My friend Jeff and I were sitting at a tavern in northwest Washington, D.C., unwinding over Irish coffee. Another session of night law school was behind us, and, as usual, we were discussing politics. It had always been enlightening, and at times a little contentious, to talk politics with Jeff. A senior aide to a U.S. senator, Jeff (not his real name) could be described as somewhat liberal, while I, a former naval officer, am generally conservative.
On this particular evening, we were discussing the upcoming 1996 presidential election. After a brief exchange on a variety of issues, Jeff stated, “I’m no Clinton fan, but he’s done a good job. What’s the difference between Clinton and Dole? They’re both lawyers and career politicians.”
“I’ll tell you the difference, it’s Bob Dole’s right arm!”
“OK,” Jeff retorted, “he saved a guy’s life and got wounded during World War II. That doesn’t have anything to do with being president. My dad is a war veteran and he supports Clinton.”
Obviously, I had missed making my point. I tried again. “I think it’s about Dole’s character. He was a military man who put it all on the line. I think that’s directly related to being president.”
To my consternation, Jeff replied matter of factly, “Look, no offense, but the military is just another job. Nobody makes you join, you choose it and you get paid for it.”
That statement started a brief shouting match that was punctuated by my abrupt departure. Why had I lost my cool? Perhaps because I could not convince someone of a fact that I considered so self-evident that it needed no justification. Jeff and I patched things up pretty quickly. However, I could not believe that Jeff, and others like him, had such a different view of military service. Likewise, Jeff could not understand why I, and others like me, believe that serving one’s country is more than “just a job.”
A Growing Gulf
The incident is indicative of a growing division between mainstream American society and the all-volunteer armed forces that defend that society, a gulf that has become more prevalent in the 1990s and ultimately threatens our national security.
This division has been fueled over the past 25 years by the nation’s reliance on an all-volunteer force. During the days of the draft, the military drew enlistees from a cross-section of American society, but with the advent of the all-volunteer force, the demographics of the services were transformed. When citizens were no longer required to fulfill a military commitment, the backbone of the services became persons who joined either out of a sense of patriotic duty or economic necessity. As a result, a sizable portion of the population has had little, if any, direct contact with the armed services.
This fact is most evidenced by America’s national leadership. The current president, secretary of defense, senate majority leader, and Speaker of the House never served in the armed forces, and only about 30 percent of the members of Congress have donned a uniform. Now, lack of military experience does not necessarily indicate a lack of concern about the fate of America’s armed forces, but it is more difficult to make prudent decisions on readiness and deployment without an informed sense of the unique lifestyle of military personnel.
As in civilian life, the branches of the armed services and even communities within each service have differing lifestyles, but a common thread remains: Military members take orders, give orders, and depend upon unit cohesion to ensure success. They forego prerogatives civilians take for granted to foster obedience and unit cohesion. Personnel must be prepared to endure close living conditions, long hours, mandatory physical training, extended separation from family and friends, a strict dress code, and wages well below the civilian sector. Most importantly, military personnel must be prepared to give their lives in defense of their nation.
For the last decade our national leaders’ decisions regarding the military have revealed the gulf of understanding between military and civilian life. Military readiness has been sacrificed to political expediency. While political considerations are seemingly ancillary to any decision affecting an arm of the federal government, playing excessive politics with our armed services can ultimately damage national security. A sampling of recent events reveals a national leadership that uses its armed forces to score political points.
Shadows of Tailhook
The case of Navy Admiral Stanley Arthur (Retired) should jolt the conscience. In 1994, Admiral Arthur, then vice-chief of naval operations, was nominated by President Clinton to become commander-in-chief of all U.S. military forces in the Pacific (CINCPAC). Arthur, a highly decorated attack pilot in Vietnam, had served as commander of the Navy’s Seventh Fleet, based in Japan. He had also commanded the naval forces employed in the Persian Gulf War. Arthur’s combat and command experience, coupled with his knowledge of the region, made him the perfect choice for CINCPAC. Arguably, there was no one better suited for the job, but for the politicians that made no difference.
