To paper over the fact that he is destroying our military by overextending it, President Bush has hired professional mercenaries by the thousands. I have a stake in this decision: it dishonors my son's choice to volunteer to serve as a Marine.
After 9/11 my Marine son served two combat tours in Afghanistan, one shorter mission to Iraq and participated in several missions to other hot spots in the Global War on Terror. He had volunteered in 1999. It is the spirit of selflessness that my son and thousands of other men and women embraced by volunteering that the president is squandering.
Today our war machine includes "contractors" who are not fighting for love of country but for love of money. They are from all over the world and literally no more than hired guns. The fact that some of them are former U.S. military personnel changes nothing. It just shows that the line between a patriotic all-volunteer force and a mercenary force is blurring. It also shows that some men and women in the U.S. military have figured out that there is a chance to make a buck out of a decadent county that asked them to be willing to sacrifice everything while most Americans act like there is no war.
(Just for the record I don't think we should be in Iraq. But my point here isn't about the war in Iraq per se. It is about how Bush has "led" our country as Commander in Chief.)
Since President Bush didn't have the courage to call for a draft and/or level with the American people and tell us that we would all need to sacrifice to do the job right in Iraq he sent two armies to war in our name: our actual military and a mercenary force.
Today we have about 160,000 military people in Iraq and another 130,000 mercenaries, sometimes called contractors. The tradeoff is that Bush can pretend that the military can handle a war it is in fact is too small to fight.
Even after tours have been extended, after the same men and women are asked to go back to Iraq again and again and again, after the underhanded and unofficial draft of "stop loss" is used to coerce the men and women who did volunteer into extended involuntary service, even after recruiting standards for the Army have been lowered and "signing bonuses" -- in other words, bribes -- have increased, our military still can't cope.
This isn't the fault of our military. It is the fault of an inept cowardly Commander in Chief. He has tried to have a war without paying the price politically, for instance, by honestly saying we needed to double the size of the military and raise taxes, and call for a draft.
In 2004 when I was doing research for Baby Jack, (my novel about the Marines, and issues about class structures and who serves and who doesn't) I lived on Parris Island while observing Marine recruit training. This privilege was especially meaningful to me because I was literally following in my son's footsteps. Knowing my son was part of the outstanding and fabled Marine brotherhood was humbling, especially because I never served.
The world might be a cynical place but that cynicism had not infected the Marines training the recruits or the recruits. The words posted all over the squad bays (barracks) "honor, courage and commitment" were taken seriously and lived.
One evening I was with a platoon nearing the end of three months of training. They were gathered around their SDI (senior drill instructor). He said, "Who hasn't told his story yet?"
Hands went up. The SDI barked out a name. A recruit spoke.
"This recruit was bouncing around in confusion. And he joined the Marines because of the war."
"Aye, recruit," murmured the other recruits.
The SDI barked out another name.
"This recruit is from Guatemala and moved to New Jersey with his mom when he was 12, and this recruit is 0-300, infantry-he joined because his friend was killed in Iraq and this recruit went down to the recruiting station the day of his friend's funeral. This recruit hopes to soon become an American citizen."
"Aye, recruit," from all the recruits.
"This recruit joined to see the world."
"This recruit joined to show my friends I had bigger balls than they do."
"This recruit joined because his dad's a Marine."
"This recruit joined because wanted to be proud of something."
"This recruit wants to get all his bad habits out."
"This recruit wants to protect his family."
"This recruit will be the happiest person alive in just one week, because he will be a Marine!"
Thunderous: "AYE RECRUIT!"
During hundreds of hours of conversations with Marines and recruits I learned that what had attracted most recruits to the Marine Corps, whatever their individual reasons, was the mystique of the Corps. They wanted to be part of something "bigger than myself." And they were being trained by DIs who believed in their mission, Marine traditions and the fabled history of the USMC, and who were also cheerfully working 18-hour days while earning less than they would flipping hamburgers. And these DIs were telling me that they felt privileged to be training tomorrow's Marines.
When my son was ending his second deployment to Afghanistan he was offered several "contractor" jobs for literally five to 10 times the pay he'd been earning as a Marine. He declined. He wanted to go to college, something he had delayed doing for five years while in the Marines. But there was also another reason: my son loves the United States Marine Corps. He doesn't love war. He had absorbed the honorable selfless ethic of the Marine Corps. He was a citizen soldier, not a professional hired gun.
Near the end of his second deployment to Afghanistan, John called home. My wife, Genie, was away so I grabbed a note pad and took notes so she wouldn't miss anything. I typed up what my son said word-for-word.
"I could make good money once I'm out of the Corps, if I wanted to get a job as a civilian contractor, but I don't want to... It isn't that I think what we're doing [in Afghanistan] is wrong. It's the right thing and absolutely necessary. The people we're after are really terrible. They have to be stopped... But I can't spend my life in this... One war is enough, at least for me... I think with any luck I'll be home for Thanksgiving; if not, then by Christmas... I'll tell you one thing: I never want to see another gun!"
I think what my son expressed was the traditional view of service that many a former Marine, soldier, airman, sailor or Coast Guard would recognize as their own. You serve your country then move on. Violence and killing are the sad realities of war, but nothing you want to do for a moment longer than duty requires. It's not about money. It's about our country and the man or woman standing next to you who depends on you.
We have a president who, unlike many other American wartime leaders, for instance Roosevelt, has no children of his own in uniform. There is no boot camp graduation picture of a beloved child on the President's desk. If there were Bush would care about the honor of our military. And he would not be asking our military to work with mercenaries who would work for anyone or any cause where the money is right.
Our military is overstretched. The president's "solution" is to hire mercenaries by the tens of thousands and spend billions of dollars on them, and then pass the enormous bill to someone else's grandchildren, just like someone else's children are fighting Bush's war while his own military-age daughter goes on a gold-plated book tour.
There is a better long term answer: the president should stand up and ask all age-appropriate Americans, including members of his own elite class and his own family, to volunteer. He could have done that after 9/11. He didn't. He told Americans to go shopping.
Instead of asking Americans to share in the sacrifice made by a few, the president is trying to buy his way out. In doing so he is dishonoring those who have volunteered. He has also stripped away the last vestiges of what was once a citizen military.
Baby Jack is now available in paperback. Frank's memoir, CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (OR Almost All) Of It Back, has also just been published.