MSNBC article- Why We Need a Draft: A Marine's Lament
08-28-2007, 02:03 PM
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MSNBC article- Why We Need a Draft: A Marine's Lament
Why We Need a Draft: A Marine's Lament
He was in the firefights of Fallujah. He saw gaps in America's arsenal that he believes can only be filled when America's elite puts its sons on the battlefield. A plea for selective service.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Cpl. Mark Finelli
Newsweek
Updated: 9:20 a.m. PT Aug 28, 2007
Aug. 28, 2007 - “Maybe we would have only lost those three instead of 13,” I thought to myself on a dusty Friday in Fallujah in early November 2005. I was picking up the pieces of a truck that hours before had been blown apart by an IED, wondering why our equipment wasn’t better and why three more Marines were dead. Ramadan had just ended, the period in which a suicide bomber gets double and triple the virgins for killing himself in the name of jihad, and my weapons company, Second Battalion Second Marines, had lost 13 men in the last two weeks—not from firefights but from roadside bombs likely being imported from Iran. The insurgents were ramping up their technology, and here we were in the same old trucks. At least these didn’t have cloth doors like the ones last year. But seriously, was this the best technology we have?
Just then I noticed a big vehicle driving by, one owned by a private contracting company. This thing made our truck look like a Pinto in a Ferrari showroom. It was huge, heavy, ominous, indestructible. I wanted to commandeer it. I wanted to live in it. If only we were in one of those, I would definitely come home, and a lot of the guys who won’t would too. As it passed I stared at what I would later learn was called the MRAP vehicle (Mine Resistant Ambush Protective Vehicle). I never thought I would see something in Iraq that enticing, but there it was, rumbling past in all its glory.
I looked at my platoon sergeant. “Staff sergeant?”
“Yes, Finelli?”
“Why are the private companies driving around in these things and not the Marine Corps?” He looked at me and gave the universal sign for money, rubbing together his thumb and forefinger. And suddenly, I understood. It became clear on that November Friday in Fallujah that America’s greatest strength, economics, was not in play. A sad realization.
According to the Pentagon, no service personnel have died in an MRAP. So why isn’t every Marine or soldier in Iraq riding in one? Simple economics. An MRAP costs five times more than even the most up-armored Humvee. People need a personal, vested, blood-or-money interest to maximize potential. That is why capitalism has trumped communism time and again, but it is also why private contractors in Iraq have MRAPs while Marines don’t. Because in actuality, America isn’t practicing the basic tenet of capitalism on the battlefield with an all-volunteer military, and won’t be until the reinstitution of the draft. Because until the wealthy have that vested interest, until it’s the sons of senators and the wealthy upper classes sitting in those trucks—it takes more than the McCain boy or the son of Sen. Jim Webb—the best gear won’t get paid for on an infantryman’s timetable. Eighteen months after the Marines first asked for the MRAP, it’s finally being delivered. Though not nearly at the rate that’s needed. By the end of the year, only 1,500 will have been delivered, less than half the 3,900 the Pentagon had initially promised.
It’s not hard to figure out who suffers. The 160,000 servicemen and women in Iraq are the latest generation of Americans to represent their country on the field of battle. And like their predecessors, they are abundantly unrepresented in the halls of power. As a result, they’ve adopted what I find to be a disturbing outlook on their situation: many don’t want the draft because they believe it will ruin the military, which they consider their own blue-collar fraternity. They have heard the horror stories from their dads and granddads about “spoiled” rich officers. Have no doubt: there is a distinct disdain for networked America among the fighting class of this country. When a politician would come on TV in the Camp Fallujah chow hall talking about Iraq, the rank-and-file reaction was always something like, “Well, I am blue-collar cannon fodder to this wealthy bureaucrat who never got shot at and whose kids aren’t here. But I know I am making America safer, so I’ll do my job anyway.” And they do, and have been for the last three and a half years, tragically underequipped but always willing to fight.
The real failure of this war, the mistake that has led to all the malaise of Operation Iraqi Freedom, was the failure to not reinstitute the draft on Sept. 12, 2001—something I certainly believed would happen after running down 61 flights of the South Tower, dodging the carnage as I made my way to the Hudson River [I worked at the World Trade Center as an investment adviser for Morgan Stanley at the time]. But President Bush was determined to keep the lives of nonuniformed America—the wealthiest Americans, like himself—uninterrupted by the war. Consequently, we have a severe talent deficiency in the military, which the draft would remedy immediately. While America’s bravest are in the military, America’s brightest are not. Allow me to build a squad of the five brightest students from MIT and Caltech and promise them patrols on the highways connecting Baghdad and Fallujah, and I’ll bet that in six months they could render IED’s about as effective as a “Just Say No” campaign at a Grateful Dead show.
