnel to acquire most of their needs without much contact with civilians; and (3) changes in the education of the officer corps.[79] Some of the following policies are being considered by Army leaders, and some are even under way in various forms, but others of these recommendations might require a significant departure from current thinking in order for decisionmakers to seriously entertain them.

Conscription has been, for some, a popular choice in discussions on the subject of civil-military relations despite the assured impracticality of implementing such a policy, given our national experience during the Vietnam era. If both sexes were drafted, with the possible support of feminists who are usually opposed to the military (who would then see the military as treating women as equals), the option might be somewhat more palatable, but it would still run into what would most likely be insurmountable opposition.[80] The fact that our Western allies are abandoning conscription is also notable. Another possibility would be to combine the draft with some sort of nonmilitary national service. However, this variation would conflict with some of the same attitudes about citizenship that are inhibiting successful recruiting for military service. In a democratic society, a plan that runs so counter to the nature of citizens' perceptions of their civic duty would not be sustainable, even if it were achievable. Recall that "as the Nazi war machine was rolling over Western Europe in 1940, a conscription bill passed the House of Representatives by only a single vote, and President Harry Truman's proposal for a one-year stint of universal military training went nowhere." The unlikelihood of instituting national service is also indicated by the lawsuits against some school boards that have imposed minimal requirements of community service for high school graduation.[81]

The second approach would monetize the benefits enjoyed by military personnel, replacing them with higher pay scales. Such a policy would make it easier to recruit soldiers and officers because their pay would be more competitive with the civilian market. (While the addition of non-monetary benefits can be a recruiting incentive, the simplicity of comparing salaries is something much easier to contemplate. Witness the mass exodus of junior officers in the past decade to higher-paying civilian jobs.) It might also be beneficial in reducing the rapidly escalating costs of those benefits. Its central focus, however, would be to alleviate the potential civil-military dangers of an isolated military identified by several scholars[82] and discussed above.

The final approach involves the education of officers. Some authors have advocated eliminating the service academies (despite the political difficulties of this) due to their tendency to generate a more isolated military culture. However, others have posited that officers accessed through ROTC are no different ideologically than those accessed through the academies.[83] Advanced civil schooling may also have a limited effect since most attitudes are deep-set long before officers would be sent to further schooling. Nonetheless, the contacts engendered by graduate education at least provide opportunities for both military and civilian students to challenge stereotypes they hold of one another.[84] Expanding ROTC, especially at elite schools, and shortening the military academy service requirement to encourage officers to pursue careers in civilian society would be beneficial in closing the gap.[85]

A RAND study recommended increasing the number of soldiers who attend college or receive college credit before enlisting.[86] They prescribe this course of action in order to attract more college-bound youths into military service. Another recent analysis argued a similar course of action as part of the recommendations from an examination of youth subgroups.[87] There are difficulties with this proposal since the GI Bill no longer has a monopoly on tuition-assistance programs. Many private employers provide tuition assistance, and government aid not contingent on service is widely available.[88] Nonetheless, targeting college-bound students might also have beneficial civil-military implications because there would then be more military experience among the college-educated segment of society. Many have advocated expanding college assistance programs, but this is an incentive rather than a means of shifting our social attitudes about the military. Charles Moskos has argued that a shorter enlistment would make recruiting these students easier, since they could perform a tour of duty during a 15-month interregnum in their college education.[89] Many students might well consider taking such a break from school to do something different and positive in a foreign locale. These shorter terms of service would have the added benefit of enhancing the civil-military linkage.

Other suggestions involve the education of the civilian public rather than the military. Courses in high schools and universities dealing with civil-military issues and national civic responsibilities could be seeded by relatively small grants and have a large payoff if they reduced the civil-military tension[90] and contributed to more successful recruiting efforts. Establishing special preparatory programs could enable more of today's inner-city youths to enlist, and expanding ROTC at historically black colleges could open new avenues for civil-military progress.[91]

Even more creative solutions have been suggested. For instance, the Army suffers from an inability to contemplate lateral entry by talented civilians at levels high enough to be attractive to successful executives or professionals. Almost all other large organizations, with the exception of well-established religions, routinely bring in at least a small percentage of executives from the outside as a way of bringing special talents and fresh perspectives to bear on enduring problems. In addition to organizational benefits, this interchange between the military and civilian elite spheres would help reduce the civil-military gap.[92]

