BCT Experiences: Military & Civil Relationship

Shifting focus a bit, one thing about Basic Training troubled me, and from what I can tell it isn’t just limited to Basic Training. That is exacerbating attitudes towards civilians, and a greater encroachment of politics among uniformed personnel. This, I believe, is a natural reaction to politically motivated policies being foisted on the Armed Forces during the ‘90s. We live in a push-me, pull-you universe, so some of this is understandable, but still troubling.

Of course, this isn’t exactly new. I’m not someone who believes that partisan politics and the uniform never mixed. It’s a change in degree, rather than a change in kind – but significant none the less. Sometimes people act as if we live in a binary universe rather than an analog one, and either something is or is not, but the degree to which it is prevalent is not significant. But more of something rather than less of that same thing is an important difference, too. Just remember that if you ever have a problem with your bank account, call them up and say tell them that there isn’t as much money in there as you deposited, and they tell you “well, you do have some money in your account, it isn’t empty, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about”.

Here’s what I mean. I could perhaps venture a guess as to the political views of my Drill Sergeants from Fort Leonard Wood in ’87, but it would be little more than a guess. None of them ever made any partisan political comments around us. It is, of course, acceptable for members of the military to have political opinions and even express them – just not in an official capacity, in uniform. Military bloggers, for example. But it isn’t done “in the color of authority”. Or at least that’s how it should be.

However, this time around, on at least two occasions one of my Drill Sergeants said that members of the military shouldn’t vote for Democrats because they always cut budget and pay – among other overtly (not indirectly) partisan political statements he made. My own political views on everything he mentioned didn’t differ that much from what he expressed, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t bother me that a NCO was telling subordinates these things while on duty, in uniform. Similarly, in AIT here a Sergeant at the school instructed a soldier to read the first chapter of a religious text (Christian-based, though not the Bible) after that solder was caught violating one of the rules (he brought a book to class and had it in his cargo pocket – the horror, the horror!). Again, it’s fine for people in the military to be religious, but pushing sectarian religious texts on duty, and ordering soldiers to read sectarian religious texts (for whatever reason) crosses the line.

These are arguably “conservative” violations of proper military etiquette. However, the current Army is not without the flip side of the coin. Several “PC” policies exist. One example from Basic Training sticks out, and that was breaking people down by ethnic group. The Army has had a tradition, since integration in the ‘50s, that we’re not black, white, or brown – we’re all green. However, that is belied by some of the policies. For example, two “Command Sergeant Major’s Surveys” were conducted during Basic Training. Three soldiers from each Platoon in each Company were selected to go before the Battalion CSM and talk about their experiences. The selection process was entirely group-oriented: there had to be one female, one African American, and one other person representing some “group” (and groups obviously categorized in PC/Multicultist terms).

But the most troublesome thing is the attitude towards civilians, which seems worse now than I remember it being. Several of the cadre at B 2/60th said they hated civilians – and clearly meant it. They were not joking. Indeed, the opposite joke was made one time by our Company Commander at one point, who told us our 1st Sergeant loved meeting civilians so be sure to introduce our families to him on graduation day. When the 1st Sergeant had an opportunity to speak to us next, he informed us the commander was joking, that he hated civilians, and went into detail as to why. But the Army defends the society at large, and the fact that most members of the military despise that society cannot be seen as a positive development – even if, arguably, their reasons for doing so are sound ones. I’m not going to go into detail of some of the reasons why members of the military might look down on civilians and the society at large, or whether I agree with them or not, because it’s almost irrelevant. Indeed, one might argue that it would be worse if they are right in despising civilian society, especially insofar as military and civilian cultures continue to diverge. Now, there is no good solution to this problem that I can think of: certainly not the draft. As I’ll go into later, the people coming into the Army as trainees aren’t that different from their peers back home when they arrive.

