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ANALYSIS: Who is Serving in the Military?
 Who Will Fight?
NEAL CONAN, host:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
Though diplomacy may yet avert a war in Iraq, many believe a conflict could start as soon as next week. The US military has now assembled more than 200,000 men and women in the Gulf, and as preparations continue, all of us talk about troops, soldiers, sailors, Marines, special ops, Air Force. But those words don't tell us a lot about who they are. How old are they on average? Are they black, white, Latino? Are these college kids or high school dropouts? And where are they from? How many were born overseas? This hour we want to put a human face on the military machine and ask who will fight in case there is a war.
Later in the program we'll talk with two veterans who were in the spearhead of the US armored assault into Iraq 12 years ago about what they experienced and about waiting for war.
But first, today's US military. Why did they sign up? What are their expectations? And how is it different from our father's or our mother's or our grandfather's army? If you're a soldier or know someone in today's military, give us a call. Our number here in Washington is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. And the e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
And joining us now from Kuwait City is NPR's Mike Shuster. And, Mike, thanks very much for joining us.
MIKE SHUSTER (NPR Reporter): Hi, Neal.
CONAN: Mike, you're there. Are US forces continuing to flow into Kuwait?
SHUSTER: Yeah. I think hundreds, if not more than a thousand, a day must be flowing into Kuwait, along with their equipment. Planes keep landing, carrying troops at a number of air bases here, and ships keep arriving at many ports in Kuwait, off-loading heavy equipment, helicopters, tanks, fighting vehicles, artillery pieces, that kind of thing. I think, in fact, it hasn't slowed at all, and the buildup simply continues inexorably, and I think it'll probably continue even into next week and even afterward--if there is an attack on Iraq, even afterward.
CONAN: How many troops are deployed so far, not just in Kuwait but throughout the region?
SHUSTER: Well, my count is--that's probably nearing 300,000. There's probably over 125,000 naval and Air Force personal on ships, carriers and air bases in the Persian Gulf and near the Persian Gulf. And I think that there is upwards of 160, 165,000 ground troops, both Americans and British, maybe 140,000 or more Americans and the balance British, now deployed into the Kuwaiti desert.
CONAN: And are they right up on the border next to Iraq?
SHUSTER: I think a few are, but I don't think many are. As best as we can tell, most of them come through Camp Doha, which is just west of Kuwait City, and then they're sort of spreading into the desert. And as more come, they keep moving forward toward the border to make room for the new ones who have come. But there's still a lot of desert in between Kuwait City and the border, and there's a long border, more than a hundred miles, with Iraq. And I think that they're fanning out, in effect, in the desert.
But I think that the military command is keeping them away from the border. I think that there are units of the US military that are surveilling the border and looking, preparing the border area to move through. But I don't think there are large deployments of troops close to the border at this point.
CONAN: A lot of people say, you know, whether it was before D-Day or before the ground assault in Desert Storm, waiting for war is the hardest part. Any idea of what they're doing?
SHUSTER: Well, I don't think that there's much waiting and I don't think there's much idleness. Because this buildup had to occur so quickly and because the bulk of the troops and their equipment have come in just the last month, I think that they're all very, very busy. A lot of troops take the equipment off of the transport ships they bring in here and prepare it to be moved to staging grounds where they'll be able to attack Iraq.
And those that are now out in the desert--the 3rd Infantry Division, for instance, has been out in the desert for a few months--they do a lot of training. They do a lot of training for desert warfare, and they do a lot of training and preparation of their weapons. And then sometimes they're hit, like last week, with bad weather, a severe rain and sandstorm, and they've got to do it all over again, make sure that their weapons haven't been degraded by the sand and the winds and the rain. So I think that they've been very busy in this short buildup period.
CONAN: This is the rainy season in that part of the world. You don't think of the Kuwaiti desert and rain in the same breath, but it can also be cold. But you've been talking to soldiers there. What's the mood like?
