Subject: Dad – My latest “thought.”  Have a great day!

This letter is motivated by the editorial available here: http://estripes.osd.mil/download/MID20816.  It is a pdf file & the editorial is on the bottom of page 15.

Dear Editor,

Mr. Price’s recent editorial regarding military recruiting tactics ran in the Middle East edition of the “Stars and Stripes,” our US military newspaper on Monday 16 Aug 04.  I read it during my evening meal at my base in Baghdad, and now have indigestion – and it wasn’t the food.  I shall address my comments to Mr. Price directly…..

Mr. Price, I have read your recent editorial about supposed, “Bait and Switch” tactics used by military recruiters, and your opinion that recruiters ignore the potential dangers of military service at this time in our history.  Mr. Price, you have every right to your opinions, which, in my military opinion, are completely erroneous.  I shall enumerate my observations point by point.  

1. Since you did not include anything in your editorial that remotely sounded like, “When I was in the service…,” or, “I remember a time at boot camp….,” I presume that you have absolutely no military experience.  I extrapolate from that, then, that you have no experience on recruiting duty.  I, on the other hand, have both.  Thus, from the outset, your criticisms of the military and methods of recruiting are equivalent to my critiques of neurosurgery.  It amazes me that you deem yourself qualified to comment as you do.  By what measure should the world accept your opinions on the subject as valid? 

2. You imply that, “…a young man or woman who can’t go to college because it’s not affordable and who can’t get a job because the economy is not producing enough jobs for the number of people entering the job market,” and, “…individual(s) living with little hope for the future (would) seize the opportunity for all that training and money.”  Your implication appears to be that we in the military are generally uneducated loser morons (ULMs) and we view the military as our last hope for any type of meaningful life.  I dare you to publicly make the same assertion about the offensive line of the Baltimore Ravens.  Sir, that opinion is offensive and reeks of condescension.  Might I suggest, sir, that you head your opinions using the name “Jeff Price,” en lieu of “Jefferson Price, III”?  With a name like yours it is very easy to presume a prep-school and Ivy League upbringing that implies a significant arrogance and a view of those of us not of your class as, “the little people,” and that you presume it is your lot in life to look after us because we are too ignorant to do it ourselves.

3. You complain that the Army’s recruiting brochure that arrived at your house, “…says nothing about the danger that exists for someone entering the military today; the likelihood of being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.”  How, sir, would you like that to be qualified?  Something like, “If you enlist today, you only have a 35% chance of being sent into a combat zone in the next 24 months,”?  Anyone who thinks that enlisting in the military today doesn’t imply the great possibility of service in Iraq or Afghanistan is too stupid to pass the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), the test that all prospective enlistees have to pass before being accepted.  Additionally, it’s the military, not the Cub Scouts.  The enlistment oath that everyone takes includes the phrase, “…support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”  Now, I’m not so sure about you, but to me, when I hear the words, “defend” and “enemies” in the same sentence, I think of combat.

4. You say, “…the draft should be reinstated so that every segment of the population is called to serve rather than the segment most likely to be lured to the service by promises of jobs and training and education.”  This is, perhaps, the most ignorant of all your comments in the piece, and the one that is most dangerous to our future military preparedness.  Perhaps you were in a pcp-laced marijuana high during the late 60s and early 70s and missed it, but we had a little military excursion in a place called Vietnam.  Most of the Americans who bled and died there were draftees.  I was not in the military then, but my father was.  He was running new soldiers through their, “Land mine, Booby Trap and Demolition” training at Fort Lewis, Washington just before they were sent overseas.  His trainees were almost completely from the underclass of society, who would never get a “college deferment,” (does that term clear the purple haze a bit?).  They were from the inner cities and the coal mines of Appalachia and farm towns from across America.  When my father distributed payroll every two weeks, some of the soldiers signed for their cash with an “X” because they were illiterate.  Others had NEVER been to a doctor or a dentist and had never even used a toothbrush.  These men were accepted as soldiers because under conscription, you cannot have standards like we have now.  Many of the trainees my father had charge of never would have qualified for today’s military.  Reinstating conscription would necessitate lowering our standards significantly.  Besides, getting out of the draft would be pretty easy - all someone would have to do is snort some coke the night before induction.  They’d fail the urinalysis and be back on the block the next week.  Or, if the prospective draftee didn’t want to go the drug route, he could eat his way out of service by ensuring that he is 100 lbs overweight by his eighteenth birthday.  And if parents wanted to ensure their kids would never have to serve, they would take their 9 year-olds to their pediatricians and demand a diagnosis of ADD.  Nothing better than nine years of Ritalin to guarantee disqualification for military service.  

