The “All Volunteer” Army

Since 1974, for thirty-three years we have had the highly touted, “All Volunteer Army”. Perhaps it is time to take a look at it history and performance. During the First Gulf War the Army performed superbly. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, all members with combat experience, planned for an efficient assault and conclusion of the war. In the field, the Army was led by competent Generals who fought an efficient war with a minimum of American combat and enemy civilian casualties. The “All Volunteer Army” looked like the force of the future.

Then came the Iraq war. This war was planned in entirety by PNAC, individual zealot ideologues without one day of combat service to their credit. These individuals had conceived a new “Shock and Awe” warfare that coupled state-of-the-art technology, weapons that would be lighter and more flexible. There was one flaw. Their plans had no exit strategy, no “Plan B”. After the initial successful lightning strike our forces were stymied. In their rush to reach Bagdad and depose Saddam Hussein, the bypassed every Iraqi ammunition and weapons depot and left them open for marauders to loot.

In their great wisdom, the PNAC leasers appointed Paul Bremer, a career diplomat with no military experience to be in charge. One of his first moves was to disband both the national army and the national police force thus creating about a million unemployed, armed, angry men. Looters stripped irreplaceable objects of antiquity from the museums, most of them never to be recovered, or destroyed beyond hope of restoration. What had been a relatively tight-knit country under the iron hand of Hussein, more modern than most of its Arab neighbors, quickly devolved into a series of tribal forces with centuries old scores to settle. No central government, armed brigands roaming the countryside and no definable military targets for our “professional army” to engage. To further muddle the situation, the people in charge at Bremer’s headquarters had been selected solely on their allegiance to PNAC and the Republican Party. No foreign Affairs or diplomatic experience was deemed important.

As the situation became more muddled, with no clear-cut objectives, terrorists flooded into Iraq to exploit the situation. There were no terrorist organizations in Iraq when the war began, but there are plenty now. The “All Volunteer” army was now faced with a new challenge. Despite the recommendations of combat-wise generals, the Army had decided to go “light”, and they soon found themselves both outnumbered and out-fought. Enter a new element, the not so “All Volunteer” National Guard.

No matter what anyone claims, National Guardsmen are not professional soldiers nor are they really “All Volunteer”. Their function is primarily home defense. That would be somewhat difficult to accomplish when most of their personnel and equipment are in Iraq or Afghanistan. Witness the debacle after Hurricane Katrina when the Louisiana National Guard could not perform its sworn duty because of the absence of men and equipment. As the strain on the Army continues, with some soldiers performing as many as four of more tours in Iraq, the Army is being strained to the breaking point.

The Defense Department has just announced a new policy. Air Force and Naval personnel are now being assigned to ground combat missions in Iraq. They have been trained for this duty. They are getting “refresher” courses of one or two weeks, but that doesn’t even qualify them for their new MOS’s (Military Occupational Specialty).

What began as a well trained all volunteer army has now devolved into a messy combination of individuals performing tasks for which they have not been trained in a combat situation with no defined objective.

The “All Professional Army” is no more. What we have now is a “coalition of the unwilling and untrained”. What was once a sensible and workable idea for the defense of a nation has been destroyed by a group of dilettante zealots to fit their preconceived ideas. The next time, it might be a good idea to let trained soldiers organize the army.

Our Founding Fathers were adamantly against a standing army. Granted, much has changed during the past 230 years. Our two oceans no longer provide protection in an age of weapons that can strike across the globe in a matter of minutes, but that doesn't mean that the United States needs 700 to 1000 permanent military posts around the globe. Despite the PNAC, we are not the world’s policeman. The foreign policy of the Bush administration, since its inception, has managed to alienate every other country on the globe except Great Britain, and with the departure of Tony Blair, they may be next. We have not always been admired, but in the past, the United States was almost universally respected, even during the cold war with the Soviet Union. Now we are viewed, universally, with contempt.