Our New Military for the New Millennium
By Gordon Cucullu
Somewhere, a True Believer is planning to kill you. He is training with minimum food or water, in austere conditions, day and night. The only thing clean on him is his weapon. He doesn’t worry about what workout to do. His rucksack weighs what it weighs, and he runs until the enemy stops chasing him.
The True Believer doesn’t care “how hard it is”; he knows he either wins or he dies. He doesn’t go home at 1700 hours; he is home. He knows only the Cause.
Now, who wants to quit?
—From the indoctrination lecture at the U.S. Army Special Forces School
The fanatical true believers who used to constitute the peculiar enemies of our Special Forces operators are now the main enemy faced by everyday American soldiers and Marines on the front lines of today’s war on terror. To cope with these dangerous and dogged foes, our military has had to adapt. Nimbleness, discriminating intelligence, flexibility, and speed are now at a premium.
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that since 9/11, America has had to build a new military to battle a new foe. So how are we doing?
My answer: surprisingly well.
One reason for this: Our fighting forces have been transforming themselves in dramatic ways for more than a
generation now.
Leaving behind Vietnam
Our military is discussed in very different—and more positive—ways than it was a generation ago when I entered the Army. We still hear plenty of old criticisms and disparagement in some quarters—lumping servicemembers into a category of misfits, fugitives from the law, and anti-social losers. But there is also much support for the military today. Yellow ribbons urging fellow citizens to “support our troops” have sprouted on bumpers everywhere. A commercial applauding soldiers even ran during the Super Bowl. That never happened during the Vietnam War.
Do the math and you’ll discover something interesting: We are now further from the end of the Vietnam War (April 1975) than 1975-era Americans were from the end of World War II (August 1945). For most younger Americans today, Vietnam is a fuzzy abstraction distant in history. For a lot of them, even the first Gulf War seems ancient.
Unfortunately, the media and our college faculty continue to be obsessed with Vietnam. The carefully constructed and deliberately promulgated myths of American futility and cruelty (and the despicable character assassination of the veterans who fought there) continue to be the accepted reality among many elites. Partly as a result, any current conflict involving U.S. forces inevitably ends up referred to as “another Vietnam.” All it takes sometimes is a flat tire on a supply truck, a sandstorm, or an ugly terrorist attack, and many Baby Boomers ritualistically start crying “quagmire.” The ability to draw appropriate lessons from today’s very different experiences seems to have been lost on this narcissistic generation.
While the Vietnam vets were demonized, the men who fought in World War II have been lionized as “the greatest generation.” But that legend is not a complete reality either. Americans like to think of their country’s experience during this war as one of total national commitment, valor, honor, and sacrifice, with every American doing his or her part. The dark side of the experience—the draft dodging, the profiteering, military
mistakes, the appalling casualties because of poor leadership, bad equipment, and misguided political decisions—are now forgotten in rosy hindsight, or mentally papered over.
Of course we should hold the WWII generation in the highest esteem. But it is an historical error to put their war experiences in a different category than the war experiences of other fighting Americans. We must look at all of our wars as they really were, not as we wish they had been. To do otherwise is to make a cartoon of history—and to set up unrealistic expectations of how soldiers should operate and wars should proceed today in our own time. If one looks with steelier eyes, as I have suggested, one of the first things that will be noticed, happily, is that today’s American military compares favorably to any preceding versions.
The U.S. Army of 2005 is a far cry from the institution of the 1960s and 1970s. Our troops today have communications capabilities that seem magical to those of us who were dependent on hand and arm signals and fickle, highly degradable FM radios. Our soldiers are also cats in the dark, thanks to night vision devices. They can find out exactly where they are—and tell artillery and air support their precise location—thanks to hand-held GPS systems that take the worry out of map reading. As a result of all of this, friendly-fire casualties, always one of war’s cruelest penalties, are considerably rarer than in any earlier conflict.
Today’s troops use laptops and computer-assisted devices to acquire and disseminate intelligence. They have flying drones that not only spot the enemy, but occasionally engage and kill him. Their body armor and other protective gear is light-years better than anything previously known. And, for all the complaining that troops are bound to indulge in, today’s G.I.s have much better chow and living facilities.
