Look, Ma, I Broke The Army! (Part 2)

by hilzoy

About eight months ago, I wrote a post about the army and reserve's recruiting problems. I wrote then:

"One of the interesting things about being involved with the Clark campaign was getting to talk to the various military people who were involved. The ones I met were generally retired career officers, mostly quite senior; and most of them were people who not only served in Vietnam but stuck with the military afterwards, when it was, as they saw it, broken: demoralized, dispirited, with huge problems with discipline, readiness, and retention, especially in the army. The army officers I met were some of the people who stuck with the army through its worst period in living memory and worked their hearts out to put it back together again. And one of the things that really terrified them about the Bush administration and its war in Iraq was the thought that the institution they loved might be about to be broken again."

Eight months ago, I didn't think we were there yet. We're a lot closer now. The Pentagon has delayed releasing its recruiting figures for last month, citing the need to scrutinize the information and explain it to the public. Why either goal requires delaying the figures' release is unclear, which has prompted widespread speculation that the numbers are very, very bad. They'd have to be, since the numbers the Pentagon has released in earlier months were quite bad enough. From the same story:

"The regular Army missed its recruiting goals for three straight months entering May, falling short by a whopping 42 percent in April. The Army was 16 percent behind its year-to-date target entering May, with a goal of signing up 80,000 recruits in fiscal 2005, which ends Sept. 30.

The Marine Corps missed its goal for signing up new recruits for four straight months entering May and was 2 percent behind its year-to-date goal. It hopes to sign up 38,195 recruits in fiscal 2005."

But there is more bad news. Phil Carter and Owen West report the following, in an article in Slate:

"Now comes a new Army directive that attempts to alleviate the personnel crunch by retaining soldiers who are earmarked for early discharge during their first term of enlistment because of alcohol or drug abuse, unsatisfactory performance, or being overweight, among other reasons. By retaining these soldiers, the Army lowers the quality of its force and places a heavy burden on commanders who have to take the poor performers into harm's way. This is a quick fix that may create more problems than it solves. (...)

Make no mistake, however—these are not soldiers who field commanders want to retain. One lieutenant colonel currently commanding a civil-affairs battalion said these troops were the ones "who eat up my time and cause my hair to gray prematurely." A former infantry officer said he could "not recall a single soldier chaptered for the reasons identified ... that I would have wanted to deploy with."

This new retention directive represents a regression by the Army, from the vaunted all-volunteer force of today back in the direction of the all-volunteer force of the 1970s, when drug use, race riots, and AWOL incidents were common among all services. The Marine Corps Historical Branch traces its own severe spiral to "the end of the draft and the pressure of keeping up the size of the Marine Corps. In the process, a number of society's misfits had been recruited." By 1975, the corps had so decayed that newly appointed Commandant Lewis Wilson sought permission from Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger to implement a radical personnel proposal: Push the authority to discharge unworthy Marines down to the battalion level. Under the "expeditious discharge program," commanders quickly cut 6,000 undesirables, sending a message that reverberated throughout the military, paving the way for the subsequent military performance surge credited to President Reagan.

Now the Army intends to reverse the policy, implying that battalion commanders are not able to weigh the needs of the total force against those of their units. By the time a soldier reaches the discharge point, the officers above him have already invested a great deal of rehabilitative effort. Forcing units to keep these troops—and indeed, to take them to war—puts a very heavy rock in the rucksack of any field commander who must now balance managing these subpar performers with his mission and the needs of his unit."

(The full list of reasons for discharged covered by the new policy is: "FAILURE TO MEET PROCUREMENT MEDICAL FITNESS STANDARDS (PARAGRAPH 5-11); PREGNANCY (CHAPTER 8); ALCOHOL OR OTHER DRUG ABUSE REHABILITATION FAILURE (CHAPTER 9); ENTRY LEVEL PERFORMANCE AND CONDUCT (CHAPTER 11); UNSATISFACTORY PERFORMANCE (CHAPTER 13); SELECTED CHANGES IN SERVICE OBLIGATIONS (CHAPTER 16, PARAGRAPHS 16-4 THRU 16-10); AND FAILURE TO MEET BODY FAT STANDARDS (CHAPTER 18).")

So: in order to minimize the effect of recruiting and retention problems, we are going to make it harder to discharge soldiers who have failed drug or alcohol rehab, performed inadequately, or who fail medical fitness standards. This just raises the odds that a soldier who is fighting his* heart out in Iraq will find that the person next to him, on whom his life may depend, is incompetent, medically unfit, an alcoholic or a drug addict. It also raises the odds that commanding officers will be dealing with intractable personnel issues when they could be trying to keep their troops safe. All in all, a great way to support the troops.

