Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

or war, for moral reasons beyond argument. For the rest of this I will try to keep

my personal feelings out of the discussion-as I did in

the rosy picture painted above. I reported facts, not my emotions.

I will not review details showing that the USSR is today militarily stronger

than we are as the matter has been discussed endlessly in news media, in Congress,

and in professional journals. The public discussion today concedes the military

superiority of the USSR and centers on how much they are ahead of us, and what

should be done about it. The details of this debate are of supreme importance as the

most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but

not good enough to win. At the moment the three-cornered standoff is saving us from

that silly way to die . . . but I cannot predict how long this stalemate will last

as key factors are not under our control, and neither our government nor our

citizens seem willing to accept guns instead of butter on the scale required to make

us too strong for anyone to risk attacking us. Polls seem to show that a controlling

number of voters think that we are already spending too much on our Armed Forces.

What I set forth below comes primarily from an article by Richard A.

Gabriel, Associate Professor of Politics, St. Anselm’s College, Manchester, New

Hampshire, author of CRISIS IN COMMAND. I lack personal experience with Army

conditions today but what Dr. Gabriel says about them matches what I have heard from

other sources and what I have read (I belong to all three associations-Army, Navy,

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Air Force-plus the Naval Institute and the Retired Officers Association; I get much

data secondhand but no longer see it with my own eyes, hear it with my own ears).

Readers with personal experience in Korea, Viet Nam, and in the Services

anywhere since the end of the Viet Nam debacle, I urge to write and tell me what you

know that I don’t, especially on points in which I am seriously mistaken.

Summarized from “The Slow Dying of the Amencan

Army,” Dr. Richard A. Gabriel in Gallery magazine, June 1979, p.41 et seq.:

Concerning the All Volunteer Force (AVF): Early this year the Pentagon

admitted that all services had failed to meet quotas.

30% of all Army volunteers are discharged for offenses during first

enlistment. Of the 70 per 100 left, 26 do not reenlist. The desertion rates are the

highest in history. . . and this fact is partly covered up by using administrative

discharges (-i.e., “You’re fired!”) rather than courts martial and punishment-if the

deserter turns up. But no effort is made to find him.

According to Dr. Gabriel, citing General George S. Blanchard and others,

hard-drug use (heroin, cocaine, angel dust-not marijuana) is greater than ever,

especially in Europe, with estimates from a low of 10% to a high of 64%. Marijuana

is ignored-but let me add that a man stoned out of his mind on grass is not one I

want on my flank in combat.

Category 3B and 4 (ranging down from dull to mentally retarded) make up 59%

of Army volunteers.. . in a day when privates handle very complex and sophisticated

weapons and machinery. Add to this that the mix is changing so that a typical

private might be Chicano or Puerto Rican, the typical sergeant a Black, the typical

officer “Anglo.” And that officers are transferred with great frequency and enlisted

men with considerable frequency and you have a situation in which esprit de corps

cannot be developed (an outfit without esprit de corps is not an army unit; it is an

armed mob-R.A.H.).

Today we have more general officers than we did in World War Two. Our ratio

of officers to enlisted men is more than twice as high as that of successful armies

in the past. But an officer is not with his troops long enough to be “the Old

Man”-he is a “manager,” not a leader of men.

Dr. Gabriel concludes: “The most basic aspect is the need to reinstate the

draft.”

I disagree.

My disagreement is not on moral grounds. Forget that I ever voiced