Military Review
July/Aug. 2006
Page(s) : 101-107
Defense Department (DOD)
Army Department (USA)

The All-Volunteer Army: Can We Still Claim Success?

By Major General Walter L. Stewart Jr., U.S. Army, Retired

     "[Secretary of the Army] Callaway positively glowed. On 1 July he met reporters at the Pentagon and declared the volunteer Army a success. The Army had ended fiscal year 1974 with slightly more than 783,000 men and women on active duty, approximately 1,400 more than its authorized end strength. It achieved that strength by enlisting nearly 200,000 volunteers and reenlisting some 58,000 soldiers."--Robert K. Griffith Jr.¹

Paratroopers in Vietnam, 1966 Paratroopers of the 1st Battalion, 173d Airborne Brigade move off a muddy landing zone in the Vietnam jungles near Phuoc Tuy Province while on a search and destroy mission, 1966. Of the forces who actually served in Vietnam, 648,500 (25 percent) were draftees. (Army News Features)

     In 1974, after just 20 months of experience, the all-volunteer Army was declared a success. But this was based solely on recruitment after a sustained period of combat had ended and at the beginning of an extended period of relatively secure garrison and peacekeeping duty, interspersed by short-duration conflicts.²

     But can we continue to claim success in 2006 when we consider a U.S. population increase of roughly 100 million since 1974, the near doubling of the recruiting pool because of the opening of most military occupations to females, and deployments that, although dangerous, are not nearly as perilous as previous prolonged conflicts?³ I say we cannot, and I offer as proof the continuing modifications of personnel standards and the expansion of monetary inducements to achieve the Pyrrhic victory of recruiting 80,000 to an Active Component strength that resists expansion beyond 500,000, with junior officers and enlisted personnel stoically facing one hardship tour followed closely by another.

     After 3 decades, our national experiment with an all-volunteer force has foundered during its first encounter with combat operations that last for an extended period of time. And accompanying this turn of events come consequences of even greater proportion: dangers to the viability of our Nation itself now that it raises its Army in contravention of the lessons of its history and that of Western civilization.

     In the opening pages of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, historian Edward Gibbon describes the essential nature of government: "Civil governments, in their first institutions, are voluntary associations for mutual defense. To obtain the desired end, it is absolutely necessary that each individual regard himself obligated to submit his private opinion and actions to the judgment of the greater number of his associates."⁴

     Gibbon knew that armies define nations and that volunteerism in an armed service should extend only to the voluntary submission of individual will to the collective will. This is a paradox to be examined. At a time in history when technology-intensive interstate conflict seems in decline, conflict requiring the low-tech actions of the squad and platoon is in ascension. In a tragedy of bad timing, in the 3 decades following the Vietnam War, recruitment of American forces discounted the human and cultural sciences in favor of the impersonal (but predictable) "supply and demand" science of markets: "Need more, pay more. Cannot pay more?--Make do with less, or substitute."

     Symbolic confirmation of this "boots on the ground" predicament is everywhere. Men and women in uniform are treated universally as scarce and even iconic commodities; the political or strategic level of war is compressed, deferentially, into the operational and tactical with the ethical and moral consequences of sending American youth into harm's way subtly dismissed by statements such as, "They are volunteers and want to be there."⁵ Operational commanders who know the scarcity and fragility of squads, platoons, and companies are unjustly required to make war decisions at the theater-force and ultimate victory levels. How did we arrive at such a state?

Act in Haste

     In 1970, economists Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman joined with other presidential appointees to officially deny the likelihood of negative consequences arising from the national move to an all-volunteer force. But these negative consequences are now evident and felt most heavily at the operational and tactical levels of war.⁶

     The great national experiment with an all-volunteer military is a failure that awaits truth or tragedy for confirmation. It relies on fewer and fewer to bear the blood burdens of defense, absolves the many of any fiscal, physical, or mental hardships, and, in a dawning age of asymmetric, non-state, and ascendant-state warfare, denies human power in favor of a near mystical belief in technology. We marvel at the sight and promise of an F-22 Raptor--even as we count the carnage caused by decades-old 155-millimeter rounds wired with field-expedient detonators and detonated by barely trained cultural warriors. Cultural war (for example, Western liberalism versus Soviet tyranny) requires the mobilization and commitment of cultures. Although we know how to do this, we lack even the courage for bloodless debate.