On a macro level, we are logistically weakened by the lack of a draft. It takes six to seven soldiers to support one infantryman in combat. So, you are basically asking 30,000 or so “grunts” to secure a nation of 26 million. I assure you, no matter who wins the 2008 election, we are staying in Iraq. But with the Marine Corps and the Army severely stressed after 3.5 years of desert and urban combat in Iraq—equipment needs replacing, recruitment efforts are coming up short—you tell me how we're going to sustain the current force structure without the draft? The president’s new war czar, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, essentially said as much earlier this month, when he announced that considering the draft “makes sense.”
Of course, the outcry was swift and predictable. America has rejected selective service before, though always in the guise of antiwar movements. But they should really be viewed as antidraft movements, and they existed, en masse, when the wealthy could buy their way out of serving—as Teddy Roosevelt’s father and his ilk did during the Civil War, or as countless college kids did during the deferment-ridden Vietnam conflict. Not every draftee has to be a front-line Marine or soldier, but history shows us that most entrepreneurial young men, faced with a fair draft, almost always chose the front. A deferment draft, however, is a different story, and ultimately counterproductive because of the acrimony it breeds. By allowing the fortunate and, often, most talented to stay home, those who are drafted feel less important than what they are asked to die for. At the end of the day, it was this bitterness that helped fuel the massive antiwar movement that pushed Nixon to end the draft in ‘73.
I don’t favor a Vietnam-style draft, where men like the current vice president could get five deferments. I am talking about a World War II draft, with the brothers and sons of future and former presidents answering the call (and, unfortunately, dying, as a Roosevelt and a Kennedy once did) on the front line. That is when the war effort is maximized. Quite simply, the military cannot be a faceless horde to those pulling the purse strings of our great economy.
The draft would even hasten a weaning away from foreign oil, I believe, if more Americans felt the nausea that I do every time I go to the pump and underwrite the people who have nearly killed me five times. This war on the jihadists needs to be more discomforting to the average American than just bad news on the tube. Democracies at war abroad cannot wage a protracted ground operation when the only people who are sacrificing are those who choose to go. This is the greatest lesson of my generation. Young Americans: you may not want to kill jihadists, but they are interested in killing you and your loved ones. Wake up.
Cpl. Mark Finelli is an inactive, noncommissioned Marine Corps officer who served in Iraq from July 2005 to February 2006. He is currently writing a book about surviving 9/11 and fighting in Iraq.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20478293...wsweek/page/2/
He was in the firefights of Fallujah. He saw gaps in America's arsenal that he believes can only be filled when America's elite puts its sons on the battlefield. A plea for selective service.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Cpl. Mark Finelli
Newsweek
Updated: 9:20 a.m. PT Aug 28, 2007
Aug. 28, 2007 - “Maybe we would have only lost those three instead of 13,” I thought to myself on a dusty Friday in Fallujah in early November 2005. I was picking up the pieces of a truck that hours before had been blown apart by an IED, wondering why our equipment wasn’t better and why three more Marines were dead. Ramadan had just ended, the period in which a suicide bomber gets double and triple the virgins for killing himself in the name of jihad, and my weapons company, Second Battalion Second Marines, had lost 13 men in the last two weeks—not from firefights but from roadside bombs likely being imported from Iran. The insurgents were ramping up their technology, and here we were in the same old trucks. At least these didn’t have cloth doors like the ones last year. But seriously, was this the best technology we have?
Just then I noticed a big vehicle driving by, one owned by a private contracting company. This thing made our truck look like a Pinto in a Ferrari showroom. It was huge, heavy, ominous, indestructible. I wanted to commandeer it. I wanted to live in it. If only we were in one of those, I would definitely come home, and a lot of the guys who won’t would too. As it passed I stared at what I would later learn was called the MRAP vehicle (Mine Resistant Ambush Protective Vehicle). I never thought I would see something in Iraq that enticing, but there it was, rumbling past in all its glory.
I looked at my platoon sergeant. “Staff sergeant?”
“Yes, Finelli?”