Carter and West propose a variety of better ways to keep numbers up; their discussion of how this might be done is very much worth reading. Unfortunately, all of them would take a fair amount of time to implement, and one, which I wholeheartedly support, would probably make things worse initially:

"The Pentagon must stop the proliferation of its private army. Today there are as many as 30,000 private military contractors serving in traditional military billets. They are paid up to five times as much as soldiers performing the same duties. Encouraging the privatization of soldiers when there is a severe shortage of riflemen is circular reasoning. While the Army and Marines struggle to increase their infantry ranks, the DoD is paying private companies lucrative contracts to act as personnel brokers. Where do these firms find the recruits? The military. So the government is paying hefty finders' fees to locate quality soldiers it recruited in the first place. Far from being castoffs, they are among America's best, mostly senior soldiers lured by pay and flexibility. They belong in the ranks of the Army and the USMC, not the NYSE."

In the meantime, the army is breaking. We need to stop this, and we need to stop it now. I do not know what the answer is -- a draft is the obvious answer, but since I don't know the answers to such questions as where we'd find the people to train a lot of draftees, I don't feel comfortable actually endorsing it. But we need to do something quickly. And I see no sign that our government is even beginning to consider taking any serious steps to address this issue.

* Pronoun reflects current restrictions on women in combat.

Comments

[Anarch]

But on the plus side, at least it explains why that memo was familiar ;)

[Catsy]

Let me take a stab at it, as I've taught a lot of people how to understand HTML who never thought they could. I apologize in advance if any of this sounds like I'm talking down to you--I'm explaining the fundamentals as simply as I can so that you understand /why/ it does what it does, as I've found that knowing why helps people who don't take intuitively to it learn it much more easily.

What you're trying to do is create a hyperlink, or just a "link" as it's usually called. You're designating a word or phrase to be underlined so that when you click on it, it goes to another URL (the term for an address on the web, like http://www.cnn.com).

To do this, you use an HTML tag. All the tag does is mark the beginning and end of some text that your web browser is going to treat as special--so that instead of showing it to people exactly as you wrote it, it's going to interpret it to create a hyperlink. Since you're anchoring one web page to another, the tag that does this is called an "anchor" tag--represented by the letter "A".

This tag has a beginning, or opening: <a>

And an end, or closing: </a>

In the opening tag, you want to tell it the address of the page you're linking. This is the hyperlink reference, which we'll shorten to "href". It looks like this:

<a href="http://www.cnn.com">

You don't usually have to put the quotes around the address, but it's a good habit to get into. Does it make more sense when explained that way? You're opening an "anchor" tag, and setting the hyperlink reference (href) as equal (=) to the address you're linking.

I've talked about opening and closing tags so far--but what are they enclosing? The answer is: anything you want. In between these two tags (<a> and </a>) you'll put the words that you want people to click on--this is what they'll see, in other words, what gets underlined. It can be pretty much as long or as short as you want, and it can say anything you want. So if you're linking to CNN's web site, it'd probably be good for the link to just say "CNN". Let's try that:

<a href="http://www.cnn.com">CNN</a>

If you type that in, it'll look like this when you post:

CNN

Hopefully this makes more sense, and helps you understand the whys and wherefores of making a link. I know that everyone learns different things differently, but I think basic HTML like this is accessible to anyone--just don't let yourself be intimidated by thinking it's more complicated than it really is. :)

[Jay Sundahl]

This comment from lily may help explain her problem. Even if she understands the concept she may not see well enough to be able to enter the tags correctly.

Lily, when you post here there is a box labeled URL:. It is probably meant for your home page, but you can use it to post any arbitrary link. If you open a browser window with the link you want and copy the link into the clipboard, then paste that link into the URL: box your name at the end of the post will become a clickable link. Just tell people to click on your name inside the post. My name links to a home page that I use here to keep my email from showing up and being harvested for spam. If you click on my name you will see the effect.

[Anderson]

Sorry to be off in the non-virtual world & miss your replies, Ken.

(1) We didn't use nukes after 9/11 for 3 reasons:

(a) we didn't have to (invading Afghanistan wasn't terribly difficult; the enemy was riding around in Toyotas)
(b)there "were no good targets," as Rummy complained at the time; and
(c) al Qaeda, not Afghanistan, attacked us.

