Terry Cowgill

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1. In 1967 I was drafted. I’d seen it coming. My grade point average wasn’t exactly 4.0. I’d been talking to an Air Force recruiter, and he got me into that branch of the service. Lucky me. I arrived at basic training two months before the Tet Offensive. I was shipped overseas, but an RAF base north of London was as close to Vietnam as I got. I hear both sides of the current draft debate. Much of what I hear on the pro draft side makes sense. Yet as someone who, when he was 20, was in a position to become cannon fodder in an unpopular war…

   I cannot in good conscience say, ” Yes, there should be a draft. ”

   By the way, as an aside. I brought two books with me to basic training. One by William F. Buckley. The other one by Ayn Rand. They were confiscated and I never got them back. My political bent these days is a far cry from Buckley’s and Rand’s. Wonder how much this has to do with the Air Force stealing those books?

   Comment by Terrence McCarthy — May 26, 2007 #

2. There is a fundamental flaw in the argument made in that LA Times article… which is the assumption that volunteer recruiting conditions are static and don’t necessarily respond to incentives. However, it has been shown time and time again in various studies that recruiting responds quite positively to incentives and additional personnel can be attracted if the conditions of military contracts are changed. Therefore, rather than instituting a draft (which is very poor at attracting motivated personnel), it is much better to take the funds that would be spent on administering the draft and putting them towards pay and benefits for the volunteers.

   The US Army quite easily attracted volunteers prior to force reductions under Clinton. The Bush Administration has been reluctant to build the force structure back to previous levels for two reasons - both highly political.

   First, under the Pentagon reorg that has been going on since Bush came to office, the military has been focused on reducing overhead - ie they’ve been trying to get rid of civilian employees, employees who are notoriously unproductive. The civilian work force is protected by the Democrats and every effort to reduce their numbers produces a fight on Capitol Hill. The easiest way for the Democrats to fight reductions in the civilian work force is to claim that the Republicans are increasing the number of war fighters without justification (Republican warmongers!, etc). As such, it has been extremely difficult to change the ration of civilian to military employees in the Dept of Defense, although some progress has been made.

   The second reason is that the military has been trying to change the type of war fighters it has. It is looking for a more highly trained, small unit fighter, as opposed to low skilled “big Army” type soldiers. The effort has been to put money into training for a new kind of highly productive soldier, rather than simply increasing the numbers of low skilled personnel. To increase uptrain the whole force while increasing numbers substantially would require a massive increase in the defense budget (even greater than the increases under Bush, which have, in large part, been to make up for the flat spending under Clinton). Such increases would be virtually impossible in today’s political environment.

   The authors of that article are either totally ignorant of all these issues or are willfully ignoring the breadth of the problem. Either way, the article is doesn’t add much to the conversation and might be just considered another effort to criticize the Bush Administration. My recommendation, as always, is to ignore agenda driven journalism and ask the military folks what they think they need. Ask a hundred generals what they need to win in Iraq and I don’t think you would find one who would ask for a draft. But they would ask for fewer unnecessary civilian employees and more money for training, recruiting and equipment.

   Comment by Jake — May 26, 2007 #

3. Jake,

   What you say makes sense. If anyone presses Bush on the draft he should come right out and say what you did. But you almost always make more sense than GWB.

   And I like your emphasis on asking military commanders what they think — a question the authors of the LAT piece fail to ask.

   I apply the same standards to the chickenhawk argument. As regular readers of this blog know, I love to seize on hypocrisy. And draft dodgers who later sent troops into battle make an attractive target for me.

   But ask people in the military if they care whether the commander in chief served in combat and my experience is most of them will tell you they don’t give a rip. They care whether or not the admin is generally supportive of the military and whether they were given the tools with which to succeed in a given mission.

   But how about the argument that the draft “prevent[s] a commander in chief from fighting a war that lacks the support of the public”?

   Comment by Terry — May 26, 2007 #

4. Ah, Jake.

   I am not sure of the source of your opinion via the motivation of the draftee soldier. Perhaps your experiences have been different from mine.

   I was one, and your assertion was not true of me, nor was it true of most of the other draftees I knew when I was in. I found the draftees to be as motivated — or more so — than the enlistees (many of whom were in the service because they had few career alternatives).

   Some career officers I knew, both as an enlisted man and later as an officer, disparaged the draftee soldier. In my opinion, they did this because it was clear that many of the draftees were smarter than the career officers and had better life prospects.

   I’m likewise unsure of the source of your opinion regarding the productivity of DoD civilian employees. Although I never was a DoD civilian, I was a military officer at Fort Ben Harrison, Indiana, and Fort Belvoir,Virginia, during the time the military was “civilianizing” — i.e. putting a DoD civilian into every military job possible to free soldiers for combat assignments.

   At both posts I met, worked for, supervised, and worked with a number of DoD civilians. For the most part I found them to be highly motivated and quite competent. Yes, the draftee programmers I supervised were more talented than the DoD civilian programmers under my supervision, but given the salaries the draftee programmers had commanded on the outside, it was a matter of higher pay for higher quality work.

   (I did meet — and had the unpleasant duty of firing due to excessive absenteeism and coming to work drunk — one DoD civilian who was neither motivated nor competent as a keypunch operator. Her name was Janis Joplin, and she subsequently succeeded in a different field of endeavor.)

   And Terry: didn’t I do an op-ed in the Journal a few months ago on this topic? Minus the opinions about motivation of draftees and DoD civilians, however.

   Comment by Geoff Brown — May 26, 2007 #

5. My military experience also lead me to a different opinion from Jakes. The draftees were no less committed or talented than the enlistees.
   How does one conduct a study to show that “recruiting responds quite positively to incentives and additional personnel can be attracted if the conditions of military contracts are changed”? How can I get access to those studies?
   I see no evidence that Bush is trying to get rid of civilian employees. There seem to be many more civilian workers in Iraq than I can remember. They are doing jobs that soldiers used to do. We all know why. Its so they need not be counted in reports about troop levels. If you get rid of the DoD civilians in Iraq we could not fight the war. Hey, that sounds like a good idea!

   Comment by Tom Cowgill — May 27, 2007 #

6. Jake has a terrific idea, ask the Generals, and commanders of units!

   But will they respond contrary to their commander in chief?

   Comment by Marshall — May 27, 2007 #

7. Geoff… there is no doubt that during the Vietnam War there were draftees who were more talented individuals than some of the volunteers. But in toto the military is better served by a volunteer force. As a group, those who want to be there do a better job. And particularly today, when much more training is required, it not worth training someone who you know will be out in 24 months.

   Tom… I’ll look for the studies I mentioned. I have seen several in my time, all of which indicated that enlistment incentives were very effective. (They also work regarding Riffs. I left the military because the DoD paid me $240,000 to leave, which in 1988 was a nice chunk of change!)

   And regarding the civilian employee issue, there is a difference between DoD civilian employees and contractors. I’m talking about the former.

   Comment by Jake — May 27, 2007 #

8. Tom… I couldn’t find any free versions of the studies I referenced, but if you have a JSTOR account, you can see them there.

   Comment by Jake — May 27, 2007 #

9. Yes, Geoff. You did a fine op-ed piece for us on the draft in January. Here is the link for those who are interested.

   Comment by Terry — May 27, 2007 #

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