William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[carl]

No - the military can fill its ranks any number of ways. Right now, it's largely effective in filling the ranks, minus the Army Reserve. But it's not effective in overcoming institutional self-selection. Think of self-selection as institutional incest.

Describe the self selection. I don't get it. It's a volunteer force.

One of the problems with that position is that it's not my position.

Fair enough. What is your position?

One - Thomas Sowell is a partisan hack. There's a couple of well-written articles out there about it. Two - why are "some groups just more inclined than others"? And if the disinclined are among the fastest growing groups in the country, what are the consequences for the military?

Well that's one way to deal with an articulate man who disagrees with you. Call him a partisan hack.

What are the consequences of the fastest growing groups disinclined to join the military? I figured one of them, figuring for you of course, would be insufficient numbers to fill the ranks eventually. But you said above no. Then there was something about how values and outlook differ and if they differed enough then the military might not get what it needed. I don't accept that. The people of the country are pretty smart and if you said to them "What do you guys want? Really now what do you want, a military that will win wars or one that precisely reflects the demographic %s?" I figure they would want to win.

Compensation is bribery? Statistically, there is a range of monetary and in-kind compensation that predicts X to Z amount of enlistees will join for every $ in benefits. That some groups, generally defined, may require more compensation than others is not surprising, irrelevant, or insulting. What's insulting - and not founded in reality - is the idea that everyone is joining the services out of patriotism, and that this is the only good reason to join. People join for many reasons - for adventure, for the benefits and pension, for the professional skills, for school, for their friends or family, and so on. Knowing the segmentation of American demographics is absolutely important to filling the ranks and for communication with the public. And people stay for many of the same reasons, which is why when the Army was hemorrhaging junior officers, it didn't appeal to their patriotism; it offered them material incentives to stay. And it still does this today for enlisted soldiers.

No I didn't say anything about monetary compensation. I was talking about race and sex quotas. I was talking about guarantees involving position and rank, power essentially.

Now you say junior officers were leaving because no appeal was made to their patriotism. But you also say that in order to attract certain demographic groups into junior officer ranks they have to guarantees about how many of them will get certain positions. That isn't an appeal to patriotism, it's bribery which you say didn't work in retaining junior officers. I don't see the logic here.

And you have not demonstrated why that is detrimental to the armed forces. The mission of the armed services is to fight and win the nation's wars, but that's not the only function of armed services in a country. It provides employment, education opportunities, skills training, and social normalization. In the US, these functions are generally applauded and supported - not so much in other countries. As the make-up of the country changes, so too will the relationship between the public and the military as an institution. The military can be pro-active and get ahead of this trend or it can increasingly isolate itself from society-at-large. Eventually, and this has already started, people will start asking why are we paying soldiers relatively well when everyone else's salaries are flat; why are we building schools around the world when schools here are failing; why do we prop up governments abroad when local governments here are going bankrupt. Those are the questions that senior leaders need to be prepared to address because it will impact the readiness of the armed forces even though they are not directly related to fighting and winning wars. We got a taste of this with sequestration when the assumption that the GOP will protect the defense budget was over-turned by the zeal to enforce government retrenchment. And we'll see training budgets, staffing, and pay and benefits continue to be cut.

It is not detrimental to the armed forces if the officer corps reflects the demographic makeup of the country...if that occurs naturally. It is very detrimental to the armed forces if quotas and goals, special favors and bribery, are used. That results in something other than fighting and leading prowess being used to select officers and that affects the ability to win.

These things you mention "employment, education opportunities, skills training, and social normalization" are all well and good. But they are all byproducts of a military the purpose of which is to fight and win. They came about as ancillary (I was dying to use that word) effects. If you want a job corps, a tech school or a halfway house, build one. The military is there to fight, any attention directed away from that distracts from it.

You went from "the officer corps needs to reflect the demographic of society at large" to "the US military, the great leveler, would have to create a race code". Slow down speed racer. By the way, the military already tracks its service-members' race, religion, sex, etc.

Speed up Speed Racer's big brother. I explained that. The military does track all that. So does just about everybody. What will change is they will have create by any other name a race code in order for the promotion system to have something to work with if the 3 stars goal is to be achieved.

I've seen this kind of thing in action. Back in the early 90s the major airlines were being pressured by the Feds to hire this minority or that one. You should have seen the guys who suddenly became Choctaw Indians after very diligent geneological (sic) searches. That was a minor thing then. You do that in the military and things will get very ugly.