Recruitment Is Down; Reenlistment Up. Why?

Everyone knows recruitment is down dramatically despite lowered standards. High school dropout? No problem. Got a record? We'll deal with it. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. But reenlistment is holding steady and even exceeding expectations. That's a dramatic switch from Vietnam when reenlistment followed recruitment in a race to the bottom. Some on the far right argue that since reenlistment is up that the soldiers must know something we don't and that things are actually going much better than it appears in Iraq. See, Iraq isn't Vietnam.

Well, I didn't buy that but I have been puzzling over the reasons why reenlistment remains relatively strong. Then the rather obvious answer struck me: this is their job. These soldiers are lifers, devoted to a career in the military. Walking away from it is a dramatic and scary switch from a track in life that is laid out and clear -- the very thing that appeals to many of them about the military.

David M. Kennedy wrote an op-ed in the NYT on July 25 pointing out that for all intents and purposes, our military is now composed of paid mercenaries. He went to great pains to make clear this was not pejorative -- anymore than people who take on the dangerous and important tasks of policeman or fireman are somehow diminished by acknowledging that it's their job as well as a calling. (And everyone recognizes it's a calling other people don't hear because it is dangerous and demanding. That's why we respect them.) Kennedy was warning about the dangers of letting a very small group of people take most of the burden of war upon them. If we're at war, all our lives should be impacted. That's clearly not the case now and that makes war all the more tempting for our leaders and too easy for the rest of us to let the fighting recede into the background.

But back to reenlistment. In Vietnam and Korea and World War II, most of the people who were drafted did their stint and then went home. (In WW II, that was after victory, of course; Iraq's "victory" per Bush came ages ago.) They were schoolteachers and mechanics and lawyers and businessmen. Some of them presumably felt drawn to a life in the military they hadn't considered before, but most went back home and got on with their lives.

Iraq is the first drawn-out conflict in modern times for which no one has been officially drafted. The soldiers bravely fighting overseas are lifers devoted to this career. It is their job. It is their world. Not reenlisting would mean abandoning this and starting something new they may be ill-prepared to face. Is it any surprise they're reluctant to do so? Back in Vietnam and Korea, not reenlisting meant getting on with your life, not abandoning it.

So it's no surprise soldiers are reenlisting -- they are devoted to a career in the military and devoted to protecting and defending this country. They don't get to choose where they're sent or why -- all they can do is follow orders and behave honorably. The fact that they haven't abandoned their career is not a vote of confidence in the way this war has been waged or the equipment and support often lacking for the them. It's just who they are.

If there was a draft and most of the military was composed of recruits who had no intention of making it a career, you can be certain reenlistment would be racing to the bottom, just like recruitment.

NOTE: Here's a better link to that full NYT op-ed on our army. Thanks to threader Huge Seagull for this.