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thedrifter
11-21-06, 12:59 PM
November 27, 2006
Retired gen.: Quality of troops declining

McCaffrey says DoD must compete economically

By Gordon Lubold
Staff writer

The U.S. military is “in trouble” and can’t sustain itself at the current rate of operations without expanding significantly, says a well-known retired Army general.

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a Vietnam combat veteran and former White House drug czar, also told a crowd of retired military officers Nov. 16 that troop quality is deteriorating and could decline further, despite Pentagon claims to the contrary, if more money is not devoted to recruiting efforts.

“Generally speaking, when you tell me that you think enlisting a 42-year-old grandmother is the right thing to do, you don’t understand what we’re doing,” McCaffrey told an audience in Arlington, Va., at a conference sponsored by National Defense University and the Military Officers Association of America.

“What we need isn’t a career military; we need 19-year-old boys and girls in good health to carry guns and fight,” he said.

The retired general, who identifies himself as “intensely nonpartisan,” is a frequent critic of the Pentagon and the Bush administration’s handling of the war, and points out concerns about equipment shortfalls and overstretching the force.

He believes much stronger appeals must be made to Americans to serve and fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the public, and its political leaders, have failed to grasp the concept, he said.

“We need combat troops to come join us and defend the country,” he said.

McCaffrey fears the Defense Department is lowering its standards on recruits, but Pentagon officials disagree.

They recently touted the fact that the services met their active-duty recruiting goals this past year despite a “more difficult, more challenging environment,” and said they did it without changing standards.

Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, Army deputy chief of staff for human resources and a former chief of Army Recruiting Command, who also spoke at the conference, blamed the “liberal media” for portraying the quality of the current generation of service members in a negative light.

“There are other opinion leaders who would cast aspersions on it, but I’m here to tell you that it’s a magnificent force,” Rochelle said. “They’re not only serving quite honorably, but by every measure of quality, economic strata from which they come, certainly patriotism, and even education and aptitude — marvelous.”

Fewer high school grads

Still, the percentage of Army recruits with high school diplomas unquestionably has decreased. In fiscal 2006, only 81 percent of the Army’s recruits were high school graduates, down 6 percentage points from the previous year and the service’s worst showing by far over the past two decades.

And while the Army still meets Defense Department standards for the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery — no more than 40 percent of recruits scoring in the two lowest categories of the exam — the Army didn’t meet its own internal standard in fiscal 2006.

Aside from the issue of standards, McCaffrey said he believes the Defense Department still is not competitive when compared to the kind of money contractors in Iraq can earn.

“We’ve got to go out and compete in the economic marketplace. I want to see a more realistic view of economic incentives, base pay, targeted on people we want to get in,” he said.

Bernard Rostker, a former Pentagon personnel chief, agreed. Rostker, who recently completed a book titled “I Want You: The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force,” said money talks.

“It’s the only way you’re going to get people to come in,” he said in an interview Nov. 16. “And it works.”

Rostker, who was not at the conference, said the Pentagon may have to revamp its recruiting incentives in the short term.

The question posed at the conference was: “What is the future of the all-volunteer force? And, by extension, is a draft necessary to sustain the force levels required?”

McCaffrey believes the Marine Corps must grow by 25,000 and the Army by 80,000. The Coast Guard, Border Patrol and National Guard also must expand, he said.

Doing so through a military draft, however, is “off the table,” McCaffrey noted, which makes the issue a matter of providing the resources — dollars and political will — to get it done.

“There won’t be a draft, period, until the country’s survival is at stake,” he said.

Ellie