Lieutenant General David Ohle, former Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, has stated that the Army is undertaking a retention-based strategy with the rationale that keeping soldiers for longer periods of time will reduce the stress on recruiting.[93] While this strategy might sustain the force, it will also further separate the military from society--indeed, it is exactly the opposite of the strategy advocated by Dr. Moskos and the Foreign Policy Research Institute report.[94] This strategy could have the unintended effect of making recruiting even more difficult as even fewer citizens are exposed to the military. Trends of lowered recruiting (which a retention-based strategy is designed to allow) could have the effect of accentuating the differences between civilian and military institutions and thereby widening the civil-military gap.[95] This could lead to even more difficulties in the future.

It seems intuitive, and supported by the evidence, that in order to continue to access sufficient numbers of high-quality recruits, senior leaders will need to address farther-reaching concerns involving the overall relationship between the military and society. Failing to be more progressive in the military's relationship with the public may cause further problems. Without attention to the sociological underpinnings of recruiting, it may be difficult for our armed forces to attract the social support needed to sustain operations in the 21st century.



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NOTES

The author is grateful to Dr. Michael Desch of the University of Kentucky and Dr. Morten Ender, Dr. Don Campbell, and Dr. Gina Kolasinski of the US Military Academy for their support and suggestions in the development of this article.

1. Nicole E. Jaeger, "Maybe Soldiers Have Rights After All!" Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 87 (No. 3, 1997), 895-931.

2. Thomas E. Ricks, Making the Corps (New York: Scribner, 1997); Ole R. Holsti, "A Widening Gap Between the U.S. Military and Civilian Society? Some Evidence, 1976-96," International Security, 23 (Winter 1998/99), 5-42; Peter Feaver, "The Civil-Military Problematic: Huntington, Janowitz and the Question of Civilian Control," Armed Forces and Society, 23 (Autumn 1997), 15-33; William T. Bianco and Jamie Markham, "Vanishing Veterans: The Decline in Military Experience in the U.S. House," unpublished paper prepared for the Triangle Institute for Security Studies project "Bridging the Gap: Assuring Military Effectiveness When Military Culture Diverges from Civilian Society" (July 1999), hereinafter "Triangle 1999."

3. Quoted in Ricks, Making the Corps, p. 291.

4. James Burk, "The Military's Presence in American Society, 1950-2000," unpublished paper prepared for Triangle 1999.

5. "Personnel Chief Describes Manpower Situation as `Healthy,'" AUSA News, March 2001, internet, http://www.ausa.org/ausanews, accessed 20 March 2001; "Army Meets Recruiting Goal," ArmyLink News, internet, http://www.dtic.mil/armylink/news/Sep2000/...recruiting.html, accessed 20 March 2001.

6. Data provided by the Public Affairs Office, US Army Recruiting Command, 20 March 2001.

7. Robert L. Maginnis, "Filling the Ranks," policy paper for the Military Readiness Project (Washington: Family Research Council, 1999).

8. Don M. Snider, John Nagl, and Charles Pfaff, "Developing Commanders for War and Peace: Professionalism and the Military Ethic in the 21st Century," unpublished paper prepared for the Culture of Command Project, Strategic Policy Studies Group, University of Exeter, 14 September 1999.

9. Charles C. Moskos, "Short-Term Soldiers," The Washington Post, 8 March 1999, p. A19.

10. Barbara McGann, "We're Recruiting Another Great Generation," US Naval Institute Proceedings, 125 (April 1999), 6-8.

11. Beth J. Asch, Rebecca M. Kilburn, and Jacob A. Klerman, Attracting College-Bound Youth Into the Military: Toward the Development of New Recruiting Policy Options, MR-984-OSD (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1999).

12. General Accounting Office, Military Personnel: Services Need to Assess Efforts to Meet Recruiting Goals and Cut Attrition, GAO/NSIAD-00-146 (Washington: GAO, June 2000), p. 3. Hereinafter "GAO Report."

13. Lola M. Zook, Soldier Selection: Past, Present, and Future, ARI-SR-28 (Alexandria, Va.: US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1996); Keith B. Hauk and Gr