SHUSTER: I think the mood is they all try to be very upbeat. They have moved many from the United States, some from Europe, in a very short time. It must be bewildering in some respects, but I think that their commanders have been focused on the jobs that they're going to have to perform should there be an invasion of Iraq. And you get the feeling--at least when you talk to troops, they all exhibit an upbeat `We're ready' kind of feeling. I think every soldier must worry about the unknowns of war once the invasion starts, but there's not a great deal of overtalk about the dangers of war, just the job that they need to do, and they seem to be very much focused on it.
CONAN: Thanks very much, Mike. I know it's late there, and we appreciate your staying up to talk with us.
SHUSTER: Well, it's always good to be with you, Neal.
CONAN: OK. NPR's Mike Shuster speaking with us from Kuwait City.
Joining us now here in Studio 3A to give us a sense of who today's soldier is, is Charlie Moskos. He's a military sociologist at Northwestern University.
And welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.
Mr. CHARLIE MOSKOS (Northwestern University): Thank you. It's my pleasure.
CONAN: Can you give us a picture of those soldiers that Mike Shuster was talking about? Who are they?
Mr. MOSKOS: Well, the soldiers today in Kuwait and getting ready to perhaps go to war in Iraq are basically working-class and lower-middle-class young men and women. They are not the bottom of society by any means. They are likely to be higher minority than the general population, but not particularly heavily concentrated in the combat arms.
The most notable thing is that America's elite, our privileged youth, are not in the military today. A recent study was done on Congress. Out of 435 congressmen and a hundred senators, only four had children in the military and only one is an enlisted person.
Well, I listened to Mike, too. I was in the Gulf War, and this is like deja vu all over again. Most of the troops there really wanted to go home, get this war going so we could get out of here and go back home. So it's the absence of the elite. That's probably what we've lost in the last 30 to 40 years.
You mentioned earlier, too, Neal, about what do their fathers think who might have been veterans? That's another difference. Most of these don't have fathers who are veterans. Today it would be grandfathers. We haven't had a draft effectively since, you know, the early 1970s, so you're talking a 30-year gap now...
CONAN: Right.
Mr. MOSKOS: ...between conscription. So this has been an all-volunteer force for over a generation.
CONAN: With an all-volunteer force, is the average age older than it was when there was a draft army?
Mr. MOSKOS: Actually it's about the same, but the difference is if there's a big sociological difference between the draft army and today's all-volunteer army is the high number of married junior enlisted people. In military terms, if you look at something like corporal or specialist in Army terminology, there are as many married people at that level, which is a lower enlisted level, as there are first lieutenants. In the old days, the expression was that if the Army wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one. In a manner of speaking, they may be doing that now. But that's, I think, one of the big differences sociologically between this current army, is the highly married junior force.
Another factor is when people are joining, they do join for a variety of motives. Some want it because it's a job, some want the excitement. Patriotism is certainly always an underlying element. But a very big attraction today is the educational benefits, the GI Bill. The big competition for recruiters today is not the economy, but it's college. Two out of three high school graduates today goes on to college and virtually every Army person is at least a high school graduate. And that's where the competition comes from, and people are sort of, you know, weighing those kinds of alternatives.
CONAN: And that might be a reason why the sons and daughters of congressmen are not in the military; they may be off in college or starting their careers.
Mr. MOSKOS: Well, if I can just give a personal anecdote, I graduated from Princeton in 1956. Out of 750 males, 450 served. Last year at Princeton, with a class of 1,000, male and female, only three served. So you can see the change in the class background.
CONAN: Obviously the presence of women is a major change as well--many more women today and in many more roles than there used to be.
Mr. MOSKOS: Certainly during the draft era, from Vietnam and before, the number of women was 1 or 2 percent, and indeed there was a special women's corps in each of the services. Today females make up approximately 15 percent of the armed forces. Of course, they aren't in ground combat roles. But this is a big difference. If they're not in armed combat roles, they're even larger than in the support positions. So you can go to places like Kuwait, I'm sure, and if you look at the logistics base, it's probably 20 to 25 percent female.
CONAN: Our phone number is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address, totn@npr.org. Our first caller is Ann, who's on the line with us from Columbus, Ohio.
