Well this isn't fun.
Saddam’s two kids are reported to have been killed in a gunfight. The 101st, cornered them in a house with two accomplices after being led there by a soon to be rich informant. The shootout lasted six hours, and apparently ended with a missile through the roof. Sorry, but I don’t get this. The butt-kicking 101st held off for six hours by four guys in a house? In Vegas the oddsmakers would probably have given them five to ten minutes tops.

I hope this isn’t a sign of a kinder, gentler army but it may be. Considering the Army is on a feel-good campaign we may not be getting warriors in olive drab. For example- the black beret had always been the headgear of the Rangers, an elite outfit. The black beret was made General Issue for morale purposes. What once symbolized excellence is now nothing more than a tool to make the troops feel cool, and maybe get a few recruits who want to impress the chicks.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that unit élan doesn’t come from handing out berets, it comes from training them to the point they know they’re special. It comes from shared adversity. Current training is a joke.

Instead of hardcore troops we’re getting soldiers who have undergone self-esteem classes but can’t shoot straight (you may not have heard of it, but it’s an Army scandal). If they trained them to a razor’s edge the self-esteem would take care of itself. In a firefight self-esteem classes don’t keep you alive, good training does, and that starts with being able to shoot straight.

The Army’s current promotion doesn’t make sense either- An Army of One. What kind of crap is that? An Army of One is fine if you’re Stallone playing Rambo, but in reality what keeps you alive is your buddies. The Army plays with real bullets; they should not be playing Hollywood.

I can almost here the war movie- the grizzled old sergeant yells, “Reynolds, take your Army of One and go check the left flank.” Reynolds is shaking in his boots because even though he aced self-esteem class and made corporal he knows he was pencil-whipped on the shooting range. He says truthfully, “Sarge, this Army of One isn’t big enough to do it by itself.” The sergeant grimaces and says, “Alright, take the Kowalski Army and the Preston Army with you.”

That wasn’t worth the effort to write or read, but I didn’t delete it anyway.

Part of the problem is that the military is seen as a refuge for hawks and terminal losers. That shouldn’t be the case, especially after 9/11. Remember 9/11? For months afterwards there was a groundswell of patriotic fervor. Everybody had a flag, or two, on their car. Those A-rabs weren’t going to beat us, uh uh, we were flying flags. Ever day the streets looked like another parade. Did anybody actually do anything? Besides kicking the crap out of Iraq and offending the Germans and French? Did military enlistments go up? No. The military is still struggling to get people and keep them.

Having an all-volunteer Army is a nice idea. But just to get some of the best and brightest in to play, and let everybody have some sense of civic duty and awareness of what is at stake, maybe everybody should serve two years. The military would have the luxury of discharging the unfit. It would be good for the health of the country, and just think of the money to be saved on the ad campaigns.
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