Nevertheless, it is somewhat reassuring to those of us with more gray than black in our hair to note that for all of the improved technology and services, it is still the courage of young men with smelly armpits, undaunted courage, and a will superior to the enemy’s that bring us our victories on the battlefield. There are some things that haven’t changed since Alexander fought battles with Persians over some of the same ground our troops defend today. U.S. soldiers even rode horses into combat in Afghanistan.
Today’s G.I.s and Marines shot it out eyeball-to-eyeball in the battle over Fallujah. Anyone who fought door-to-door in Europe, the Pacific, Korea, or Vietnam could instantly share the intensity of the experience. The combat realities of bravery, sacrifice, courage, pain, dirt, comradeship, elation, and exhaustion transcend all time and technology.
Ditching the draft
Of the things that do change in war, the factors far more important than gadgetry have been the sweeping cultural developments that have taken place in the U.S. military. Between 1940 and 1973, our Army relied on a system of national conscription. The draft produced some positives: It forced many young men to leave their comfort zones, mix with other Americans very different from themselves, and visit places in the country and the world to which they would never have ventured otherwise. By the mere act of completing military training, those generations learned much about themselves, and gained a respect for discipline, results, and endurance.
But, contrary to popular belief, many Americans actively resisted participation in the Second World War. It was true that in the days following Pearl Harbor men lined up in droves to volunteer for military service; in some cases entire high school classes enlisted. But as time wore on and casualties mounted, the draft dug deeper and deeper into society. Eventually, even the Marine Corps, with its proud volunteer tradition, needed conscripts to fill its ranks. Many men evaded, cheated, or got married quickly to avoid service.
People argue that the difference between recent wars and previous conflicts is that the public more firmly backed those older, “good” wars. That selective reading of history ignores the fact that 6,000 Americans went to jail as war resisters during World War II. When the relatively unpopular Korean War followed on the heels of WWII, discomfort with the draft grew. But it took Vietnam to bring dissatisfaction to the point of ignition.
During the Vietnam War, a major cause of college campus unrest was the simple fear of young men that they would be called to risky service. Many young women demonstrated against the war purely because they worried about the safety of their boyfriends. When President Nixon announced the end of the draft, campus protests virtually ceased. This was dramatic proof that, as many of us suspected at the time, the anti-war agitation was less one of high moral indignation than of keeping one’s own rear end far away from those nasty Viet Cong.
But the anti-war movement’s deliberate lies and exaggerations about Vietnam, and about the men who served there, scarred our veterans permanently. The Vietnam War is an albatross that the media have successfully hung around the neck of the U.S. military. Try as it may, even today’s Army is burdened with the Vietnam inheritance. Just a few days into the war in Iraq, as our Marines and Third Infantry Division soldiers raced up the Tigris- Euphrates valley at record pace, annihilating Iraqi forces in their way, the agitated producers and anchors in the newsroom in which I served as an analyst fretted openly that Iraq was “becoming another Vietnam.” When I said on air that our forces were winning, they corralled me. “That word implies something,” they said darkly, refusing to allow me to say “winning.”
It is true that our military made some serious mistakes in Vietnam. Some were internally generated; many were forced on it by wrong-headed political decisions. One of the most serious events was the abrupt succession of Lyndon Johnson to the Presidency while the entire U.S. policy and strategy concerning Vietnam was in flux. The Kennedy assassination had deep ramifications that historians have yet to perceive.
Johnson didn’t communicate the political objectives in Vietnam adequately. Never did he actually tell Americans what was required to win. Nor did he issue a call to arms to the nation. He flatly denied the Pentagon’s request to use National Guard and Reserve forces because he so desperately wanted to avoid upsetting his political base. Johnson refused to acknowledge that the demands of the war should slow the avalanche of social programs with which he intended to define his Presidency.
The Army tried desperately to fill our troop requirements in Vietnam with conscript forces, many of them trained and led poorly. Some troops were sent into combat with a scant four months of basic infantry training. Officers were processed through Officer Candidate School at record rates, and the insatiable demand of the war guaranteed that commanders pushed through many who ought not to have been commissioned. The policy of individual rather than unit rotation, a bad idea left over from the Korean War era, destroyed unit integrity and changed the fundamental dynamic that welds men into effective fighting forces: the cohesion of a group in something together. Our men were not “bands of brothers,” but individuals more concerned with when their 365-day tour would be complete than with victory over the enemy, mission accomplishment, or loyalty to their buddies. The very core principle of the combat Army was deeply eroded.
