oh good, by dint of presidential fiat my country's military is being gutted today

[pmulcahy11b]

This comes back to the issue of FRANCHISE or the issue of the VOTE.

How do you limit the quality of the vote to those qualified to vote??

Right to vote and qualified to vote are two different things. Qualification, to me, smacks of Jim Crow and all the crap pulled by prejudiced, white people over time to limit the ability of minorities to vote. Or the crap being pulled by Republican governors or legislatures these days to prevent liberal and Democratic voters from voting. In my mind, even a homeless person who is a US citizen should have the right to vote.

Right to vote, however, deals with the requirements of the Constitution to vote, possibly (and I really mean possibly, reviewed by courts if there is the slightest question of unfairness) modified by state and local law. While I believe in a national service system, failure to take part should not remove your right to vote.

[Legbreaker]

Personally I believe the US system which doesn't require ALL those meeting the necessary criteria (age, nationality, etc) to vote is just plain asking for trouble. You can't possibly get a realistic representation of the peoples will from just those who can be bothered to show up and make their mark.
Sure in a compulsory system you get those who only show up just to get their name marked off, or donkey vote, or cast an informal vote, or otherwise screw up the simple task, but 99% still get the process right (even if they cast a boneheaded vote).
Yes, I get that whole "freedom to decide to vote or not" thing, but seriously, if you REALLY don't want to vote, then there are ways to avoid making your voice heard.

[Webstral]

Most certainly is. Those Private Military Contractors like Blackwater gutted the MP Corp in 2004 and 2005. Two E7 Platoon Sergeants in addition to many E6 Staff Sergeants left. There were at least 8 Corporals and that promotion seldom happens just to fill Team Leader slots.

Even with the bonus pays and tax free the Army pay couldn't touch the $100,000 tax free pays going to PMCs.

Blackwater lured your NCOs away, but Blackwater didn,c,"t groom them. Without the institution of the Army, there would have been no experience base for Blackwater to purchase. The Army can,c,"t produce seasoned veterans out of thin air no matter how much money Congress might decide to spend, and neither can Blackwater or anyone else. Money like what Blackwater was willing to spend can help shift existing assets around, but it can,c,"t grow those assets without the additional inputs of time and experience.

Thought this went without saying?

So very many things that should go without saying don,c,"t go without saying.

[atiff]

That depends....are you sticking with the traditional Heinlein Starship Troops or are you going with the watered-down, touchy feel goody Hollywood version?

The book, which I admit to not having read; although I have read articles summarizing the book's details.

[pmulcahy11b]

The book, which I admit to not having read; although I have read articles summarizing the book's details.

Well, the Hollywood version? There's a reason I refer to it as "That movie which shall not be called Starship Troopers."

[Fusilier]

Well, the Hollywood version? There's a reason I refer to it as "That movie which shall not be called Starship Troopers."

I thought it was a pretty funny movie.

[B.T.]

I thought it was a pretty funny movie.

Hm ... more or less. The novel by Henlein was a piece of serious utopian (or, if you like it better: dystopian) literature. The movie followed some elements of the story, but the sincere topics of the novel could not be transported into the movie. The movie was more a mix of WW II German uniforms and a lot of Games Workshop stuff.

The novel is worth reading, the movies is, from my personal point of view, nothing important.

[Fusilier]

I know, I read the book. Well most of it anyways. I just don't think the people who made the movie were trying to replicate the book too much. It was a just simple action/comedy flick.

[Webstral]

Personally I believe the US system which doesn't require ALL those meeting the necessary criteria (age, nationality, etc) to vote is just plain asking for trouble. You can't possibly get a realistic representation of the peoples will from just those who can be bothered to show up and make their mark.

Another way of looking at the issue is to see it in terms of self-interest. Citizens who seem themselves as having something to defend show up to vote. People who view themselves as disenfranchised don,c,"t vote. I make a distinction between those who have a stake in the shape of the government,c,,"everybody,c,,"and those who perceive themselves as having a stake,c,,"less than half. Although I don,c,"t much like Darwinian logic when it is applied to people off the battlefield, there is a degree to which those who can,c,"t be bothered to participate deserve to be f***** in the *** and f***** hard without lube by the monied interests who always show up to vote. If you can,c,"t be bothered to come out to vote every two years, why should the government or the rest of the nation give a damn about your well-being?