“Why are the private companies driving around in these things and not the Marine Corps?” He looked at me and gave the universal sign for money, rubbing together his thumb and forefinger. And suddenly, I understood. It became clear on that November Friday in Fallujah that America’s greatest strength, economics, was not in play. A sad realization.
According to the Pentagon, no service personnel have died in an MRAP. So why isn’t every Marine or soldier in Iraq riding in one? Simple economics. An MRAP costs five times more than even the most up-armored Humvee. People need a personal, vested, blood-or-money interest to maximize potential. That is why capitalism has trumped communism time and again, but it is also why private contractors in Iraq have MRAPs while Marines don’t. Because in actuality, America isn’t practicing the basic tenet of capitalism on the battlefield with an all-volunteer military, and won’t be until the reinstitution of the draft. Because until the wealthy have that vested interest, until it’s the sons of senators and the wealthy upper classes sitting in those trucks—it takes more than the McCain boy or the son of Sen. Jim Webb—the best gear won’t get paid for on an infantryman’s timetable. Eighteen months after the Marines first asked for the MRAP, it’s finally being delivered. Though not nearly at the rate that’s needed. By the end of the year, only 1,500 will have been delivered, less than half the 3,900 the Pentagon had initially promised.
It’s not hard to figure out who suffers. The 160,000 servicemen and women in Iraq are the latest generation of Americans to represent their country on the field of battle. And like their predecessors, they are abundantly unrepresented in the halls of power. As a result, they’ve adopted what I find to be a disturbing outlook on their situation: many don’t want the draft because they believe it will ruin the military, which they consider their own blue-collar fraternity. They have heard the horror stories from their dads and granddads about “spoiled” rich officers. Have no doubt: there is a distinct disdain for networked America among the fighting class of this country. When a politician would come on TV in the Camp Fallujah chow hall talking about Iraq, the rank-and-file reaction was always something like, “Well, I am blue-collar cannon fodder to this wealthy bureaucrat who never got shot at and whose kids aren’t here. But I know I am making America safer, so I’ll do my job anyway.” And they do, and have been for the last three and a half years, tragically underequipped but always willing to fight.
The real failure of this war, the mistake that has led to all the malaise of Operation Iraqi Freedom, was the failure to not reinstitute the draft on Sept. 12, 2001—something I certainly believed would happen after running down 61 flights of the South Tower, dodging the carnage as I made my way to the Hudson River [I worked at the World Trade Center as an investment adviser for Morgan Stanley at the time]. But President Bush was determined to keep the lives of nonuniformed America—the wealthiest Americans, like himself—uninterrupted by the war. Consequently, we have a severe talent deficiency in the military, which the draft would remedy immediately. While America’s bravest are in the military, America’s brightest are not. Allow me to build a squad of the five brightest students from MIT and Caltech and promise them patrols on the highways connecting Baghdad and Fallujah, and I’ll bet that in six months they could render IED’s about as effective as a “Just Say No” campaign at a Grateful Dead show.
On a macro level, we are logistically weakened by the lack of a draft. It takes six to seven soldiers to support one infantryman in combat. So, you are basically asking 30,000 or so “grunts” to secure a nation of 26 million. I assure you, no matter who wins the 2008 election, we are staying in Iraq. But with the Marine Corps and the Army severely stressed after 3.5 years of desert and urban combat in Iraq—equipment needs replacing, recruitment efforts are coming up short—you tell me how we're going to sustain the current force structure without the draft? The president’s new war czar, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, essentially said as much earlier this month, when he announced that considering the draft “makes sense.”
Of course, the outcry was swift and predictable. America has rejected selective service before, though always in the guise of antiwar movements. But they should really be viewed as antidraft movements, and they existed, en masse, when the wealthy could buy their way out of serving—as Teddy Roosevelt’s father and his ilk did during the Civil War, or as countless college kids did during the deferment-ridden Vietnam conflict. Not every draftee has to be a front-line Marine or soldier, but history shows us that most entrepreneurial young men, faced with a fair draft, almost always chose the front. A deferment draft, however, is a different story, and ultimately counterproductive because of the acrimony it breeds. By allowing the fortunate and, often, most talented to stay home, those who are drafted feel less important than what they are asked to die for. At the end of the day, it was this bitterness that helped fuel the massive antiwar movement that pushed Nixon to end the draft in ‘73.
