Debunking military myths

Boy on a Bike has an updated post about the Soldiers podcast on Counterpoint. In his post he discusses the continuing fallacy that the military is almost exclusively recruited from the working class. I agree with him on that point. In my decade and a half of experience, most soldiers are from middle class families. Most are educated to at least Year 10, and a significant proportion to Year 12. There are also quite a number with tertiary qualifications, and not just in the commissioned ranks either. It is not unusual for an officer to have fewer academic qualifications than some of his subordinates. Whilst there is some acceptance in the wider community that this is true of the ADF, there persists the perception that the US Army is made up of the poorest of America’s citizens who view the military as a way out of squalor and poverty. This is true in some cases. Information is publicly available from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank in the US, that refutes the belief that the US Army is primarily recruited from lower income brackets. This graph shows a breakdown of the neighbourhoods that US soldiers are recruited from. It clearly shows that the lowest income bracket neighbourhoods contribute 11%, whereas 25% come from the wealthiest. The graph also shows a progressive rise in the number of recruits as the income bracket goes up.

But what does that information mean? It fairly comprehensively refutes the myth that military service is a last resort for people unable to forge a career in other areas, as well as the myth that it is primarily made up of people who see it as their only avenue of escape from abject poverty. It means that there is something else that draws young people of all backgrounds to service. Are they just too stupid, despite their family’s wealth, to have any other career? This graph would suggest otherwise. It shows enlisted recruits outperforming their civilian counterparts in the qualifying testing than their civilian counterparts in all but the highest and lowest brackets. It should be noted that 20% of the civilians tested scored in the lowest bracket, but the military representation is exactly 0%, although it probably indicates a recruiting standard more than anything else. Is the US military exploiting minority groups to attain recruiting targets? Quite simply no, this graph breaks down the percentage of recruits by identified racial group as a proportion of the whole US population. Variances between the two figures are minor, with the exception of Native American/Alaskan, which is nearly three times the general population. That is an interesting statistic.

All this ties in with an argument I’ve been having with a former Australian National Serviceman, about motivations for soldiers in combat. The data indicates that a vast majority of military personnel have alternatives to military service. This means that they have chosen the military, not out of desperation, but out of a sense of duty, or pride, or morality, or honour, or all of the above. It means that soldiers are not the tools of exploitative governments, but willing volunteers who see service as a reward unto itself. They will serve their country, be separated from their families and loved ones, and even sustain wounds or die in combat because they see it as the right thing to do.

There are those whose ability to separate soldiers from the decisions of their political masters rests on the premise that they are somehow pawns, that they were too poor to do anything else, or they were coerced into service. This negates their moral responsibility for their participation in a controversial conflict. That is not the case. Soldiers are responsible for their own decision to enlist, in the full knowledge that they may be required to do violence on Her Majesty’s behalf. They are the servants of the Australian people. They fully understand their role. They will conduct operations, violent and deadly if necessary and mandated, against Australia’s enemies as dictated by her elected government. Whilst the government are the elected representative of the Australian people, soldiers will do what the government tells them to. This is not a surrender of their own conscience or intellect, but the acceptance of their role as servants of the people.