In large and small ways, many of the current training policies in the Army are in response to political directive rather than prompted by what is most effective in creating a good fighting force. Again, it isn’t exactly a new thing that politics interferes with combat effectiveness – but a growing change in degree can be significant enough to create a change in kind. As it so happens, for example, Jessica Lynch had Basic Training at B 2/60th, the same Company I just completed Basic at. If military skills such as keeping your weapon clean and functional at all times had been stressed more when she was in training, perhaps things would have gone better for her. If basic navigation techniques had been stressed more, perhaps the convoy she was with would not have been lost in the first place. This isn’t just hypothetical “what if” speculation – this is application of the maxim “the more you sweat in peace (during training) the less you bleed in war”.

Discipline was a lot tighter and the training & teaching methods a lot more effective, I must say, back at A 5/10 in 1987. Now, not all of that is due to the way the Army is run now. I also must say that while the people enlisting in the Army these days are, by and large and for the most part, better educated and better equipped, mentally, to be a part of a technological/information age military, they also seem less self-motivated. Of course we had slackers then, and of course there were people who had to be pushed and driven hard. But it seems that, right now, people blow things off a lot more. In some ways, they are “too smart for their own good”. One example of that is a remark I commonly hear in response to “smoking sessions” (motivational/corrective PT – grass drills) – that it’s “all mind games anyhow”, and thus no need to change behavior in response to it. Back in the day, we kept our barracks a lot cleaner without having to be constantly harangued about it, cut threads off our uniforms to look sharp, and the like. We polished copper pipe with brasso in the bathroom and made sinks gleam in the morning by putting baby oil on them – and soldiers didn’t have to be told not to go in there and mess it up during and after cleaning it. Now, they routinely ignore such admonishments and do what they want, and no consequence seems strong enough to deter them from doing their own thing. There are a lot of people who take the “Army of One” slogan to heart in this way.

But this ties in with the fact that they treat us a lot more like children than they did in the past. What do I mean? Well, we’re not allowed to even have asprin or over-the-counter cold medication without it being issued by Sick Call. So you have to go on Sick Call for every little thing, because they don’t trust you with Tylenol. In the past, in Basic, we could have lighters, and used them to burn off dangling strings or heat up kiwi, for instance. But not now. In ’88 when I went to AIT, people who smoked could smoke on break and we were allowed to drink (if of age), even on post at an Enlisted Club. We signed out on pass on Friday and weren’t expected back till Sunday evening. There were also Post passes most weeknights after class. Not anymore: a lot of makework fills the time, and you aren’t permitted to go anywhere without a “battle buddy” – not even across the street, or to talk to the Drill Sergeant in the barracks. Aside: at some AITs on other bases, from what I gather things are still more similar to what I experienced in ’87, at least as far as weekend passes. Were these policies introduced because people act like children, or do people act like perpetual adolescents because that’s how they’re treated? Probably a little of both. I do know that some of them were introduced in reaction to specific events in the recent pass – just like the abhorrent “Zero Tolerance” policies were introduced into many schools, shaping policy for everyone in reaction to statistically insignificant episodes. The problem then is that no one ever takes into account the “Law of Unintended Consequences” – the fact that the policies introduced to “fix” such problems make things in general worse than before.

Which brings up another thing: apparently no one in the Army has learned economic theory, in particular perverse incentives. Take for example the towel display we’re all required to have hanging outside our Wall Lockers. In Basic Training, this was so our towels would air-dry in the open and not get funky. In theory, that’s the reason we have them at AIT as well. However, our towel display is expected to be immaculate at all times: effectively ironed and perfectly aligned. So of course no one uses the towel or wash cloth they have hanging out “to dry” on the outside of their wall locker. That is just a display item: instead, the towels we use get stuffed into the wall locker itself, and can get funky as a result.

But that’s all minor compared with the perverse incentives involved in their reaction to discovery or reporting of wrongdoing. They inflict mass punishment on the entire Company (or, in Basic, the Platoon). So of course, whenever someone wants to report misbehavior for whatever reason (for example, people not pulling their fair share of the load in cleaning the barracks, or even fighting, or smoking, and the like), no one will do so and the “peer pressure” is entirely to not do so, on the grounds that we’ll all get jacked up in consequence.