I don’t favor a Vietnam-style draft, where men like the current vice president could get five deferments. I am talking about a World War II draft, with the brothers and sons of future and former presidents answering the call (and, unfortunately, dying, as a Roosevelt and a Kennedy once did) on the front line. That is when the war effort is maximized. Quite simply, the military cannot be a faceless horde to those pulling the purse strings of our great economy.
The draft would even hasten a weaning away from foreign oil, I believe, if more Americans felt the nausea that I do every time I go to the pump and underwrite the people who have nearly killed me five times. This war on the jihadists needs to be more discomforting to the average American than just bad news on the tube. Democracies at war abroad cannot wage a protracted ground operation when the only people who are sacrificing are those who choose to go. This is the greatest lesson of my generation. Young Americans: you may not want to kill jihadists, but they are interested in killing you and your loved ones. Wake up.
Cpl. Mark Finelli is an inactive, noncommissioned Marine Corps officer who served in Iraq from July 2005 to February 2006. He is currently writing a book about surviving 9/11 and fighting in Iraq.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20478293...wsweek/page/2/
08-29-2007, 12:43 AM
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Seems like a good idea on paper but it's crap.
I think overprotection can lead to complacency and the inability to perform high speed tasks. The media, those stateside, and REMFs have tried overprotection before...I can think of the ballistic fatsuit that left men immobile and the over-armored humvee that was prone to rollovers. It’s easier to package to the public: Those back on American soil can easily relate to what armor does as opposed to what certain vehicles and highly trained men in our arsenal are capable of. You know, what our tax dollars went toward in training our elite for crying out loud. Instead, why not unleash the dogs of war so our men and women can actually perform their jobs?
It's despicable that people cannot trust the combat intuition of our men and give them enough leeway to fulfill their capabilities. And for what? Fear of a media lynch-mob whenever we assume a very small group of them may have stepped outside the boundaries of professionalism despite the overwhelming combined professionalism of the rest? It's sad. This Marine cannot have his cake and eat it too. God forbid people actually die in war he volunteered for. I know I sound like a insensitive ***** but it's true. Maybe the problem is - as horrible as it sounds - that not enough blood and sweat has been spilled? You can't volunteer as the most expendable part of our military (a grunt) then demand protection that would render you ineffective. It's like voluteering to race Indy cars as long as the cars are made of airbags and styrofoam. People here and in Iraq aren’t and have never been willing to risk enough for the cause, as sketchy as it's always been. Soldiers have always been iffy on the reasons for the war since the early days of Rumsfeld. You think Soldiers would question their lacking armor if their objectives were clear and true? The Soldiers on Omaha Beach didn't.
I think overprotection can lead to complacency and the inability to perform high speed tasks. The media, those stateside, and REMFs have tried overprotection before...I can think of the ballistic fatsuit that left men immobile and the over-armored humvee that was prone to rollovers. It’s easier to package to the public: Those back on American soil can easily relate to what armor does as opposed to what certain vehicles and highly trained men in our arsenal are capable of. You know, what our tax dollars went toward in training our elite for crying out loud. Instead, why not unleash the dogs of war so our men and women can actually perform their jobs?
It's despicable that people cannot trust the combat intuition of our men and give them enough leeway to fulfill their capabilities. And for what? Fear of a media lynch-mob whenever we assume a very small group of them may have stepped outside the boundaries of professionalism despite the overwhelming combined professionalism of the rest? It's sad. This Marine cannot have his cake and eat it too. God forbid people actually die in war he volunteered for. I know I sound like a insensitive ***** but it's true. Maybe the problem is - as horrible as it sounds - that not enough blood and sweat has been spilled? You can't volunteer as the most expendable part of our military (a grunt) then demand protection that would render you ineffective. It's like voluteering to race Indy cars as long as the cars are made of airbags and styrofoam. People here and in Iraq aren’t and have never been willing to risk enough for the cause, as sketchy as it's always been. Soldiers have always been iffy on the reasons for the war since the early days of Rumsfeld. You think Soldiers would question their lacking armor if their objectives were clear and true? The Soldiers on Omaha Beach didn't.
Last edited by Salty; 08-29-2007 at 01:23 AM.
08-29-2007, 08:54 AM
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What I got from it is that we'd probably see a better job done by our government if it was their sons and daughters in the conflict zone, but most often that's not the case. Also, I liked his point about putting genius minds to the task.