Sen. David Durenberger (R-Minn.) put a hold on the nomination at the request of a constituent, Lt. Rebecca Hansen, a female naval officer who had washed out of flight training for poor performance. Washing out is not unusual, neither is it particular to women: Flight training is physically and mentally demanding. However, Hansen complained that her failure was due to retaliation by flight instructors bent on getting even for sexual harassment allegations she had leveled against another instructor. The Navy had subsequently disciplined that instructor for his misbehavior. Hansen’s case was ultimately appealed to Arthur, then the Navy’s senior aviator, who reviewed Hansen’s flight training record and determined that her instructors had been correct in dropping her from the flight program. But in post-Tailhook Washington, it had become politically popular to advance a feminist-oriented agenda in military matters, and Sen. Durenberger simply gauged the political winds. Despite attempts by the Navy to get the nomination cleared, the hold remained. With little or no backing from the Clinton administration, Admiral Arthur’s nomination was withdrawn. The admiral—and our national security—deserved a better fate.
Unfortunately, the Navy is not the only service that has been undercut by politics. The case of Air Force Lt. Kelly Flinn, the first female pilot of the B-52 bomber, made national headlines. Flinn stood accused of committing adultery with the husband of an Air Force enlisted woman. She was also accused of lying to her superiors about the affair and of disobeying a direct order to stay away from the man. Media reports portrayed Lt. Flinn as a victim of both the man in question and the Air Force’s “puritanical” rules concerning adultery. The Air Force had other ideas and moved to court-martial her for three violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, even as a misled public cried foul. The public outcry also included the senate majority leader, Trent Lott, who scolded the Department of Defense for its out-of-touch policies, telling them to “get real.”
Lott later amended his statements, but the damage had been done. Flinn was not court-martialed. The Air Force had to settle for a general discharge, a slap on the wrist considering the allegations against her. Contrary to public perceptions, adultery was the least serious of the charges, ranking behind lying and insubordination. The Air Force does not need officers who lie and disobey direct orders piloting its nuclear-capable strategic bombers.
As a result of the Flinn incident, Secretary of Defense William Cohen decided that the military’s definition of adultery is too harsh. If his plan succeeds, adultery will only be charged where it interferes with the good order and discipline of a military unit. During my time in the Navy, I have seen adultery charged in some situations and overlooked in others, but I never fully trusted a pilot who was regularly fooling around on his wife. My life and the lives of my crew were in his hands. We depended on his sound judgment to make the right call in precarious situations and bring us home in one piece.
No one expects sainthood in the military, and a frequent adulterer may not directly impact the smooth functioning of his or her particular unit. But if that person will openly violate the trust of a spouse, might he or she not also violate the trust of a military comrade? Again, absolute trust and unit cohesion are vital to the military’s unique culture. Its smooth functioning should not be hampered by society’s questionable moral relativism.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
President Clinton’s “gays in the military” flap is another indication of the division between national leadership and the armed forces. When he assumed office, the new president had a political debt to pay to the homosexual lobby for its support in the 1992 campaign. Soon after his inauguration, he lifted the ban against homosexuals in the military, ignoring the advice of his own military advisers, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the summer of 1993, Congress struck back with legislation codifying the ban, putting the
Democratic administration directly at odds with a Democratic Congress. The armed services were caught in the middle. A compromise, reached in 1994, resulted in the ambiguous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, in which military members were not to be asked about sexual orientation and, if homosexual, were to keep that orientation to themselves. The Pentagon encouraged unit commanders to punish homosexual behavior, not homosexual orientation.
The results of the policy have been threefold. First, there has been an increase in the number of persons dismissed from the services on the basis of homosexuality. Second, the policy has been challenged in the federal courts by a number of plaintiffs. These cases are slowly working their way to the Supreme Court. Third, unit commanders, JAG officers, and civilian investigators have been put in the unenviable position of determining whether service personnel of the same sex have engaged in intimate sexual contact. In short, aspects of military readiness are being sacrificed to enforce an ambiguous policy implemented to satisfy a political debt.
Gays historically have been barred from the military because homosexuality has been determined to be incompatible with military service. The unique military lifestyle, with its close quarters, lack of privacy, and dependence on absolute trust and unit cohesion, does not permit the introduction of openly gay persons whose behavior many soldiers find personally and morally repugnant. To order 18-year-olds to bathe, sleep, train, and fight in forced intimate personal contact with open homosexuals defies common sense and is not conducive to unit bonding and cohesion.