Sure in a compulsory system you get those who only show up just to get their name marked off, or donkey vote, or cast an informal vote, or otherwise screw up the simple task, but 99% still get the process right (even if they cast a boneheaded vote).
Yes, I get that whole "freedom to decide to vote or not" thing, but seriously, if you REALLY don't want to vote, then there are ways to avoid making your voice heard.

I,c,"m far from convinced that compulsory voting solves any problems. Genuine participation requires informed opinion. I don,c,"t know how it is in other nations, but here in the US the average voter knows vastly more about his local sports franchise than he does his elected officials. The ease with which the American voter is duped by the most transparent propaganda is disturbing. Bad as I thought things were in the early 1990,c,"s, Fox News has demonstrated that a large segment of the American population will swallow any tripe they are fed, provided there,c,"s lots of flag-waving and Patriotism Lite thrown in. You can get these people to the polls, but their votes only increase the dog-and-pony show aspects of the political system.

As for the issue raised by others regarding qualification v right to vote, I would vastly prefer to have some sort of investment in the well-being of the state required for voting. The idea that people get political power as some sort of birth right is Medieval. I don,c,"t want universal conscription any more than anyone else concerned for the long-term effectiveness of the Army. However, some sort of investment ought to be required. The challenge, though, is to create a system that enables all those willing to bite the bullet (so to speak) to gain full voting citizenship, regardless of whether they are in a wheelchair or what have you while addressing the problem of grandfathering. At what age do we tell Americans they have to execute national service in order to keep voting? How do we handle the 50+ crowd? The obstacles to implementing such a scheme are so daunting as to make me think we can,c,"t there from here, regardless of how much better the Promised Land might be.

[Webstral]

In keeping with the Army philosophy of putting the bottom line up front, I will say that I wholeheartedly agree with Army Sgt,c,"s thesis that the purpose of the Army is to fight and win the nation,c,"s wars. Every policy of the force needs to support the Army,c,"s ability to fight and win at the lowest achievable cost in life and treasure. Policies that diminish the Army,c,"s ability to fight and win at an acceptable cost must be modified or eliminated outright.

The issue at hand is policy regarding single parent soldiers. I agree with Army Sgt that the majority of soldiers in this category are women under the age of 24, though obviously there are women who are older and some single parent soldiers who are men in the force. The diversity of the population matters because the Army,c,"s policy on dealing with single parent soldiers (I,c,"m going to abbreviate single parent soldiers as SPS from this point forward) must reflect a commitment to fair treatment and the good of the force. The former matters because tort law and Congress are powers unto themselves, even if one does not agree that fair treatment is a necessity for the maintenance of morale among the troops. Dealing with the matter of SPS is a matter of improving the readiness of the force, not a witch hunt to get them unmarried moms who are riding the system.

Without a doubt, SPS present the force with a problem. SPS receive special treatment in the form of lax enforcement of professional duties. The child care responsibilities of the SPS population transform themselves into additional duties for other soldiers who either have their family care situation squared away or who have no family care obligations. In effect, the Army provides child care by displacing the SPS in question from her duties. This is horribly unfair, and everyone knows it. I was never exposed to this in the infantry or the combat engineers, but in MI I saw this sort of thing on regular basis. The CSS units on post suffered from this phenomenon even more than the MI units. Morale suffers. The ones who pick up the slack for the SPS are, by and large, men with families of their own and young men living in the barracks. Their attitudes towards this problem directly translate into retention issues.

While there is no doubt that the SPS phenomenon is a problem for the Army, a solution that satisfies everyone is difficult to find. Let,c,"s face it: families are a double-edged sword. It,c,"s bad enough that many of them men are distracted by their home lives. The challenge to find the right policies for managing military families became even more acute when women started joining the services in significant numbers. Soldiering and fertility do not mix well.

One of the more extreme solutions is to tell female soldiers that they cannot have any children as long as they wear the uniform. I,c,"m not going to debate whether this approach is sensible or not because there is no chance that the US military will be able to enact such a policy. Congress will not stand for it. Rightly or wrongly, such a policy will be stillborn upon arrival in D.C.

