Baby-Faced Soldier

I traveled through the Dallas-Fort Worth (Texas) airport recently.  Because it is a major hub, there are lots of people moving through the airport.  Still, I noticed that a number of the travelers were servicemen and women.  I've seen them before in my travels, but what struck me this time was how incredibly young they all appear.

The obvious youth of one young airman in particular, really grabbed my attention.  He looked like a child, not old enough to shave, certainly not old enough to be in the military.  As I watched him walk past, I realized that he probably isn't more than a year or two older than my teenaged son.  Are we really sending babies off to defend our country?

According to the Defense Manpower Data Center, of the nearly 1.4 million serving in the US armed forces, almost 1 in 5 are between the ages of 18 and 21. Barely old enough to vote and not old enough to buy a beer, these kids have sworn to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”.

Enemies come in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds.  It seems not too long ago, an enemy was easy to identify.  In war, he wore a uniform and was a member of the adversary’s armed forces.  But I wonder who today’s serviceman’s biggest enemy is; the one who holds the bullets or the one who controls the budgets?

After the First World War, the size of the US military dwindled through budget cuts and isolationist foreign policies that assumed diplomacy and negotiation would solve all grievances and avoid armed conflict.  Such policies allowed aggressors such as Germany, Italy, and Japan to violate standing treaties and invade Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, and Manchuria without fear of armed conflict.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the US military ranked behind Bulgaria’s and Romania’s militaries in size.  When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the US forces in the Philippines were still armed and supplied with World War I-era equipment.   Thanks in large part to the industrial might of America and the American armed forces, the Allies triumphed over the Axis powers.  But the cost was an average of 416 American lives lost per day during the nearly four years of combat.

The invasion of South Korea by the North Korean army in June, 1950 caught the US by surprise and by August, 1950, US and South Korean forces had nearly been pushed into the sea at Pusan by North Korean forces.  Chinese intervention in October, 1950 again caught US and United Nations (UN) forces by surprise.    US and UN forces were nearly overwhelmed and President Truman declared a national emergency, resulting in the activation of National Guard and military reserve units to fight in Korea.  After two years of stalemate fighting along and around the 38^th parallel, North and South Korea agreed to an armistice.  Taking three years to fight-to-a-draw cost US forces 45 lives per day.

The Vietnam War experience, for servicemen, could best be summed up by the quote,” We the Unwilling, Led by the Unqualified, Are doing the Impossible, For the Ungrateful”.  President Johnson escalated the US involvement in Vietnam, aided by a Congress willing to give him unilateral power to conduct full-scale war based on an alleged second attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.  Unclear objectives, underestimation of the enemy, loss of public support at home, and military decisions made by politicians in Washington instead of military commanders on scene led to over 58,000 deaths.  In spite of the scores who served in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese captured Saigon in April 1975 and the South Vietnamese government collapsed.  The US policy of containing communism in Indochina failed because of poor leadership at the highest levels.

 In response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US, we have been involved in a global war on terror.  Although our troops are no longer actively engaged in combat in Iraq, we still have troops in combat in Afghanistan.  Since 2011, we lost over 6,000 lives and nearly 42,000 were wounded.  Yet, The Heritage Foundation reports that, because of decisions by Congress and Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, much of the equipment used by military personnel, such as armored personnel carriers, helicopters, and tactical aircraft, are older than the servicemen and women who use them.

In September, 2012, the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked and four members of the diplomatic mission were killed.  An investigation report on the attack declared "Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department ... resulted in a special mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place."

As part of the debt ceiling crisis fiasco in 2011, the White House suggested a compulsory set of budget cuts that would go into effect if Congress failed to produce deficit reduction legislation totaling $1.2 trillion in cuts.  These cuts, known as the “sequester” and scheduled to begin on March 1, 2013, reduce the federal budget by $85 billion.  Half of the reduction comes from cuts in defense spending and half comes from cuts in nondefense, discretionary spending.

The Wall Street Journal points out the defense budget is less than 20% of the federal budget, but absorbs half the sequester cuts.  The Journal also points out that from 2008-2013, defense spending increased 11%, but over the same time period, total nondefense discretionary spending increased by 16.6 %.  That 16.6% includes an increase in Department of Transportation, for example, spending by 66.8% over the same time period.

Many presidents in US history have sent soldiers into battle and political decisions have cost soldiers’ lives.  We should know better.  Yet, it appears that Obama is more than willing to play politics with the military to try and force Republicans to raise taxes.  As The Wall Street Journal, says, “This fits Mr. Obama's evident plan to raid the military to pay for social programs like ObamaCare.”

While this round of cuts will not affect the number of troop deployments or troop paychecks, there is no certainty that the President and Congress won’t do so in the future.  But upgrades to military hardware and research and development of new technologies will be cut—those technologies intended to protect our soldiers in the field.   If we are willing to send baby-faced soldiers to defend the United States, we should not allow leaders to play politics with the support and welfare of our armed forces.  Nor should we elect officials who are willing to do so.  Our servicemen and women deserve so much better.