Historically, when a homosexual was discovered—either by his or her own admission and/or by an investigation—he or she was given a hearing and then administratively separated from the service. Advocates of lifting the ban cited the overzealous nature of these investigations, terming them “witch hunts.” The reality is that homosexuals have and will continue to serve in the armed services. Their patriotism and dedication are not at issue. They served incognito, knowing that if discovered, they would be discharged. If witch hunts were the problem, the Clinton administration could have ordered a review of Pentagon investigatory practices to ensure due process. However, the administration’s naive attempt to lift the ban violates common sense, entrenches a vague and muddled policy, and endangers unit cohesion, morale, and readiness.”
Rosie the Rifleman
Seemingly concurrent with the debate over homosexual policy, our national leaders have expanded the role of women in the armed services to include combat assignments, a decision that remains divisive. With the advent of the all-volunteer armed forces, women’s roles were expanded in the 1970s to include combat support jobs previously reserved only for men. Many traditional barriers fell, including the all-male natures of the service academies.
Women were propelled into combat assignments by two factors. The national media hyped female participation in the Panama invasion and the Persian Gulf War, and the political clout of the feminist lobby increased following Tailhook and other sexual harassment scandals. In 1992, the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces narrowly approved opening some direct combat assignments to women. The Department of Defense under Clinton did so in 1993. Proponents argued that women could do the job and that equal opportunity dictated they be given the chance. Consequently, women are now assigned to air squadrons, Navy combat vessels, and myriad other combat support roles that were previously off limits. Federal law still bans women from filling positions in ground combat units in all of the services.
The voices of those who oppose the changes have been drowned out by the cacophony of political and media “experts” lauding the concept of America’s mothers, daughters, and sisters being afforded the opportunity to kill and be killed on future battlefields. Brian Mitchell, a decorated Army infantry officer turned author, has written extensively on the issue of women in the military and testified before presidential commissions on the subject. His writings include two books on the subject, Weak Link: The Feminization of the American Military and Women in the Military: Flirting With Disaster. He concludes that the disadvantages of women in the military far outweigh any advantages and that their increasing presence has caused an erosion of combat readiness. Among other factors, he cites women’s higher rates of attrition, greater need for medical care, higher rates of nonavailability, lower rates of deployability, lesser physical ability, inability to meet standards, and disruption of unit cohesion as evidence that our military readiness has been compromised. And he does not distinguish between combat and combat support assignments. In Mitchell’s eyes, the entire military exists as a team to support combat operations, and anything that detracts from a “combat support” unit also detracts from units directly engaged with the enemy. Mitchell also assaults the argument that in today’s all-volunteer military, women are needed to fill out the ranks. If that were ever true (a point that Mitchell disputes), it is no longer the case. Numerically, the current military is down from a 1988 high of 2.1 million to fewer than 1.5 million uniformed members. In short, Mitchell argues that there are plenty of men to fill the ranks in today’s shrinking, post-Cold War military.
Further, sailors who become pregnant as a result of an illicit relationship do much to decrease readiness. In 1994, the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower was reconfigured to accommodate 500 women in its crew of 5000 and deployed to the Adriatic Sea in support of NATO combat operations under way in the former Yugoslavia. During the six-month deployment, at least 39 women were sent home after becoming pregnant. Former Secretary of the Navy John Dalton inexplicably reported to the American public that such personnel losses had no effect upon the ship’s combat readiness. His statement is disingenuous. The Navy had to compensate for the loss of those sailors, which created manpower shortages elsewhere. A manpower shortage translates into a monetary loss incurred in recruiting and training new personnel. If one calculates the loss proportionally for each of the armed services, the cost is significant. In short, in the name of equal opportunity, the armed forces are being forced to absorb the cost of a preventable condition that is particular to women.
Stories of illicit sexual activity in the ranks continue to emanate from forward deployed units, but it should come as no surprise. Men and women have been attracted to each other since the beginning of time. Neither Congress nor the White House can dictate a change in human nature.
Gender integration has negatively impacted morale in both the enlisted ranks and the officer corps. Physical standards have been eroded to accommodate female personnel. There is evidence that some services have adopted unofficial quotas for the promotion of women. Uniformed and civilian leaders have attempted to cover up incidents that reflect negatively upon the gender integration policy. These quotas and cover-ups have understandably eroded confidence in military leadership.
