An Essay on the Website of |
The All Volunteer Army
Is Working Well
President
Richard Milhous Nixon in 1973
signed a paper making the United States Army change from a conscription army to
an all volunteer army. The army of today is different in many ways than it was,
but it still depends on the Congress of the United States to do its job. How
well Congress funds the Armed Forces is how well they can perform their jobs.
For
the past 37 years the Army has proved itself exceptionally well and is much
smaller than before. The Army’s size makes it impossible to satisfy the
demands of an imperial foreign policy. The Iraq war has taken a toll on the Army
because of its longevity; no other war has lasted so long. This war has lasted
longer than both World War I and World War II put together. This has caused too
much extended deployment and redeployment of the troops overseas.
The
underfunding of the Army’s equipment has led to unnecessary deaths because of
poor equipment like the thin wall side panels of the Humvees. The smaller
numbers in the Army require that the troops be more mobilem and the cheap
homemade road side bombs used by the enemy have been found to be very effective
against the under armored Humvees carrying the troops.
The
troops in Iraq have often complained that the media continues to focus on bad
news which in turn causes the people back home to not give the support to the
troops that they should. The armed services is having trouble recruiting because
of these unfavorable press reports and the reluctant attitude it builds making
it harder to attract and keep enough people.
Currently
the Army needs two additional divisions and the cost concluded by the
Congressional Budget Office for recruiting, training, and equipping these two
divisions would cost up front as much as 18 to 19 billion dollars and it would
take three to five years to accomplish at a cost of six billion dollars per year
to maintain.
The
United States has managed to meet its occupation force numbers by turning the
Reserve and National Guard into active units. They have increased recruiting by
expanding the age requirements to 42 and by issuing more “moral” wavers
which are used to gain admittance to the armed services which once would have
disqualified recruits because of their criminal convictions. Moral wavers have
allowed the Marines to gain 23% of their recruits using this method to fill
their ranks. The Army has 14% of their recruits using this method to gain enough
members, while the Navy is only at 8%.
Defense
Under-Secretary David Chu admitted that “Certain high demand, high use units
and specialties have experienced higher than normal attrition.” Even though
the armed service has accepted recruits with lower Armed Forces Qualification
Test scores, recruits with general equivalency diplomas rather than high school
diplomas and recruits who have had legal problems, filling the ranks has become
harder and harder.
Returning
to conscription would be foolish, however, because the U.S. military is the
finest on earth due largely because voluntarism allows the Pentagon to be
selective in choosing recruits who are smarter and better educated than their
civilian counterparts. Volunteer soldiers are also more selective and work
harder at their chosen careers. They serve longer terms and reenlist in higher
numbers which increases experience and skills more than conscription soldiers
do.
Even
though the United States Volunteer Army has its problems, it is still the best
in the world.
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