ANN (Caller): Good afternoon. Thank you so much for this show and for taking my call.
CONAN: Sure.
ANN: Our daughter is a college graduate and had a very successful career going as a Web designer, but decided her window was closing on an interest to be in the military, and so she joined at 30. And she's in the Navy now as a sonar technician and enjoying the studies of technology and science in a way that we were rather surprised and delighted at. But, of course, the talk of war is very worrying.
CONAN: Sure. Is yours a military family?
ANN: No. Well, not directly. My husband served in Vietnam, and uncles and my father was in World War I in Italy. And so there is some military background, but not a military family in that there were career military.
CONAN: But there was a lot of tradition, it sounds like.
ANN: Yes, indeed.
CONAN: Can you tell us where she's based?
ANN: Norfolk.
CONAN: In Norfolk, Virginia.
ANN: Correct.
CONAN: So her ship has not been sent over, at least not yet.
ANN: Not yet. Not yet, but we expect deployment about June.
CONAN: Well, all we can do is--you're able to stay in touch with her if she's certainly based here with e-mail, phones calls.
ANN: Right. That's a wonderful thing to have today, that we can be in touch by e-mail. Right. Can't say very much, but at least we can hear her voice and talk family things. But we're very proud of here, I need to say, and that this is a choice she made. But it's certainly wasn't for college, for the GI Bill. It was simply, I guess, a combination of her own patriotism and interest in the military that went back to her teen-age years.
CONAN: And is she finding--you talked about the technology. Is it challenging? Is it interesting work?
ANN: Oh, it's very exciting for her. She's loving it. She's loving the oceanography and the science of sonar and so forth. So that's--I don't know whether her art background actually prepared her better for this in a way that she sees the larger picture instead of the details and can fit things in, in a very composite way. But that's what we tend to get from her, and that's what we feel we understand from her.
CONAN: Well, Ann, thanks very much for the call. And you may want to tune in tomorrow. We're doing a show about military families tomorrow. So you may want to call in on that one as well. But thank...
ANN: Great. Thank you so much for your show.
CONAN: Thanks very much.
ANN: Bye-bye.
CONAN: And, Charlie Moskos, that's--well, according to what you were talking about...
Mr. MOSKOS: Well...
CONAN: ...it takes all kinds.
Mr. MOSKOS: It takes all kinds, and it's a very heartening story. It's an exceptional story, though. As a matter of fact, recruiters are telling me that with the buildup in the war in Iraq, parents especially now are discouraging their children from enlisting into the military. So we don't know how this is going to finally play out.
CONAN: A couple of years ago, when the economy was going strong, there was so much competition for young men and women, the armed forces were having difficulty making their recruiting goals. What's it like now?
Mr. MOSKOS: They're making their goals today, but it's getting tougher. And we don't know what the--apparently the word on the street is that the buildup in the war on Iraq is hurting recruitment in the last, you know, several weeks. It's interesting, too, Ann mentioned about e-mail. We did a study in Kosovo, and it was--80 percent of the troops there were using e-mail at least once a week or more. So that is a new situation.
CONAN: Different from the old V-Mail from World War II.
Mr. MOSKOS: Right.
CONAN: Quite a bit. We're talking about who makes up our fighting forces and what it means to be a soldier in today's military. And we'll take more of your calls after we come back from a short break. Our phone number is (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. And you can send us e-mail anytime. Our address is totn@npr.org.
I'm Neal Conan, and you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
Tomorrow on the show, military families deal with frequent moves and long separations. Now they face a country divided over the war their loved ones may fight. We'll hear their stories tomorrow on TALK OF THE NATION.
Today we're talking about those who will be on the front lines or back at the bases manning the computer keyboards or driving the trucks in between if the nation does go to war. Our guest is Charlie Moskos, who's a military sociologist at Northwestern University. If you're in the military, or used to be, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call, (800) 989-8255. That's (800) 989-TALK. And the e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
And joining us here in Studio 3A is Mark Lewis, a research associate at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a former Army captain.
And welcome to TALK OF THE NATION.