     On Monday, 4 December 1967, shortly after 9:30 A.M., Joseph D. Melonson Jr., a descendent of slaves, and Jesse B. Stevenson and Richard V. Thompson, descendents of America's move west, crossed the stage at Infantry Hall, Fort Benning, Georgia, and did what thousands of enlisted soldiers did during the Vietnam War: They accepted appointment to the rank of second lieutenant, infantry branch, U.S. Army. On 3 December, these three men were draftees, and on the 4th, commissioned officers--and all three would die in action as volunteers in Vietnam. They were not included among the 17,725 draftees counted as killed.⁷

     In 1967, in an Army formed by the draft, having draftees attend officer candidate school was not unusual. Of the 138 candidates commissioned at Fort Benning on 4 December 1967, 42 had been drafted, and many of the others (had a record been kept) would have admitted to having been "draft induced."⁸ But even as these draftees signed on for the hazards of leading platoons in a jungle war, one of the most corrupting and consequential distortions in American history--the labeling of the Vietnam War as "a class war"--entered the public discourse. It was alleged that "the vast majority of U.S. conscripts who fought in the Vietnam War were plucked off the lower rungs of the American socioeconomic ladder."⁹ Based on anecdotal perceptions rather than scientific analysis, this distortion assumed the proportions of an urban legend--a legend that haunts us now to the point of tactical, operational, and strategic failure.

     Conscription and its accompaniment, inducement, proved to be great cultural levelers and force providers. Earlier, the power of America's drafted and draft-induced armies defeated fascism and imperialism and maintained the 38th Parallel in Korea. It would defeat the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong in every fight of significance in Vietnam. Army professionals at all levels knew how to lead citizen Soldiers then. But this aspect of leadership--and the combat power that came with it--is now forgotten.¹⁰ This great cultural and national strength is what Greenspan, Friedman, and others were directed to justify abandoning--and as dutiful servants to presidential authority, they followed orders.

Repent at Leisure

     Military history records that strategic shifts and battlefield innovations are first felt at the trench level of warfare. We need only think of the rifle, its range, and the shoulder-to-shoulder line formations it made impractical; the machine gun and improved artillery that necessitated armored vehicles; and the mass production of inferior weapons that overwhelmed the limited production of superior ones. All these changes, so deadly to troops on the battlefield, resulted from critical decisions made far from the action.

     President Richard M. Nixon announced one such decision on 27 March 1969: "I have directed [The President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force] to develop a comprehensive plan for eliminating conscription and moving toward an all-volunteer armed force."¹¹ And now in 2006, we deploy junior officers and enlisted men on one hardship tour after another, trade unfilled Soldier positions for the chimera of technology, and limit the battlefield force options of senior field commanders.

     That the Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force was directed to its conclusions is unarguable. Validation of the Commission's conclusions requires not just a period of relative peace but a period of sustained combat. We are now in a period of sustained combat called Operation Iraqi Freedom, and an evaluation of Nixon's fiat, and its operational and tactical impacts, is due.

     History records that the decision to move to an all-volunteer force, then form a commission charged with justifying it, was based on a false premise, the myth of class-based "draft inequity," which was formally presented to Nixon in January 1969, during a meeting in the Oval Office with Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, President, University of Notre Dame, and member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Hesburgh describes the moment and the strategic wheels it placed in motion: "The thing I advised [Nixon] was to end the war in Vietnam soon. He said he was going to do that. Then I recommended giving the vote to eighteen-year-olds. Third, I said he should abolish the draft, because it was inequitable. Poor blacks and Hispanics were being drafted into the Army while most whites typically had all kinds of ways to beat it. I said we should be moving toward an all-volunteer Army...two weeks after that, I got [a] call...from Tom Gates, the former secretary of the Navy and a very dear friend of mine. He did not ask, he ordered me to join his newly created Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force. 'This was your bright idea,' Gates said. 'You talked Nixon into it, and now I'm the chairman. So because you opened your mouth, I'm putting you on the commission.'"¹²

     There you have it: This was the moment of conception of the "they want to be there" military. The unscientific and badly off-the-mark conclusions of a sincere man of God were instrumental in detaching American citizens from the hardships or consequences of military service. The great, republican equity of our draft and draft-induced armies was abandoned because of a false perception of racial and social inequity. By decisions such as these, cultures and the armies that sustain them are lost.

Commission Dismissals

     To support his policy decision, Nixon's commissioners studied, discussed, pondered, and promptly dismissed every one of the following legitimate objections to an all-volunteer Army:

     • An all-volunteer force will be very costly--so costly the Nation cannot afford it.

