There has been vigorous discussion of David Kennedy’s NYTimes Op-Ed (07/25/05) on right-leaning blogs this week, with opinions ranging from the scandalized to the more reasonable, like at redstate.org.
Sadly, lost in much of the reaction, is Kennedy’s argument questioning the wisdom of continuing with an all-volunteer army. (He does NOT suggest that Hessian behavior during the Revolutionary War is in any way comparable to the behavior of our soldiers in Iraq.)
In fact, the bloggers protests against perceived liberal elitism seem to underscore Kennedy’s point that:
our troops are emphatically not the kind of citizen-soldiers that we fielded two generations ago – drawn from all ranks of society without respect to background or privilege or education, and mobilized on such a scale that civilian society’s deep and durable consent to the resort to arms was absolutely necessary.
Here is a longer quote:
In World War II, the United States put some 16 million men and women into uniform. What’s more, it mobilized the economic, social and psychological resources of the society down to the last factory, rail car, classroom and victory garden. World War II was a "total war." Waging it compelled the participation of all citizens and an enormous commitment of society’s energies.
But thanks to something that policymakers and academic experts grandly call the "revolution in military affairs," which has wedded the newest electronic and information technologies to the destructive purposes of the second-oldest profession, we now have an active-duty military establishment that is, proportionate to population, about 4 percent of the size of the force that won World War II. And today’s military budget is about 4 percent of gross domestic product, as opposed to nearly 40 percent during World War II.
The implications are deeply unsettling: history’s most potent military force can now be put into the field by a society that scarcely breaks a sweat when it does so. We can now wage war while putting at risk very few of our sons and daughters, none of whom is obliged to serve. Modern warfare lays no significant burdens on the larger body of citizens in whose name war is being waged.
Click here to read Kennedy’s entire piece at The New York Times. It really is worth the time, not all the outrage.
David Kennedy is the author of Freedom from Fear.
I “actually read” the piece. I strongly disagree with it, for the reasons that I wrote. Do you always presume that those who don’t share your point of view are illiterate, or do you just believe you have some sort of higher understanding that escapes the hoi polloi?
I note that your post here lacks any kind of argumentation supporting Kennedy or refuting any of the criticism he received in the blogosphere. Did you bother to read it, or did you just clip a couple of paragraphs out for your post?
I “actually read” the piece. I strongly disagree with it, for the reasons that I wrote. Do you always presume that those who don’t share your point of view are illiterate, or do you just believe you have some sort of higher understanding that escapes the hoi polloi?
I note that your post here lacks any kind of argumentation supporting Kennedy or refuting any of the criticism he received in the blogosphere. Did you bother to read it, or did you just clip a couple of paragraphs out for your post?
I find it extremely funny that academics who
oppose letting Military Recruiters on campus
are upset with the supposed mal-composition
of our all-volunteer forces.
One wonders if Mr. Kennedy actually bothered
talking with a representative sample of our
Military before composing his … well …
rant.
The main reason our Military can project huge
amounts of force on a world-wide basis is that
it is the most educated such entity on the
Planet.
Sadly, Mr. Kennedy didn’t bother doing his
homework on this issue. So, not surprisingly,
similarly naive editors of the New York Times
thought the article was “first-rate”.
Such are the pit-falls of ‘leftish’ group-think.
I ‘read’ it too, and frankly, I found that it simply didn’t make any sense. It was bad not because of its politics: it was bad because of its facts and assumptions.
Are we really supposed to be scandalized because an army that fought WWII, a ‘total war,’ is different from the army that’s fighting the current war, which is not a ‘total war’? What is he saying-that if we’re in a war, it has to be on the scale of WWII, even when its not? Or the army has to be as big? Or we should model an army on the WWII army, even though that was 60 years ago, and the Army doesn’t need to be that way any more, just because that was the Good War? Or what?
“The implications are deeply unsettling: history’s most potent military force can now be put into the field by a society that scarcely breaks a sweat when it does so. We can now wage war while putting at risk very few of our sons and daughters, none of whom is obliged to serve.”
I guess you have to be an academic to follow this argument and consider it to be ‘worth the time.’ Am I really supposed to be ‘unsettled’ at the fact that we can wage a war really really well (perhaps an expensive, bloody less successful war would be less ‘unsettling’?) I’m supposed to be ‘unsettled’ because my army is quite effective? Oh, if only our army was more expensive!! Why oh why can’t it be?!?!?!
Frankly, his portrayal of the army is not accurate, either. It probably does come from almost all ranks of society (other than the very very rich) regardless of background or privilege or education (one example: approximately 1/5 of the military are officers-college graduates. I am sure this reflects society reasonably well. Those officers, upon reaching mid-level rank, almost ALL have graduate level education. I would not be at all surprised if the military actually had MORE graduate level education than society at large, though I don’t know the actual statistics). What the military doesn’t draw from are college professors, journalists, and other chattering classess-the people that David Kennedy happen to bumb in to.
As I said’ there’s no rightwing/leftwing disagreement with the piece. Its just bizarre.
Steve
“He does NOT suggest that Hessian behavior during the Revolutionary War is in any way comparable to the behavior of our soldiers in Iraq.” Of course he does. He explicitly writes, “…like those Hessians, today’s volunteers sign up for some mighty dangerous work largely for wages and benefits…”
BTW those Democrats who cannot see the insult to our troops might imagine how they’d feel if Rush Limbaugh had called John Kerry a mercenary and compared him to the Hessians.
In Viet Nam era, the elites bought their way out of the draft by going to school or even divinity school…in the Civil war, they literally bought their way out of the draft…
I suspect Kennedy and those on the NYTimes staff don’t know people in the military (and therefore assume NO ONE in NYC knows anyone in the military) is for the same reason they don’t know NYC policemen (mainly black or ethnic), NYCFD personnel (mainly ethnic Catholic), or even Washinton DC bureaucrats (mainly Black): social isolation.
The REAL problem is the lack of diversity in the newsroom and in our universities…maybe if the NYTimes still had “veterans preference” they would recognize that the rest of us actually DO know people in the armed services, or even served there ourselves..
The editor of the Times, Bill Keller, in trying to figure out how to recover some of the paper’s lost prestige and authority has suggested that it might do well to hire people with military experience. I think he recovered after he lay down for awhile.
Kennedy fails to mention why the draft was repealed; its proponents after Vietnam were said to oppose mercenaries, too. Milton Friedman’s famous response was, “the alternative is slaves.”
Kennedy wants a slave army. Like Leftists usually end up supporting.
The Left has been notably absent in how IT should sacrifice for the war, ie Federal College Loans at only 50% for those who have NOT been in military;
ending Fed loans to colleges that don’t have ROTC on campus.
David Kennedy likes the idea of slaves in the army instead of voluntary mercenaries. Bah.
And the secret purpose, of course, is to get young anti-draft folk to be anti-Bush.