Iran, by contrast, has a serious military and would not be easy to waltz into; has good targets; and is a real functioning state.

If we had reasonable proof that Iran sponsored an attack on the Mall of America or whatever, killing a comparable number to the 9/11 dead, I have no trouble at all believing we'd nuke targets in Iran, rather than launch a full invasion. I think a Democrat or Republican would support this. Indeed, yellow-dog Dem that I am, I wouldn't vote for a Dem who wouldn't do this. (Hilzoy: What Would Clark Do?)

(Though given the Bushies' low standards for "reasonable proof," I'm not sure I would trust this President if he presented same, without a whole lotta corroboration.)

(2) WW2 recruiting is a technical subject that possibly neither of us is an expert on, but I am very skeptical that the rush to the recruitment stations after Pearl was enough to meet the USAFs' needs. We had a draft, I daresay, because we needed one. Politicians do not have drafts for the heck of it.

(3) I, like other commenters, do not really see the ayatollahs wanting to directly attack America or sponsor such attacks. They have nothing to gain thereby. If they were impractical fanatics like bin Laden, they wouldn't be where they are now. Waving the bloody shirt against America is a really good way for them to retain popularity & power, but it doesn't take a secular humanist to figure out what America would do in response to a serious attack.

[Jay Sundahl]

And just to prove it works my name now links to the Clark web page that started this conversation, my previous post should still be my web page.
Hopefully our Obsidian Wings overlords will not view this as an abuse of the URL: box.

[otto]

What would be so bad about attacking the Mall of America. That place gave me "The Fear"!

[Anderson]

Otto, expect a visit from the FBI today or tomorrow.

[liberal japonicus]

WW2 recruiting is a technical subject that possibly neither of us is an expert on, but I am very skeptical that the rush to the recruitment stations after Pearl was enough to meet the USAFs' needs.

I'm not an expert either, but it is important to note that the draft was put into place _before_ Pearl Harbor. This link notes that just under 1 million men were drafted before the war started (for the US, of course).

[Anderson]

Right you are, LJ, I'd forgotten that, despite having just finished Black's FDR bio; shame on me.

The draft extension bill in summer 1941 passed by just one vote, oft cited as evidence of America's reluctance to go to war, tho Black thinks that Congress was lagging behind popular opinion.

[Gary Farber]

"The incompreshensible gooble-de-gook you post is not helpful. Nor is the impatient, sneering tone."

Oh, for god's sake. You're so welcome. Very gracious of you. And thoughtful.

Despite your response, I'll try to continue to be helpful to strangers in future. Go slap away everyone else trying to help you and answer your question now.

[Dantheman]

Gary,

this is for you.

[Gary Farber]

Lily, I commend Catsy's comment of 02:50 PM and hilzoy's comment of 12:42 PM to you. I would have been happy to so elaborate on my previous explanations of the same matter if you had but asked for further aid, rather than ignored them until you decided that my help was unwelcome and slapped my taking the time and trouble, several times, away. (Yes, I react to that as an extremely rude response; volunteering time and effort -- and, yes, I have to look up how to generate brackets without them being invisible, not that that takes a long time -- on my part was not, in fact, because I have no better use of time than to help people who aren't interested; I do hope you teach your students better manners.) Incidentally, HTML has nothing to do with learning about "computers," and I'm a guy who hasn't even completed a single year of college, let alone taken a single course on "computers" or computer languages, or anything related; I simply have learned maybe six whole tags; I gain my knowledge through looking things up. Also, I tend not to insult people who offer to help me.

[Jay Sundahl]

Ggary,

See my comments above.

From the comment I linked to, on another post she wrote:

(BY the way, the minute I admit that I am a teacher I get paranoid that people are going to criticize my spelling, punctuation, etc. so I will pre-empt that with this disclosure; I am also legally blind in one eye and have very poor vision in the otherr one. I read get by by using context skills and a sort of global scanning technique. I can't see my typos.)

If Lily's eyesight is so bad that she finds it difficult to impossible to proof read her posts, how do you expect her to enter the fussy syntax of html with any confidence it will work, or a reasonable chance of fixing it if it doesn't? Open tags and broken links are the likely result.

I offered an alternative that should work consistently for her, using the Post a comment URL: box. As helpful as you, Hilzoy and Catsy are trying to be, it probably won't work for her to enter html directly.

[Jay Sundahl]

Gary,
Ggary was a typo, not a stutter. I wish I didn't have to cut and paste to spell check.