     • The all-volunteer force will lack the flexibility to expand rapidly in times of crisis.

     • An all-volunteer force will undermine patriotism by weakening the traditional belief that each citizen has a moral responsibility to serve his country.

     • The presence of draftees in a mixed force guard against the growth of a separate military ethos, which could pose a threat to civilian authority, our freedom, and our democratic institutions.

     • The higher pay required for a voluntary force will be especially appealing to blacks who have relatively poorer civilian opportunities. This, combined with higher reenlistment rates for blacks, will mean that a disproportionate number of them will be in military service. White enlistments and reenlistments might decline, leading to an all-black enlisted force. U.S. racial tensions would grow because of white apprehension at this development and black resentment at bearing an undue share of the burden of defense. At the same time, some of the most qualified blacks would be in the military--not in the community where their talents are needed.

     • Those joining an all-volunteer force will be men from the lowest economic classes, motivated primarily by monetary rewards rather than patriotism. An all-volunteer force will be manned, in effect, by mercenaries.

     • An all-volunteer force would stimulate foreign military adventures, foster an irresponsible foreign policy, and lessen civilian concern about the use of military forces.

     • A voluntary force will be less effective because not enough highly qualified youths will enlist and pursue military careers. As the quality of servicemen declines, the prestige and dignity of the services will also decline and further intensify recruiting problems.

     • The defense budget will not be increased to provide for an all-volunteer force, and the Department of Defense (DOD) will have to cut back expenditures in other areas. Even if additional funds are provided initially, competing demands will, over the long term, force DOD to absorb the added budgetary expense of an all-volunteer force. The result could be serious deterioration of the nation's overall military posture.¹³

The Rebuttal of History

     The concerns Nixon's commissioners dismissed--erosion of civilian control, reliance on the economic underclass, racial imbalance, isolation of a professional military, shared sacrifice, military adventurism, force expandability and affordability--appear often in contemporary debate and the warnings of history:

     • Pericles, military commander of ancient Athens, weighed in on shared sacrifice and military adventurism: "For it is impossible for a man to put forward fair and honest views about our affairs [of war] if he has not, like everyone else, children whose lives may be at stake."¹⁴

     • James Madison, a colonel of the Virginia militia and author of much of the U.S. Constitution, called a conscript-based force (in this case, compulsory militia) into action to enforce the laws, and said of volunteerism in general: "There never was a government without force. What is the meaning of government? An institution to make people do their duty. A government leaving it to a man to do his duty, or not, as he pleases, would be a new species of government, or rather no government at all."¹⁵

     • President George Washington, a field commander of militiamen, testified to the republican virtue of shared risk and willing sacrifice of Americans standing in the ranks together: "It has been a spectacle, displaying to the highest advantage, the value of Republican Government, to behold the most and least wealthy of our citizens standing in the same ranks as private soldiers; pre-eminently distinguished by being the army of the constitution; undeterred by a march of three hundred miles over rugged mountains, by the approach of an inclement season, or by any other discouragement."¹⁶

     • Thomas Jefferson advised Secretary of War James Monroe to prepare for "interminable war": "To this end we should put our house in order, by providing men and money to indefinite extent. The former may be done by classing our militia, and assigning each class to the description of duties for which it is fit. It is nonsense to talk of regulars. They are not to be had among a people so easy and happy at home as ours. We might as well rely on calling down an army of angels from heaven."¹⁷

     • Rudyard Kipling, poet and sociologist, foresaw the "Great Society" impact of a disconnected post-Vietnam War America, its effect in ever-declining inclinations to military service, and the approaching point of no return (perhaps we are already past it) in our ability to deter rising "foemen":

     "Swiftly [they] pulled down the walls
     that their fathers had made them,
     The impregnable ramparts of old,
     they razed and relaid them,
     As playgrounds of pleasure and leisure,
     with limitless entries,
     And havens of rest for the wastrels
     where once walked the sentries;
     And because there was need of more
     pay for the shouters and marchers,
     They disbanded in face of their foemen
     their yeomen and archers."¹⁸

     • General Bruce Palmer Jr., Vice Chief of Staff of the Army from August 1968 to June 1972, reflects the position of senior Army leadership at the time of conversion to an all-volunteer force and the Nixon administration pressure to "get aboard." Palmer said: "Philosophically I guess none of us ([General William] Westmoreland or Palmer) really agreed with the (all-volunteer force) idea because we felt that the citizen-soldier idea was the responsibility of everybody...the philosophic aspects of it, I didn't agree with. But it was clear to us that at the beginning of the Nixon Administration the draft would go out completely...and soon. [Secretary of Defense] Mr. [Melvin] Laird told the Joint Chiefs one day that that was a firm decision of the President. That was early [19]69. Mr. Laird didn't agree with it. He thought the country couldn't afford it. He predicted that eventually we would have to go back to a draft because of the cost of the volunteer force, and he is probably right....But that was the President's decision and Laird expected everybody to get aboard."¹⁹