5. The assumption that our military doesn’t represent the great swaths of our society today is simply wrong.  Please see point #1.  Two years ago I stood on a windswept hill in the barren Peruvian coastal desert talking to a radio operator from the Marine Corps Reserve who had volunteered for one year of active duty that included the deployment he was on.  I was assigned stationed in Peru at the time, and as we waited for the exercise below to begin we had an amazing conversation.  He was wearing the rank of Lance Corporal, one of the most junior ranks in the Marine Corps. It turns out that in his civilian life he is a lawyer for the US Attorney’s office in NYC.  He was about two blocks away from his office in the WTC when the first plane hit the towers on 9/11.  So in front of me was an attorney wearing very junior rank, standing on a barren hill in South America with a 35 lb. radio on his back and loving every minute of it.  He certainly doesn’t fit your mold.  Here in Iraq I’ve seen reservists from every walk of life.  Some are independently wealthy, and some are just scraping by as laborers in the civilian world.  Many have volunteered to come and fill jobs that come open by ones and twos.  Others have been activated with their units, and they, along with their families, are suffering the hardships of family separation just like those of us “full-timers.” 

6. Finally, you take a huge swipe at the President for having us in Iraq to begin with.  Once again, I ask for your qualifications to comment on this issue (see point #1 – are we noting a pattern here?).  Unless you have been to Iraq recently, you are, in my opinion, unqualified to make any comment that amounts to more than repetitive rhetoric.

Your arguments, sir, follow the, “post hoc ergo propter hoc,” convention and are fallacious.  If you missed that political science lecture (see “purple haze” in point #4), let me refresh your memory.  The “post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for “after this therefore because of this”)” argument tries to tie effects to apparent causes based on assumption.  In our little example here, you assume the recruiting brochure you mention is only enticing to people who have no other recourse or potential in life, and also thereby assume that the military will accept anyone.  Further, erroneously judging your first assumption to be fact, you also assume it factual that the current make up of the US military does not represent a cross-section of our nation.  If you were to spend a few weeks with us over here, you would either have to recant your assumptions, or lie through your teeth, because reality simply does not support what you presume to be unquestionable truth. 

So, if you have the guts, grab a helmet and one of those pretty blue flak jackets with “PRESS” written in big white letter across it (coincidentally, very easy to see through the sights of an AK-47), and have a few meals with me in our chow hall.  Talk to the young heroes I get to be around every day.  I’m just a staff pogue here – as rear echelon as you can get in this place – but there are a lot of troops around here doing the real thing all the time.  They are my heroes.  They are the superstars.  I see them leaving this relatively safe compound every day, armed to the hilt and not knowing what they’re going to come up against out there where there are lots of evil men who want to kill them.  So I dare you to talk to them. Look them in the eye and tell them that you “really” know that they are just uneducated simpletons being exploited by an out-of-control administration.  Or, maybe, you’ll look at them as I do and see sons, brothers, husbands and fathers - the kind of men I fall on my knees and thank God for because they are on my team.  You may never consider us equal to you, but when the chips are down, who do you want busting down the door to save your sorry liberal backside – my buddies or yours?  

So, I suggest that your future exercises in freedom of speech be confined to topics about which you actually have some credibility to discuss.  And, really, even though “Jeff” sounds rather plebian, it would help your audience relate to you so much better. 

Sincerely,
Major W. J. Truax, Jr., USMC
Baghdad, Iraq

(With thanks to Dr. Jim Toner, Phd., wherever you are, the best Political Science professor I ever had).

© copyright 2004 WJ Truax

The views are my own and do not necessarily represent the position of the US military or the US Marine Corps. or this website.
 
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