Given that fertility and soldiering are unhappy bedfellows of the modern military, we need to come up with a way of managing the women in uniform who have children. For the purpose of this work, I,c,"ll stick to the issue of managing SPS. They come in a few varieties. The type that so irks Army Sgt (and many others) is the single mom who either entered the service with children or who bore children after entering the service. No in-house support network is present, although these SPS may have arrangements with neighbors, etc. Another type is a divorcee who finds herself with custody but no husband. Yet another type is a widow. These latter groups are much, much more common today than they were the last time I lived on-post in the 1990,c,"s. There are a few men who are SPS, but they pretty much fit into the same categories as their female counterparts. All of these varieties of SPS have a strong potential to place part of the burden of their responsibilities onto the shoulders of other soldiers. Late night missions to the motor pool (or wherever), Charge of Quarters, Staff Duty, and other garden variety responsibilities are pushed off onto soldiers who do not have children at home with no other support network besides the parent soldier. Deployments can be deferred or delayed, resulting in other soldiers assuming the burden of deployment. I can,c,"t say it enough: it,c,"s a crappy situation that needs to be addressed efficiently and effectively.

The solution of serving all of these women (and men) with their walking papers and severance pay is tempting by dint of its simplicity and seeming finality. This solution is both crude and indiscriminate. Moreover, the group being targeted,c,,"the SPS who is young and early in her career and who may never have married,c,,"has a ready-made solution: marriage. If PFC Smith, who is 20 and has a child but no husband, is presented with the prospect of being thrown out of the Army because she has no husband, she will find herself a husband rather promptly. To some degree, the issue of having extra duties passed off on other members of the unit will go away once PFC Smith has her new husband moved in. However, PFC Smith probably will be distracted. Impending divorce will hang over the house and therefore over Smith,c,"s execution of her duties. As her marriage of convenience frays, Smith will worry more about her children than her responsibilities. While the tough-minded among us may say that this will provide us with the opportunity to shed PFC Smith, we should think about the process. There are no winners in this scenario,c,,"just some who lose more than others. The Army needs to put policies in place that are more constructive than punitive. Neither the institution of marriage nor the Army will derive benefit from further encouraging the types of marriages that so often occur at the Defense Language Institute. The Army communities don,c,"t need any more marriages of convenience, any more divorces, any more soldiers who are so distracted during the execution of their daily duties that we are thankful that no one lost an arm today. Trying to boot out all SPS to get rid of the ones who are at the heart of the problem diminishes one problem at the expense of exacerbating others.

In the cases of women who find themselves SPS due to divorce or death, the issue becomes even more complex. Some of these women possess skills the Army needs. Personally, I find the idea that the Army would throw out an SPS who has lost her husband in the War on Terror morally and professionally repugnant. Worse, such a practice simply invites Congress to get even more into the Army,c,"s business, since their interpretation of such a practice would be that the Army is full of moral degenerates who can,c,"t be trusted to look after their own. Army Sgt already has proposed a thoroughgoing review by a board that would have access to records of the soldier,c,"s entire career. I support this idea wholeheartedly.

At the heart of the problem with SPS is the conflict of time between the needs of the service, which extend beyond the 40-hour work week, and the needs of the children of soldiers. Even if we were to bar single mothers from enlisting, we can,c,"t prevent women in uniform from having children. The Army can,c,"t prevent them from divorcing, nor can it keep their husbands from dying. As long as there are women in the service, there will be SPS. However emotionally satisfying throwing them out on their fourth points of contact might be, doing so is not a viable option. Another solution has to be found.

Earlier in the thread, I proposed having SPS be empowered to designate a special dependent, which I will abbreviate SD. This suggestion got more-or-less the reception I expected for more-or-less the reason I expected. And let,c,"s face it: the idea of telling a single mom whom we already believe is taking advantage of the system to the detriment of her fellow soldiers and the readiness of the force that she can move in her mom, her dad, her sister, or her cousin at the expense of the Army sticks in the craw. But let,c,"s look at the battlefield objectively for a moment. The SPS could get married at any time, thus incurring the cost of an adult dependent at any time. If SPS aren,c,"t getting married, it,c,"s because they don,c,"t see the need yet. Provide sufficient motive, and they will bring in a husband lickety split. If our objection genuinely is that the Army shouldn,c,"t spend money on having these SPS bring an SD on post at the government,c,"s cost, then our objection is flimsy to the point of being ridiculous. So if push comes to shove, the Army will find itself obliged to spend the money anyway.