08-29-2007, 10:57 AM
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Not sure it would matter.
And the more important your family is the less likely you're going to see any combat.
Just look at Price Harry... they've held him back from entering Iraq. If he does go then the issue isn't better armor for everyone to insure Harry’s safety, but rather protect the prince at all costs.
If a politician’s son or daughter entered the war I'd guarantee strings would be pulled somehow to keep them safe. Maybe they'd be in theatre but remain at camp? Or maybe daddy managed to get his hands on the new prototype armor and had it sent off to his son. It's easier to worry about protection for one person rather than sympathize for the entire force.
There just seems to be a lot of wishful thinking going on with his thought.
And the more important your family is the less likely you're going to see any combat.
Just look at Price Harry... they've held him back from entering Iraq. If he does go then the issue isn't better armor for everyone to insure Harry’s safety, but rather protect the prince at all costs.
If a politician’s son or daughter entered the war I'd guarantee strings would be pulled somehow to keep them safe. Maybe they'd be in theatre but remain at camp? Or maybe daddy managed to get his hands on the new prototype armor and had it sent off to his son. It's easier to worry about protection for one person rather than sympathize for the entire force.
There just seems to be a lot of wishful thinking going on with his thought.
08-29-2007, 11:34 AM
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Here's my quick train of thought...
1) Money and the military's ability to drag-*** is the issue in getting the MRAP.
2) We initiate a draft and money goes toward the training of these forces instead. Now there's no money for armor. Besides, now we have a pool of troops to replace lost Soldiers. Armor is on the back-burner now. Hopefully a game of numbers will help us win instead.
3) Unlike WWII, the support for the war still isn't there, assuming the numbers game didn’t work, which it most likely wouldn’t. It would still be the families of those serving in war versus the rest of Americans not at war. Even if the government sold war bonds, some Americans would buy them while most would not. We still have a funding issue for the increased troops, we still have little support for the war, and we still have a hurry-up and wait military. We always had the last one.
------
I think the better article would be on why the Government hasn’t started selling war bonds when lack of funding is always used as a threat for the war. Some people would buy them. But nope, politicians and half of Americans are much more inclined to buy yellow ribbon instead.
1) Money and the military's ability to drag-*** is the issue in getting the MRAP.
2) We initiate a draft and money goes toward the training of these forces instead. Now there's no money for armor. Besides, now we have a pool of troops to replace lost Soldiers. Armor is on the back-burner now. Hopefully a game of numbers will help us win instead.
3) Unlike WWII, the support for the war still isn't there, assuming the numbers game didn’t work, which it most likely wouldn’t. It would still be the families of those serving in war versus the rest of Americans not at war. Even if the government sold war bonds, some Americans would buy them while most would not. We still have a funding issue for the increased troops, we still have little support for the war, and we still have a hurry-up and wait military. We always had the last one.
------
I think the better article would be on why the Government hasn’t started selling war bonds when lack of funding is always used as a threat for the war. Some people would buy them. But nope, politicians and half of Americans are much more inclined to buy yellow ribbon instead.
08-29-2007, 07:21 PM
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1) I'd rather serve in a shorthanded volunteer force than a "full" draftee one.
2) A draft doesn't provide more money for operations, training and equipment, it actually reduces it.
3) I volunteered to serve at 18, but if I'd been drafted I'd have probably told the military to go **** their collective self.
4) A draft will not serve the purpose of causing the Administration and Congress to more carefully utilize, or not utilize, the military
5) :donkey:
2) A draft doesn't provide more money for operations, training and equipment, it actually reduces it.
3) I volunteered to serve at 18, but if I'd been drafted I'd have probably told the military to go **** their collective self.
4) A draft will not serve the purpose of causing the Administration and Congress to more carefully utilize, or not utilize, the military
5) :donkey:
09-01-2007, 09:13 PM
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I was drafted, I did serve in vietnam,I was vehemently opposed to the war,but I did my job to the best of my ability,and yes I was shot at and shelled on a truly regular basis. But it brought the citizens of this country out onto the streets in numbers anyone under age 50 probably can't remember and certainly can't appreciate. That's the value of the draft-many will escape it,but if the war is not needed, if it's not right ,the people will not just see it but they'll react to it in strong and forcefull ways. The politicians in this country don't fear the people, the citizens, anymore. This is the greatest danger to our society.
Last edited by cowg; 09-01-2007 at 09:20 PM.
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