     • General John Keane, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, 8 March 2001: "There are no guarantees that the all-volunteer force will continue to serve the needs of the Army."²⁰

     • Charles Moskos, a draftee and professor emeritus at Northwestern University, comments on lowering personnel standards and increasing monetary outlays to pursue fewer and fewer willing recruits: "Without conscription, what will happen? We will see, as is already happening, a lowering of military entrance standards. And, as is already occurring, there will be an exponential increase in enlistment bonuses. And we can expect new policies to recruit non-Americans into our armed forces. Recruits in the all-volunteer force are three times more costly--in constant dollars--than draftees. The erosion of the citizen soldier has made for a career force that's top heavy. The Pentagon now owes its Soldiers $654 billion in future retirement benefits that it cannot pay."²¹

Resetting the Force

     In spite of the patriotism and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform, a national military policy built on a false supposition will--like a line of horse cavalry that has outlived its usefulness but not the heart's expectation--fail at the most critical of moments. The national decision to move to an all-volunteer force, built on the falsity of draft inequity, is this line of cavalry--a line barely able to sustain combat in Southwest Asia, let alone expand to the East.

     To preclude cataclysmic failure, we must return to an army that sustained itself during 17 years of cold war combat in Korea and Vietnam, suffered over 94,000 killed in the process, deterred the Soviet Union to the point of collapse, and maintained its morale and courage at the tactical level of war until overwhelmed by policy failure at the strategic level.²² This army was a draft-induced army, and there is a politically palatable way to have it back, but we must first counter the falsities that caused its loss.

     In a Wall Street Journal article on 10 January 2003, former secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger--calling on his enlisted and junior officer experience in World War II to advise against a return to a draft--makes a blatantly ill-informed observation: "There was no doubt in anyone's mind that volunteers were far more effective than draftees and eager to train and fight." If we are to take Weinberger's observation at face value, one wonders how the United States prevailed over Nazi tyranny and Japanese imperialism, because in World War II, 93 percent of Army personnel were draftees.²³ And considering young Weinberger held low-ranking soldier positions--positions and ranks nearest the draftee--one wonders where he observed the voluntary 7 percent of the Army that was "more effective.. and eager to train and fight." The legitimacy of Weinberger's argument collapses under cursory review, but it joins with equally fallacious "draft inequity" arguments to underpin a policy blunder that has our Nation reeling, and enemies more powerful than the 10,000 terrorists in Iraq biding their time and salivating.²⁴

     The March 2003 VFW Magazine summarizes the service and sacrifice of the Vietnam era draftee: During the Vietnam era, 1,728,344 men were drafted. Of the forces who actually served in Vietnam, 648,500 (25 percent) were draftees. Draftees (17,725) accounted for 30.4 percent of combat deaths in Vietnam.

     Other than lending credence to former British Prime Minister James Callaghan's observation that "a lie can be half-way round the world before the truth has got its boots on," anti-draft arguments (such as that put forth by Weinberger) are without merit. But as myth, they did meld with "class war" falsities to demean the record of the Vietnam-era Army in its entirety, and the men and women who formed it, individually.²⁵ These Soldiers were the sons and daughters of the World War II generation, and to believe that the Army they formed was consumed by rampant drug use, open racial tension, and general indiscipline is to believe that this is how the "Greatest Generation" raised their children.²⁶ Yes, leaders in the Vietnam-era Army had to deal with drugs and other Soldier failings--just as leaders in our present Army must--but negative factors then were no more consumptive than they are now, and one can only speculate whether a volunteer army--abandoned during a decade-long war and after suffering more than 50,000 killed--would do any better.²⁷ I say it would not--a conclusion I make by measuring the actions now being taken to sustain our Army during the Global War on Terrorism.