Mr. MARK LEWIS (Former Army Captain; Institute for Defense Analyses): Well, thanks very much. Glad to be here.
CONAN: Just because you're in the military doesn't necessarily mean you're going to see combat. In fact, the ratio between those who are in the front line and those who are not is pretty large, isn't it?
Mr. LEWIS: That's right. It looks like about 17 percent of DoD, all of the soldiers are in gun crews or tank crews or their on the line, and the remainder, 80 percent, is in the tail. But that doesn't mean that those 80 percent aren't in danger, especially with long-range weapons these days.
CONAN: Sure. And, Charlie Moskos, we have to, you know, include as we talk about the people who are in the armed forces, beyond those who are in the regular forces, an awful lot of people in the Guard and reserves have been called up.
Mr. MOSKOS: This is a very important development, is the calling up of the reserves components in the National Guard, as occurred, you know, in the Gulf War, too. But this time the force is much smaller than it was back in the Gulf War I days, and therefore, the strains on the reserves and the National Guard are really very, very heavy. It's also a fact that many--a disproportionate number of reserve and Guardspeople are firemen and police officers, and therefore, in the event of some catastrophe back in the States, we're going to be understaffed.
There was just a recent article in today's paper I saw that one-third of all American cities now say that their police and fire departments are hurting because of this reserve call-up. It's because I think largely that we don't have enough people on the active-duty force and that's why these reservists are being called up in this great percentage today.
CONAN: Mark Lewis, a lot of people in the active-duty force, though, people on aircraft carriers or MPs or various other specialities, they're finding they're spending more and more time overseas as well.
Mr. LEWIS: Sure. The active-duty force is working a lot, and a lot of the skills we need today are in the reserve force and that's why we're seeing them come up and come--excuse me--get called up a lot. It's because there's this disconnect between what they need and what they've got on active duty.
CONAN: Now you came up through the ranks, as I understand it.
Mr. LEWIS: That's right. I spent three years as an enlisted soldier right out of high school, and then got out, went to college and back in as an officer, spent another eight there.
CONAN: Why did you go in, in the first place, why did you leave and why did you come back?
Mr. LEWIS: Well, honestly I went in, in the first place, because I grew up around here, in McLean, Virginia, a pretty nice neighborhood, and you went through the college competition process. And I had to spend an awful lot of time telling people why they ought to accept me into their college. And I went into the career center one day at school and there was a recruiter, and he spent a lot of time telling me why he wanted me to come join the Army.
CONAN: Something you hadn't heard too much of.
Mr. LEWIS: That's right, yeah.
CONAN: Yeah. Then you were in the Army and left to go to college, presumably.
Mr. LEWIS: That's right. I went in, my intention was to do a three-year enlistment. I had a very specific job I wanted to do in a very specific unit, and the Army was able to accommodate me. And once I finished my three years, I wanted to go to college. But when I was in college, I decided, hey, you know, I really missed being a soldier and I wanted to go back.
CONAN: Charlie Moskos, are there a lot of people like Mark in the military?
Mr. MOSKOS: Not that many, actually, though Mark obviously is and was a fine soldier. But as a former draftee myself speaking about that pre-Vietnam era when, you know, a large number of college graduates did serve, Mark, of course, received his college education after enlisting and then went on to his officer commission.
There would be--another variable here, too, would be interesting to ask Mark and others in the listening audience--you know, this is the first war in memory in which an anti-war movement started before the shooting started. And that is another new variable. I wonder how that's going to affect recruitment. It didn't happen in Vietnam, it didn't happen in Korea, it obviously didn't happen in World War II or World War I.
CONAN: Well, there was the America First movement before World War II. We keep forgetting about that.
Mr. MOSKOS: That was an isolationist movement, yes.
CONAN: Yeah.
Mr. MOSKOS: But, you know, sort of an anti-war movement in the sense that we are having today before the shooting starts--you know, it took Vietnam four or five years before it cranked up into a genuine anti-war movement.
CONAN: Mark, what do you think?