In the Vietnam-era Army, a strange sense of entitlement was held by many ranking officers, and had spread through the officer corps. Some of this mentality probably started in our post-World War II occupation forces, who became a kind of royalty. The concept of privilege reached bizarre proportions in Korea, as headquarters just behind the fighting lines competed with each other in absurd displays of luxury. Cloth-covered tables, Noritake china, Korean servants, and painted rocks around command buildings contrasted sharply with primitive infantry life on the front lines just over the next ridge.
When some of these same behaviors surfaced in Vietnam there were some egregious excesses. Luxury villas, dissolute living, and an open disdain for the bush soldier characterized certain chair-borne staff and commanders. Muddy-booted troops fighting the enemy in the jungles resented these rear-echelon grandees.
A new Army
From the mistakes of Vietnam came a military generation determined to correct the faults. Before the ink was even dry on the Paris Accords, we were already in the midst of restructuring the U.S. Army. By 1973, draft laws were repealed and the painful process of rebuilding began.
Altering the mindset at our training centers was the first challenge. Until that time drill sergeants were rated by how many troops they were able to push through the process and out the other end. Now they were told to change the culture: They were to set and enforce standards so that only the best could make the cut. This was initially difficult to enforce.
Attitudes began to modify in earnest when NCOs were told to assume that at the conclusion of their training they would deploy with the unit into a potential combat situation. Our soldiers began to evaluate seriously who they wanted in fighting positions beside them. Rejection rates skyrocketed; standards rose.
Soldiers and officers went to work to solve problems, rather than pretending they didn’t exist. One of the post-Vietnam challenges was to integrate the National Guard and Reserves properly with our active units. In the future we would go to war together. By the late 1970s the changes were apparent.
When our new all-volunteer, higher-standard Army fought in Panama and the first Gulf War, the difference in troop quality and command was immediately evident. It helped enormously that America’s commanders at the national level were willing simply to issue broad mission orders (“liberate Kuwait”), while leaving it to subordinate commanders to figure out how best to accomplish each mission. Professionalism at all levels was the watchword.
Today the Army is still undergoing changes. This is natural, necessary, and a sign that consummate professionals now lead the institution. They realize that lack of flexibility can bring deadly results on rapidly changing battlefields. So individual initiative is now encouraged. There are elaborate and far-reaching processes for constant assessment and internal criticism. After-action sessions spread lessons learned across boundaries.
Few individuals on active duty today can recall the days of conscription. Virtually all soldiers now have a high school diploma or higher. And re-education and training are constant.
In previous decades, our military’s “tooth-to-tail ratio” (number of support troops standing behind every combat soldier) was insanely disproportionate. In Vietnam there were about 25 uniformed support soldiers for every fighting man. When someone says “I was in Vietnam,” that doesn’t usually mean he fought there.
Today that ratio is sharply lower, in large part because non-military functions have been hired out to civilian contractors. Food service, camp construction and maintenance, transportation, engineering, and other tasks can easily be performed by civilians at a more efficient cost. And this lets the Army move troops from serving on the chow line and put them behind a trigger.
In today’s Army, individual rotation is rare. Units come in together and leave together. This seemingly simple change has taken two generations to become fixed policy, but what group rotation does to training, morale, and effectiveness cannot be overstated: When the shooting starts, the shared bond that makes men perform feats they otherwise think impossible is the cohesion of an established combat unit.
Different—and better
Our modern soldiers also interact infinitely more effectively and humanely with civilian populations than did any of their forefathers. Today’s reporting would have you think that rogue behavior among U.S. troopers is common, but it is, in fact, at historic lows. Within weeks after the Normandy invasion, numerous soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, one of America’s finest units, were charged with looting, rape, and assault. In today’s Army, it is because such behavior is so rare that the aberrations are blown out of all reasonable proportion in the media drumbeat (especially by those who seek to criticize soldiers for their own reasons).
Were I to address our troops today, I would say how proud Americans are of them, and how much we support their mission. And I would tell them—as a member of the previous generation of U.S. soldiers—that through their hard work, dedication, and sacrifice, they have now become the Army we so desperately wanted to be.
Former Special Forces lieutenant colonel Gordon Cucullu served in the U.S. Army for 20 years. He is author of Separated at Birth: How North Korea Became the Evil Twin.