     Now is the time to fix a horrendous national mistake by returning to the just and awesome deterrent power of a draft-induced military. (Time is short because only a dreamer could imagine an army sustaining itself in war against tens-of-thousands when it can barely sustain itself in war against a few thousand terrorists.) A politically palatable way exists to return to the draft. But first we must dispel another false notion--that, collectively and historically, the draft has only served this country for a few years. This notion ignores the compelled-service nature of colonial and state militias and decades of service under the command of colonial and state governors. During much of American history, compulsory militia service was a fact of life. It militarized U.S. culture in a way that was non-threatening to the Homeland, but quite threatening to potential enemies. The militia's existence and inducement effects were critical to rapidly forming regular forces during times of war. Army Rangers take their name from militia "ranging units" that countered French and Indian depredations. The English colonists and the rifle companies that joined New England militias at Boston in 1775 to form the United States Army found their recruiting base in the militia organizations of frontier America.²⁸

     The Nation can follow this precedent. It can "draft" for the regulated militias of the states--the National Guards. A draft for Guard service will find political support, if done in conjunction with a reorganization of the Reserve Components. The Army Reserve should transfer its troop-unit programs to the Army National Guard; the Air National Guard to the Air Force Reserve; and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau must be elevated to four-star rank, made a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and designated as commander of Northern Command.

     The political will to see these things through will come from the governors of the states, 50 commanders in chief who will gain troop units that lend themselves to state contingencies (absent Posse Comitatus prohibitions, of course) in exchange for fighter, tanker, and air cargo units that do not. No general officer, adjutant general, Soldier, or Airman will lose his or her position. Reserve forces available for federal service will be unchanged; the inducement effect of the draft, as it always has, will sustain regular forces; and the patriotic appeal of drafting for homeland defense and contingencies will fill draft calls with willing youth.

     These things are possible; events have proven that sustaining the all-volunteer force is not. And it is overstretched junior leaders who must find the will to vocal advocacy, because years ago, senior leaders were ordered "aboard" and know there is only one way off.²⁹ If they find the will to do so, young officers will once again command Washington's "army of the constitution," and our Republic will avoid history's condemnation.

     Let us hope that Edward Gibbon would not be able to say to us: "In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend, and some share in enacting those laws, which it was their interest, as well as duty, to maintain. But in proportion as the public freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded into a trade."³⁰

Notes

     1. Robert K. Griffith Jr., United States Amy's Transition to All-Volunteer Force, 1988-1974, Army Historical Series (Defense Dept., Army Center of Military History, 1997), 249. Griffith reports that of the 25,940 non-prior service volunteers in June 1974, "82 percent scored in the Mental Category I-III range."

     2. The experiment with an all-volunteer force is an Army experiment, and failure will first show itself in Army personnel statistics. Arguably, the collapse of the Soviet Union (and consequent drawdown of U.S. forces) delayed the "day of reckoning" for the all-volunteer military. But a relatively small number of insurgents and terrorists in Iraq bring that day to us.

     3. I do not mean to diminish the risk to Americans engaged in the Global War on Terror, or the valor, patriotism, and sacrifice of the thousands of our dead and wounded. But numbers are what they are, and in comparison, the single deadliest month of the Vietnam War--February 1968--counted 3,895 Americans killed in action. See article by Richard K. Kolb. "Korea and Vietnam: comparing participants and casualties," VFW Magazine, June/July 2003, 23.

     4. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 (New York: The Modem Library, 2005), 196.

     5. This statement (with variants) is frequently heard at and near the non-uniformed level of the chain-of-command. Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, in an opinion piece published by the Wall Street Journal on 10 January 2003, gives his version, and uses President Ronald Reagan to deliver it: "Once, early in 1982, President Reagan and I reviewed a force of young American soldiers newly enrolled. Afterwards he said to me, 'You know, Cap, I would infinitely rather look each of these young people in the eye and know that each wants to be here.'"

     6. I make specific mention of Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman because the conclusions of the President's Commission on an all-volunteer armed force read, mostly, as market analysis. Other members of the commission were Thomas Gates, Thomas Curtis, Frederick Dent, Crawford Greenewalt, Alfred Gruenther, Stephen Herbits, Theodore Hesburgh, Jerome Holland, John Kemper, Jeanne Noble, Lauris Norstad, W. Allen Wallis, and Roy Wilkins.

     7. The draft and historical amnesia--Now hear this: public remarks about the ineffectiveness of draftees are unwarranted," VFW Magazine, March 2003, 8.

     8. Special Orders Number 286, 21 November 1987, Headquarters, The Student Brigade, U.S. Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia. The term "draft induced" refers to those men who enlisted rather than waited to be drafted. Historically, draft inducement was a major factor in filling the ranks of the Army's sister services.

     9. George Donelson Moss, Vietnam: an American Ordeal, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994), 243. Moss's work is a superb history of our national involvement in Vietnam. That he parrots this distortion is understandable. It was easy to believe and would take extensive research and analysis to disprove.

     10. Although my recollection of my lessons at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is somewhat dated, I dearly remember the unarguable conclusion that leadership Is the crucial element of combat power." By exalting the "all-volunteer" concept to the exclusion of all else, we deny the human power that won every 20th-century war, to include the cold war.

     11. From President Richard Nixon's instructions to the All-Volunteer Commission.

     12. Theodore M. Hesburgh, God, Country, Notre Dame (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 207-208.

     13. Report of the President's Commission on en All-Volunteer Armed Force, February 1970, 129. Although dismissing objections was the reason for Nixon having appointed the commission in the first place, and dismissals are found throughout the final report, these nine are mentioned specifically in chapter two and thematically repeated throughout the report.

     14. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 150.

     15. James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention on Control of the Military, 16 June 1788.

     16. George Washington's Sixth Annual Message to Congress, 19 November 1794.

     17. Paul Leicester Ford. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1905), 437.

     18. Rudyard Kipling, "The City of Brass," The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling (Hertforshire, Great Britain, 1994), 326-327.

     19. From the Oral History of General Bruce Palmer Jr., U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

     20. General John Keane, in a speech for the Institute of Land Warfare, 8 March 2001, AUSA News, Volume 24, Number 7, May 2001.

     21. Charles Moskos, "Feel the Draft?" Chicago Tribune Online, 8 June 2005.

     22. Richard K. Kolb, "Korea and Vietnam: comparing participants and casualties," VFW Magazine, June/July 2003, 21. The article lists 36,576 Americans killed in action (KIA) in Korean, and 58,198 KIA in Vietnam.

     23. "The draft and historical amnesia--Now hear this" public remarks about the ineffectiveness of draftees are unwarranted," This article states: "In WW II, 66 percent of all U.S. forces were drafted. Of the 10.5 million Army personnel, a whopping 93 percent were draftees."

     24. I cannot imagine that 10,000 terrorists are the sum of our opposition in Iraq. However, 10,000 is the number Senator Joseph Lieberman gave in a 29 November 2005 opinion article published in the Wall Street Journal: "America cannot abandon the war between 27 million Iraqis and 10,000 terrorists." Effectively, what Lieberman is saying is that 10,000 poorly trained and poorly armed fanatics have the Army at the breaking point.

     25. In the last decade of the 20th century, careful study and objective authorship proved the falsity of the draft as "class war" argument. See Arnold Barnett, Timothy Stanley, and Michael Shore, "America's Vietnam Casualties: Victim of a Class War?" 1992 study by MIT researchers.

     26. America's draft-induced armies were a microcosm of American culture; thus, the Army that fought In Vietnam was not immune from the impact of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and 1970s and the 4 April 1988 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

     27. Arguably, controlling drug use in the volunteer military is a function of "no notice" urinalysis testing. Prior to urinalysis, drug users had to be caught red-handed, investigated, and proven on the reports of others or in privacy-demeaning shakedown inspections--inspections that exempted officers and noncommissioned officers. After urinalysis was adopted. I was tested annually in the 100 percent screening of aviation personnel and once randomly while serving as a division commander. Also worthy of note is the 15 February 2006 Wall Street Journal report that said, "Privates that come to the Army with a history of mild depression now can take Paxil or Zoloft."

     28. Probably the most famous of the rifle companies was that raised and commanded by Daniel Morgan. Needing only 10 days to recruit 96 men to the ranks, Morgan and his company left Winchester, Virginia, in early July 1775, and after a march of 21 days reported present for duty. The march was 600 miles and not one man was lost to sickness or desertion. James Graham, The Life of General Daniel Morgan, of the Virginia Line of the Army of the United States (New York: Derby and Jackson, 1856), 54-55.

     29. Senior leaders, almost exclusively populating defense policy levels, are most likely to suffer pride of authorship, and least likely, when proven wrong, to let that pride go. Also, the "get aboard" ruthlessness of non-uniformed leaders--the "Shinseki effect"--cannot be discounted. Once aboard, it seems the only way off is the plank.

     30. Gibbon.

Major General Walter L. Stewart Jr., U.S. Army, Retired, has commanded at every level of the Army National Guard, including the 28th Infantry Division. He received a B.A. from Albright College and is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College. He has served in a variety of command and staff positions in the continental United States and Europe.

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