[August 28, 2016] Army Vet writes for us today that the U.S. Army is EMBARRASSED by the choices that its junior Officers are making in their own self interests.
I first noticed it as a junior in college. Each of us in my Army ROTC1 class at Penn State University were anxious to select which branch each of us would go into. The same was happening for my friends in Navy and Air Force ROTC. For the U.S. Army the most prestigious branches are and have always been the Combat Arms (Infantry, Armor, and Artillery). While the needs of the Army may supersede our choice, at least our wishes are considered. What the military has discovered is that there are patterns to this self-selection process and it is an embarrassment to the politically correct establishment.
Everyone of us noticed that some identifiable groups avoided the Combat Arms branches; primarily racial minorities and those who grew up in large cities. To my knowledge, no one pressured anyone to ask for any specific branch but the Combat Arms were where the action was and where the promotions were most likely to be found. Anyone studying history knows that senior General Officers come almost exclusively from the Combat Arms. And, as expected, the most competitive were the Combat Arms branches. To be selected you didn’t have to be the smartest (actually the smartest officers went to the Engineer and Intelligence branches) or physically strongest but it helped. What really mattered was that you really truly had to want it, you had to tell the ROTC staff about your choice, and show it. I selected Infantry.
The American political establishment preaches to us that diversity is the way to make us a better society but there is this underlying, deeply held desire that everyone of every racial, gender, religious, etc. make-up be equally represented across all parts of society. The fact that this is not the case has been a thorn in the side of our top military brass for more than a decade (and in the side of senior politicians everywhere). Remember that the U.S. Army is a politically-directed bureaucracy and the bureaucrats keep a close eye on every conceivable variation in its socially defined groups.
When I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Infantry, no one cared much about doing anything about it. Sure, there was some encouragement given to African Americans and Hispanics about getting into the Combat Arms … that was it. It might have seemed a little odd to the big brass in Washington at the Pentagon where things like this mattered although we never got an indication something was amiss. Then the 1990s happened and that all changed. The self-selection that had occurred in earlier years to satisfy our individual desires was now something to be frowned upon.
The U.S. Army jumped started a number of programs to direct minorities into the Combat Arms. It was seen as the “right thing to do.” How that came about is anyone’s guess but I always suspected it was some politically-correct senior civilian with the ear of some senior brass knucklehead. Then came the election of Barack Obama. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan had been largely successful by that time and, I think as a consequence, Obama’s team wanted to tinker with the military and make it more socially acceptable. That always seems to be the modus operandi of politicians; when things are going well, do something to mess it up.
Unofficially, quotas were established in the U.S. Army to bring racial minorities into the Combat Arms. What happened was that a number of newly minted lieutenants lacked the passion and motivation to be in the Infantry, Armor, or Artillery and their performance suffered. The assumption was that somehow these men were being discriminated against. But there is a simpler explanation … they didn’t want to be there. There was no passion to be an Infantryman and if you’re not really motivated to do well … you’re out.
Alas, with the current Secretary of the Army, more social experimentation is going on as I write this. He wants women in the Combat Arms (previously prohibited by Congressional mandate). We’ll see how well that goes. But I can tell you that the vast majority of women don’t want to be an Infantryman any more than the average person off the street does; self-selection in action. And when the motivation is lacking, their performance will suffer and politicians will blame us.
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- ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps). ROTC is a group of college-based officer training programs for generating commissioned officers into the U.S. Armed Forces. The Army ROTC program is the oldest and most popular. Those who graduate college from the ROTC program make up a little under 40% of the total newly commissioned U.S. Army officers. See: http://www.goarmy.com/rotc/ways-to-attend.html