Now, obviously people shouldn’t be ratted out over every little thing. But even for incorrigible misbehavior and really bad conduct, the method of mass punishment (or, as our Company Commander likes to call it, “team building”) has only managed to create a trainee version of the Mafia code of Omerta. Our Senior Drill Sergeant says he doesn’t understand why this is, why people refuse to report violations, but then he’s a big supporter of mass punishment. So, duh, go figure, eh? But they can’t – or perhaps don’t want to – make the connection. Note that this isn’t just a means of keeping us from reporting things, because it’s how they react to everything regardless of how they learned of it. Perhaps someday someone will have the balls to tell them what the phrase “perverse incentives” means, but I think I’ll give it a pass. You know how that’d go over – like a lead balloon.

This of course also generates cynicism about the rules and everything else, which is rather akin to what policies like “Zero Tolerance” do outside the military as well. So in that sense it’s not unrelated to things in the society at large. Constrictive rules that guarantee that just about everyone will be a violator in some sense at some point is of course detrimental to respect for the Rule of Law. So we get what we have here – which is also reflected in how the Drill Sergeants behave from time to time. For example, at AIT they were directed to retest us in some of the Basic Soldier Skills that we learned at BCT. How did they handle that? Well, the other day right before our Command Inspection, our Drill Sergeant called us into the Day Room, handed out our test sheets, asked us if we knew how to do x, y, and z, and told us to mark ourselves as “GO” on all of them. Just one example of leadership by example in the Army Value of Integrity. Why did they do that? Well, I suspect they were told to retest us in all those things, but not given the equipment and time to do so properly. So it became what it was, a farce and a sham.

I haven’t had as much opportunity to post here at AIT as I initially hoped. Not because we’ve been too busy learning, mind. We actually do about two hours worth of course work per day. The rest of the day is filled with tedium and monotony – detail (pick up every leaf) or time wasting in classroom (but not allowed to do anything semi-productive but personal, like go on the internet and write blog posts or read on what is going on in the world).

I mention that because some have said that what I learn here may save my life. Well, what I learn here may very well help soldiers – that’s what my MOS is all about, and I’m diligent in learning that. But there’s a lot of extraneous “hurry up and wait”, really deliberate wasting of the time of Soldiers in Training that goes on now.

That’s the biggest and most annoying change from what I remembered about AIT in the past vs. what I’m experiencing now: Being treated as a child and having my time wasted isn’t very cool. Especially when if I had only joined a year or two ago, or had joined in the Guard or Reserves, I wouldn’t have been treated as a Soldier in Training having to go through AIT as a newby, but instead been sent here as Permanent Party soldiers are. They do of course have to clean their barracks and the like, but get their evenings and weekends off and are allowed to be adults. There are two of them in our class, receiving the same MOS training under the same conditions we are, but without the pointless B.S. that I mentioned above. Ahh well, it’s only another month of this – then off to Fort Hood, and after that Iraq, where I expect to be doing something meaningful. That’s what it’s all about, and I’m more than willing to get through this part in order to come out on the other side as a contributing member of the greatest Army in human history.

I just wonder if it will remain such if training continues to go down the path it’s currently on, with the problems I’ve mentioned. One might have expected Bush and Rumsfeld to fix some of what was introduced by a very un-military Administration during the ‘90s, but while they are making a number of other reforms to the military, they don’t seem to be touching most of the things that I see as troublesome developments in entry-level training, which are themselves reflections of troublesome developments in society at large (such as an increasing failure to make good judgments regarding the important and the trivial) and in civil/military relationships. The good news is that the militaries of the rest of the world are in even worse shape – my point is we shouldn’t rest on our laurels and believe that everything is just as it should be. Continual examination and improvement should be our goal, so we can retain our preeminence.

Now, I’ve been concentrating on the things I think are wrong and need to be fixed. But by no means is everything negative. More on that in a later post.

Obligatory Post: every good blog post should have at least one link, right? That's a rule, or something - and I've been violating it. Well, here's a link to a book by Samuel Huntington that relates to this topic: Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations.