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Military
Too Fat, Female, Married, Old NewsMax.com Wires Wars Are Best Fought by Young,
Single Men WASHINGTON – As the drums beat louder for a war against Iraq, a
look at our military personnel policies is in order, including a review of
problems that cropped up when we fought Saddam Hussein in 1991 with a much
larger force. It's a bad sign when it's necessary to belabor the obvious: Wars are
best fought by young, childless males. Societies deviate from this pattern at
their peril. During a midnight layover at a European airport about 18 months ago,
something about the appearance of soldiers from a U.S. Army infantry unit made
me uneasy. They were older, heavier, and (apparently) slower than their
underappreciated Army and Marine Corps counterparts of the Vietnam era. A recent study confirms those impressions. At a November meeting of
the American Obesity Association, Richard Atkinson, a professor of internal
medicine at the University of Wisconsin, reported that more than half of all
service personnel are overweight according to the National Institute of Health
standard, and the trend is increasing. The extra pounds increase the risk of
becoming a heat casualty, the physician said, as well as injuring bones, joints
and muscles. And, of course, heavier soldiers generally have less speed and
endurance. What does this have to do with public policy? Atkinson tied the trend to the steadily increasing average age of
the All Volunteer Force. Armies don't just "happen" but rather emerge
from conscious and unconscious political decisions for which the citizens in
free republics are ultimately responsible. When I took the enlistment oath in
1965, most of the enlisted force and almost all of the junior officers were
young, single and childless. The biggest demographic change in the All Volunteer Force is the
rise of the "enlisted marrieds," said Charles Moskos, the eminent
sociologist of the military, who teaches at Northwestern University. "The
average age of marriage for a male in America is 27, and for a female it's 24
and a half," Moskos told United Press International in a phone interview.
"In the military it's approximately 24 for a male and 22 for a female. So
while the country is getting married older and older, the military is getting
married younger and younger." The sociologist recalled the adage he learned as a draftee in the
1950s: If the Army wanted you to have a wife, it would have issued you one.
"Now, in a sense, it is," he remarked. A mass deployment would result
in "more family separation than you might have had during World War II by
far." Sometimes we hear that in this high-tech age the retention of
stable, long-service volunteers outweighs the disadvantages of an older,
stouter, child-heavy military. But Moskos produced a shocking statistic that
undercuts this assumption. One-Third Fail to Complete Enlistments
Fully one-third of the members of the All Volunteer Force fail to
complete their initial enlistments, he said, while 90 percent of draftees served
their entire tours of duty. Although the enlistments of today's volunteers are
longer than the draftees' two-year obligation, Moskos said that most volunteers
who drop out do so during their first two years of service. In an interview in his Capitol Hill office on Nov. 1, 2000, Sen.
Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, foresaw the possibility of a war precipitated by a
terrorist attack. The Medal of Honor winner, who lost his right arm fighting the
Germans in Italy during World War II, expressed his concern about how the
military had changed since his service days and said some members of Congress
have at times "had difficulty in making judgments" about the armed
forces "based on their backgrounds." "Ninety-six percent of my regiment had no dependents," he
said. "Only 4 percent had wives." Now 60 percent of active-duty
military personnel are married, but single parenthood pushes the number with
dependents higher. Inouye recalled a "difficult personal assignment," that of
censoring his men's letters, which revealed the special difficulties soldiers
with families faced. The senator characterized the typical letter of a new
father: "'Oh, I was so pleased to learn that our baby arrived healthy. And
you pleased me so much by naming him after me. I can't wait to see him.' "You are in no condition to go out on a tough assignment when
blood might be the result," Inouye said. "You're going to be too
careful for that moment." Carl E. Mundy Jr., commandant of the Marine Corps from 1991 to 1995,
followed his conscience in this matter but his commander in chief did not back
him up. On Aug. 11, 1993, the Marine Corps announced that it no longer would
permit married persons to enlist |