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By Raymond Perry


The U.S. Army is having increasing problems enlisting the young men and women it needs (see Ralf W. Zimmermann, "Overcoming the Recruiting Quagmire," DefenseWatch, March 18, 2005). This is a truly serious concern for the nation. The presumption by many observers is that there is a growing fraction of our young men and women who no longer see the potential sacrifice of their lives in Iraq as worthwhile.

Senior leaders in the Pentagon are missing a critical perspective. Instead of Iraq, I believe the falling enlistment rates instead can be linked with the perceived actions of military service leaders.

In my years of active duty, I found that the young men and women I served with made very good choices and readily took on the tough, dangerous tasks so long as their leaders took the time to provide the background necessary and treated them fairly.

Our young people see far more deeply into issues than some give them credit for. I remember speaking with a junior in high school during the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton in 1998. The hullabaloo of the moment surrounded the appropriate standard for evidence that Special Prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr presented against the president.

Without missing a beat in our conversation, one high school junior stated that since President Clinton was not "at risk for life or limb," the standard was clear: that of preponderance of the evidence instead of the fourth estate's position that the principle of "beyond a reasonable doubt" should apply. This was from a young man attending a rather liberal high school.

Our young people today observe events such as the criminal murder charges leveled against Marine 2nd Lt. Iliario Pantano, the prisoner abuse uncovered at Abu Ghraib, or the scandal surrounding very low acquisition of armored vehicles such as Humvees for our troops in Iraq, and draw their own conclusions.

I believe that they see in these occurrences a failure of senior leadership in the armed services and DoD. They then ask themselves whether they are willing to place themselves under the orders of that leadership.

In the case of Lt. Pantano, I believe young people perceive that a "chairborne" Marine Corps general, without combat experience himself, second-guessed a previous investigation conducted on scene and in real-time of the shooting incident in which Lt. Pantano killed two suspected Iraqi insurgents. These young people do not like it and some have opted to "just say no" to recruiters.

In the case of the Abu Ghraib abuses, I believe the recent trial and conviction of former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers provides useful illumination. Ebbers pleaded that he was not aware of the criminal acts of those working for him. The jury in his case sent a message: "It was [his] job to know" what was going on.

In her analysis of the Ebbers trial, Loren Steffy of The Houston Chronicle stated: "CEOs have to care. That's the moral of Ebbers conviction." Ebber's defense sounds an awful lot like what the Army chain of command appears to have been saying about the responsibility of senior officers for criminal acts at Abu Ghraib. As a result, some more young men and women have decided to "just say no" to the current military leadership.

The key element surrounding the scandal of insufficient armored Humvees and other vehicles in Iraq is not that more were not available. It is that during a decade, evidence had steadily accumulated that some kind of armored vehicle was needed for forces tasked with civil control (see my earlier article, "How the System Shorted Armored Humvees," DefenseWatch, Dec. 9, 2004). Researchers proposed several different vehicles during this decade, but both Pentagon and Army leaders ignored the evidence and funded none of them.

Declining Army enlistment rates today are a reflection of the lack of confidence that our young people have in service leadership (see SFTT Special Report by Nathaniel R. Helms, "Army Woes: Apathy, Hostility and a Healthy Economy," DefenseWatch, Apr. 1, 2005). The Army has staked a lot of its reputation on using expanded veterans benefits for future educational opportunities to entice new recruits. But when the clear possibility of not cashing in on that offer is coupled with a loss of confidence in leaders, the Army now finds itself in serious trouble. Even the Marine Corps is beginning to see similar problems.

There are certainly many, many reasons that motivate young people to join up or not. Long-term confidence (or a lack of same) that senior leadership will back them up in the crunch is one factor - but a very important one. The incidents I cited earlier - and numerous others, including a growing number of pending criminal cases against soldiers accused of abusive treatment of prisoners - clearly suggests that senior U.S. military leaders are not doing their jobs.

Senior leadership may overlook or ignore their own role, as Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom tried to do, or maybe these leaders do not even see it. But this self- indulgence surely and subtly, has affected many young people's decisions to enlist in the military.

In a previous article on the Pantano case ("Be Most Careful in Judging this Marine," DefenseWatch, Nov. 17, 2004), I concluded that victory in the war in Iraq will come from the sum of many small decisions by many people.

The serious drop in enlistments suggests that our young people may well be starting to make some of these many small decisions against the current military leadership. Today's young men and women are quite capable of accepting their sacrifice on the battlefield for the good of the nation. They are just as capable of saying, "I'll take my chances in combat but not of being abandoned by the system."

We have a serious problem here that cosmetic improvements in the veterans benefit system will not solve.


©2005 DefenseWatch. Lt. Raymond Perry USN (Ret.) is a DefenseWatch Contributing Editor. He can be reached at cos1stlt@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.