Update : Thanks to Michelle Malkin and OutsideTheBeltway for the links.
The military has a problem. The problem is that the incentives being offered for military service are too low for the venture to be considered a business and the standards that the military holds their soldiers to are far too low for the venture to be considered as a function of elitism. The perceived level of danger involved with military service is much higher than it has been since Vietnam and so the military is having problems attracting enough new recruits.
Even if the standards are raised it may not be enough to fix the problem. As an example I offer the U.S. Marine Corps. For a very long time the Marines have had no trouble meeting their recruitment goals. This is partly due to the small size of the Corps in comparison to the Army but the main reason young people join the Marine Corps is that the Corps is renowned for it’s high standards, quality leadership, and elite esprit de corps. The pay and bonuses are basically the same across all of the military services (minor differences yes but D.W.L!). The reward for joining the Marine Corps is being a Marine. Yet the Corps is also having recruitment problems for the first time in almost a decade.
The Army is falling short of its’ recruiting goals as well and more importantly it has broken the Reserves. The damage to manning levels takes about 4 years to echo through the whole force structure but the first tremors are starting to wash up on the Army’s verdant shores. The nation needs a solution and a draft is not it (a topic for another time). Raise standards? Increase pay and benefits? I would say both.
The main problem with elevated standards is that there is a limited quantity of the population that would wish to meet those standards and even fewer who would be able to do so. The end result would be a drastically smaller force who constituent parts are much more potent than the current model of more = better. This force would certainly still be devastating in conventional warfare and freakishly potent in small unit actions but would be totally unable to perform the duties required of an occupation Army. The only way to accomplish both missions is to push the reward levels up high enough to make service in the military one of the most highly compensated and coveted jobs in the country. Could we have a military the size we have now with both high standards and high pay? Not likely from either a fiscal or statistical standpoint but I don’t think we would need one.
Frankly speaking the reason we need such a large force right now boils down to poor intelligence gathering. The nation’s HUMINT system is dilapidated and the entire intelligence community is hamstrung by ridiculous restriction like Jamie Gorelick’s wall. Furthermore SIGINT efforts are constricted due to a combination of antiquated collection theories (based on Cold War strategies but sans the Cold War chokepoints) and outlandish estimations of collection capabilities.
If the intelligence picture of Iraq had been more complete the former regime elements who jumpstarted the insurgency would have been captured or killed within days or weeks of the fall of Baghdad largely obviating the need for extensive occupation forces. More extensive intelligence would also result in a smoother occupation by zeroing in on insurgents before they can carry an attack plan to fruition. Success against asymmetrical forces depends more heavily on intelligence indications by an order of magnitude than conventional warfare operations do.
This is a very tall order I know but it is vital to the future success of the nation. Only a combination of reforms can turn this ship around before it bottoms out on a Hollow Force sandbar with disastrous consequences.
