Quality or Quantity?

For those of you that don't believe that the Army's end strength is not an issue these days, note SecDef Rumsfeld's latest great idea - drop professional military education for officers. Fortunately, some (unnamed) senior military leadership disagrees, and with good reason.

"Let's come up with some options how we might shorten professional military education or abbreviate it during stress periods," Mr. Rumsfeld wrote in a short memo marked "for official use only." It went only to Gen. Myers and David Chu, defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness.
    Mr. Rumsfeld's proposal is meeting with resistance among the uniformed military.
    "We've done this before, but on a case-by-case basis," one officer said. "We've had other requests [during the Iraq war] that we've turned down."

Yeah, turning out quality officers can really be inconvenient during "stress periods." Other military officials defend this option, stating that some battlefield experiences are "better than anything they will get in a classroom." Of course, the grading curve in the classroom is a bit more forgiving than in Fallujah.

Max Boot has got a unique solution to the recruiting shortages: hire foreigners to defend and advance freedom across the world. Not mercenaries - this is a multinational force under U.S. command, for those less-than-critical national security concerns that call for unilateral interdictions. It would save the military on recruiting budgets and lessen that public scrutiny on U.S. service members killed in overseas conflicts. Costs less AND less filling!

David Holiday discusses this issue and notes other recruiting attempts.

Comments

[Ian Kaplan]

> Max Boot has got a unique solution to the recruiting shortages: hire foreigners to defend and advance freedom across the world. Not mercenaries - this is a multinational force under U.S. command, for those less-than-critical national security concerns that call for unilateral interdictions. It would save the military on recruiting budgets and lessen that public scrutiny on U.S. service members killed in overseas conflicts. Costs less AND less filling!

Of course this is already happening. There
is a fairly large contingent of Nepalanese
Gurkas in Iraq, along with various other
mercenaries: South Africans, ex-military
from Eastern Europe. These mercenaries
and other "service" personnel are already
filling military roles that do not directly
involve combat. And what's even better from
the Pentagon point of view is that their
deaths don't seem to be reported. Or at
least they are poorly remembered. While the
press reports that there are something like
1,400 military fatalaties in Iraq, I have yet
to see a total for "contractors". The
mercenary outfits probably don't talk on
record to the press much and don't report
how many of their employees die.

The use of "contractors" for "security" is
reflected in the spending on reconstruction.
Perhaps what Mr. Boot (ex-Wall Street Journal
zealot that he is) is advocating is having
foreigners join the US military and collect
military pay, which is considerably lower
than what is paid mercenaries in many cases.

[J.]

I had no idea. Don't really see any of those kind of stories in the press, that's for sure.