I have served with a number of female military personnel, both officer and enlisted. Their patriotism, dedication, and professionalism are not at issue. What is at issue is whether their overall presence in today’s military enhances or degrades combat readiness. Some proponents of placing women in combat argue that if women desire the job, they have a right to serve. This argument appeals to the cherished American ideals of fair play and equal opportunity: It is a convenient, catchy, but ultimately flawed argument. There is no right to serve in the armed forces and readiness should remain the first priority in granting enlistment. This necessitates performance-oriented discrimination.
With respect to women in combat, effectiveness has ceased to be the primary concern. It is merely one of many considerations to be judged against the concept of equal opportunity.
Skeleton Forces
The decline in military spending is perhaps the most visible division between our national leadership and the armed forces. Celebrating America’s victory in the Cold War and perceiving no immediate foreign threat, our politicians have proclaimed peace throughout the world and have sharply cut defense appropriations in favor of domestic spending. Spending the “peace dividend” became the political focus in the early 1990s. However, it has not been spent without a cost to military readiness and our national security.
While military spending has declined, the tempo of America’s military operations has not. During the 1990s, the military has been deployed for numerous peacekeeping, nation building, and humanitarian goals. Operations have been conducted in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and other regions with a dubious nexus to America’s national interest. These operations, coupled with continued deployments in areas such as Korea and the Persian Gulf, have left the military stretched dangerously thin. Maintenance of ships, aircraft, tanks, and other equipment has suffered. Many personnel, especially in the enlisted ranks, are forced to live in substandard base housing, and increased operational tempos have strained their family lives. On average, military pay remains 13 percent lower than pay for comparable work in the civilian sector. Not surprisingly, retention of highly trained personnel—especially pilots—has become problematic. Military leaders warn of a return to the “hollow military” of the 1970s. Meanwhile, Congress and the administration are debating how to spend huge budget surpluses. Increased military spending is not high on most politicians’ list of priorities.
It should be. The world remains a dangerous place. Communist China is becoming a world superpower bent on retaking democratic Taiwan. The Chinese are developing a naval force to challenge the U.S. Seventh Fleet and have nuclear ballistic missiles capable of striking a defenseless American mainland. Russia remains politically unstable and still possesses most of the offensive firepower of the defunct Soviet Union. Elsewhere, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and India remain volatile hot spots. Proliferation of nuclear and conventional weapons among rogue nations and terrorist organizations is on the increase. In a world such as this, an international economic power like the United States cannot afford to have an underfunded military.
The military’s mission, to protect the national interests and security of the United States, requires that military members live a unique lifestyle centered upon courage, trust, discipline, honesty, obedience, unit cohesion, and the willingness to sacrifice one’s life to complete the mission. Politically expedient decisions, social engineering, relaxed standards of conduct, and budgetary decisions that interfere with those requirements degrade the ability of the military to complete its mission.
Politicians must not treat the uniformed services as just another budget line to be eviscerated when the political mood permits. They have a sworn duty to do otherwise, as the Constitution explicitly directs the Congress to raise and maintain the armed forces and authorizes the president to command them.
Our history is rich with instances in which our national leaders have capably, though not spotlessly, executed their constitutional duties. A review of that history will also reveal that military service is not “just another job,” a fact brought home by the shockingly realistic combat scenes in the film Saving Private Ryan. American infantry and Army Rangers on Normandy’s Omaha Beach were pinned down in the surf under deadly accurate enemy fire. They were no doubt terrified, yet they moved forward and, at a terrible cost, took the beach. What made them rise up and advance into withering German machine gun fire? The simple fact that the success of the invasion required them to achieve their objective. Training, discipline, and personal courage accomplished their task, not the paycheck. The men of Omaha Beach knew it wasn’t just a job. Likewise with the colonial troops at Valley Forge, the men of the 20th Maine atop Gettysburg’s Little Round Top, the crew of the USS Arizona, the survivors of the Bataan Death March, the Marines at Korea’s Chosin Reservoir, any pilot who had the misfortune of checking in at the Hanoi Hilton, and the troops of the First Infantry Division in Desert Storm: They all knew it wasn’t just a job.