So if we,c,"re given a choice between a marriage of convenience for the SPS and allowing an SD, should we not choose in favor of the SD? Given that we,c,"re not conducting a witch hunt to punish SPS for having children out of wedlock, for having a marriage that failed, or for becoming widows, is the goal of shifting the burden of child care from the unit back to the soldier and her dependents served just as well by allowing an SD as by having the SPS run out and find a warm body to marry? From the standpoint of stability, an SD is much better choice than a marriage of convenience. If need be, I,c,"ll paint a picture of why the soldier,c,"s mother, father, sister, grandmother, etc. are all better choices than marriage of convenience; but we,c,"re all big boys here. This, at least, should go without saying.

Yet we are prejudiced against such arrangements, aren,c,"t we? The idea of single moms in uniform eats at us. The idea of altering the time-honored arrangement of having only nuclear families on post is anathema to us. But why should it be? Look at the divorce rate among service members. Clearly the sacred nature of marriage isn,c,"t being observed. Just as we would change our tactics on the battlefield, perhaps we need to be a bit more flexible in the rear. Heck, for all I care the SPS can bring their lesbian lovers on post, marry them, and have that kind of family. So long as the SPS is executing her responsibilities, and so long as the cost of her adult dependent is no greater than the cost of a male soldier with a wife at home raising the kids, then I don,c,"t give a damn who her adult dependent is. If having the mother of the SPS live at home and mind the kids enables the Army to send the SPS overseas every other year, then I,c,"m in favor of it. Better this than a marriage of convenience.

[rcaf_777]

No.

Ok we do in the Canadian Military not so much as paying for the whole daycare but we top up to offset costs incurred by 24 Hr care, most base also provide child care and base community support center maintian another list of those who provide child care, and also here in Canada we get money from the government for child care based on income so maybe if you had that in place single parents could make a good go of it

food for though

[Targan]

This is OT, and please don't think I'm criticising the USMC as a whole (as it is an instution for which I have great respect), but I must say I'm surprised and disturbed that after more than 6 years and a number of detailed investigations, the only outcome of the killing of 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq , is a USMC Sgt receiving a demotion and no prison time or monentary penalty. All the other marines involved were exonerated.

Am I alone in my view on this? If I was a relative of any of those killed (which included 10 women and children) I would feel absolutely outraged at this outcome. I wasn't there, but in light of the facts as they stand it would seem to me that justice most certainly has not been seen to be done in this case.

[waiting4something]

This is OT, and please don't think I'm criticising the USMC as a whole (as it is an instution for which I have great respect), but I must say I'm surprised and disturbed that after more than 6 years and a number of detailed investigations, the only outcome of the killing of 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq , is a USMC Sgt receiving a demotion and no prison time or monentary penalty. All the other marines involved were exonerated.

Am I alone in my view on this? If I was a relative of any of those killed (which included 10 women and children) I would feel absolutely outraged at this outcome. I wasn't there, but in light of the facts as they stand it would seem to me that justice most certainly has not been seen to be done in this case.

It's too hard to tell without really being there ourselves. We use combat soldiers like cops and then we act like we are shocked at the outcome. Civilians will always get killed in wars, they always have. For some reason it is viewed worse if you shoot them with a rifle, instead of dropping bombs on them.

[Legbreaker]

You can point your finger at the Private with the rifle and cry "SCAPEGOAT"!
Not so easy to do to a General and his staff who planned and ordered the airstrike.

[Webstral]

You can point your finger at the Private with the rifle and cry "SCAPEGOAT"!
Not so easy to do to a General and his staff who planned and ordered the airstrike.

We are excellent at blaming soldiers for the shortcomings of their leaders. Lt. Calley is a prime example. Abu Ghraib is another perfect example of what happens when the senior leadership creates a climate ripe for abuses. Individual soldiers need to know right from wrong, but senior leaders need to create command climates that support a soldier's human need to meld with the mentality of the organization.