[Bruce Baugh]

Apparently some people pick up HTML formatting as easily as others pick up communications etiquette.

[Jesurgislac]

Bruce: Apparently some people pick up HTML formatting as easily as others pick up communications etiquette.

Quite.

Lily, I think the final thing is - for heaven's sake, don't worry about it! Entering links as coded HTML is a luxury, not a necessity.

[Bruce Baugh]

Jesurgislac Johnson is right! Rarum!

But seriously: useful information and interesting thoughts presented in a readable form are a much higher priority for me than whether or not I can clink the accompanying link, or must cut and paste it. I like having both, but I also know what it's like to have limitations that aren't obvious to others. (In my case, it's an immune system run berserk with some nasty allergies, like to orris root, the base of naerly all perfumes. Going out can be quite an adventure.) At that point I do what I usually do, which is shrug and say "enh" and look for the next interesting post. :)

[Nell]

Hilzoy: But we need to do something quickly.

Agreed, and that something is to begin withdrawing from Iraq.

[lily]

Dear everybody, Thanks for the directions on how to make a link. I have printed out the step-by-step directions and, when my boyfreind has time, he will walk me through it. I will practice, and I will be good to go.
Sorry about the whining over my eye. The computer I was using at that time has very small, blurry letters and I knew my post was going to be bad. Most of the time I don't have much problem. Right now, on this computer, I can see fine. For those of you who worry about my students or my ability to produce professional communication--never fear! Spell check works wonders. I just don't know how to use it on posts.
Gary--I enjoy your posts when you write about politics. I always read them carefully and come away better informed. I think, perhaps, that communication with you would be easier if we could see each other's faces. In the absence of facial expression, your more personal, editing, correcting, or directive posts come across to me as abrupt to the point of arrogance. "OK? Got it? Questions?" Maybe with a smiling face those three interrogatives would seem friendly or encouraging. In a vaccumn I didn't take it that way. So anyway...peace now?

[Slartibartfast]

P.S. The alien thing may be why Slartibartfast just doesn't recognize Tom Delay or Grover Norquist as fellow Republicans, but rather as objectionable personalities who appeared from the sky and who happen to be in his party.

BASTAAAAAARD!

Just playing on the moody meme. Not "appeared from the sky" so much as...ok, maybe that IS a good way to think of it. I mean, how else does one explain Nancy Pelosi?

[hilzoy]

What's wrong with Nancy Pelosi? I mean, she hasn't equated the Estate Tax to the Holocaust (like Norquist), or wholly (or, afaik, even partly) corrupted the House, like DeLay. (In this context, I also have to mention DeLay's explanation of why he didn't serve in Vietnam:

"He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself. Satisfied with the pronouncement, which dumbfounded more than a few of his listeners who had lived the sixties, DeLay marched off to the convention."

Right.)

You may or may not agree with Nancy Pelosi, but she's a basically normal person, not a lunatic.

[Slartibartfast]

No, I wasn't saying she's a lunatic, at least not on the scale of equating estate tax to the Holocaust.

Next to that, the claim that she's a "conservative Catholic" is minor-league bizarre.

[Gary Farber]

Lily: "So anyway...peace now?"

Peace. I'd like to note that most people who know me in person like me, but, of course, there are exceptions to that, as well (not reasonable exceptions, you know, but people are just like that, somehow, and besides, such folks have clearly bad taste). At the very least, I don't think anyone has ever leapt over the table at me when I've either tried to help them, or even just teased them in friendly fashion.

I disagree, on the one hand, with those who, in the fashion of limited knowledge, tend to worship Strunk & White as the be all and end all of writing, but although their advice to be pithy is generally wise, it does also run counter to trying to put in a lot of cautions and emotional gentlings and "if-then"'s. I tend to fall back on the belief that if active hostility isn't outright revealed, or at least shown as a likely covert intent, in writing, it shouldn't be assumed, but I do know that many folks do tend to react to unadorned words with a negative interpretation. All I can say is that if I were better at assuring people that I'm generally benign in intent, it would probably be noticable. (I did take a break from here over the weekend, both because I was so irritated at feeling spat on for offering help multiple times, and because I don't actually enjoy expressing irritation at other people [okay, unless I think they really really deserve it].) Peace.

[Gary Farber]

"Next to that, the claim that she's a 'conservative Catholic' is minor-league bizarre."

I don't recall yet reading anything about Pelosi's religious beliefs or practices; what do you have in mind that strikes you as bizarre?

[Jesurgislac]

If this is true, the Marines are desperate.