Mr. LEWIS: It's tough to say how national politics affects the decision-making process of a 16- or a 17-year-old. Are they paying attention? I don't know. I certainly paid attention to, for example, the Iranian hostage crisis. That was something that happened to me when I was very young, and it solidified my desire to go and try and do something about it. But whether or not anti-war sentiment is impacting the decisions of young people, it's hard to say.
CONAN: Well, let's hear from some listeners, maybe we'll ask them. Our next caller is Laurel, who's on the line with us from Sacramento.
LAUREL (Caller): Hi.
CONAN: Hi.
LAUREL: I called because one of the things that's come up is: Why aren't the elite joining up? I'm thinking this has got to be just part of the microcosm of our society--responsibility, taking responsibility for your own actions, taking responsibility for the security of your society. And it just doesn't seem to be a real popular move nowadays.
CONAN: We ought to describe them as maybe the educational or the financial elite because there are certainly a lot of elite people who would not be in that category. But...
LAUREL: Oh, absolutely.
CONAN: Yeah. Laurel, are you in the military?
LAUREL: I'm currently in the reserves. I joined and went on active duty in 1977 as an officer. And in part I think I went in because of my response to Vietnam and not having gone myself, not having been put on the line because of the draft, because women weren't being drafted at that time. And I had a real good time, stayed for 10 years on active duty, and went into the reserves, where I remain to this very day, mentoring a number of young men and women as I've come up the ranks.
CONAN: If you're in the reserves, can you tell us about some of the displacement that you might have experienced, you know, having to leave your job at a moment's notice?
LAUREL: Fortunately or not so, as the case may be, I haven't actually been placed in that situation. During Gulf War I, I was in law school. Several of the people I was going through law school with at that point were called up and did need to go. The unit I was in at the time simply wasn't called. At this point, I'm senior enough that I'm in what they call a volunteer training unit, and because of that they're not calling us either. But the last group of people I had under my command, a logistics unit out of the Puget Sound area, have been put on pretty much a 48-hour standby.
And I know it's simply disconcerting. Nobody that I've talked to has any problem at all with going if called. But they're being told, `We don't want you right now, but we may need you in two days.' And two days go by and, `We may need you in another two days. Just put everything on hold and be ready to go with two days' notice.' It's a little bit crazy.
And referring back to something that I was hearing earlier, I think in a large part it's because we don't have enough people on active duty. We don't have enough people on active duty with the right skills. We simply don't have enough people on active duty to do the number of jobs that are being asked of us right now.
CONAN: Mark Lewis?
Mr. LEWIS: Yes. Well, it's interesting. There's no question, of course, that economics plays into the range of choices a young person has, and if they can afford to go on to school and that's a reasonable decision or a reasonable choice, they might choose to look away from the military. I mean, there's something to be said, of course, for the service ethic. But on the other hand, if you look at ROTC, for example, and you look who's doing the ROTC programs, I think you'll find that the top universities, the top schools are represented at a greater proportion than the rest of the population. It's counterintuitive because we hear that Harvard doesn't have an ROTC on campus or that Yale and Princeton are having trouble. But as a proportion of college-age people and the proportion of ROTC commissionees, it's actually that the top 10 universities are overrepresented, speaking just, you know, by the numbers and the proportions involved.
CONAN: Laurel...
Mr. MOSKOS: Well, can I say something, too?
CONAN: Go ahead.
Mr. MOSKOS: I think Laurel hit a very important point about nothing's really--you know, I call it patriotism light. She says she's disappointed that there hasn't been any kind of truly rallying in terms of actual service from people. Here we have a situation since September 11th that even our commander in chief has not asked people to join the military. I mean, is being patriotic putting a flag on your SUV? This is the kind of thing I think Laurel was, you know, hinting at.
CONAN: Laurel?
LAUREL: I don't fly a flag on the back of my car. I tend to think that I'm doing what needs to be done, and patriotism light is--I don't want to put down the people who are displaying that kind of patriotism. It worries me to a certain extent that it takes something like 9/11 to get people to display it. And how many of them are simply going along with a message that's popular to display right now is something else I question.
CONAN: Well, Laurel, hang in there. Thanks very much.
LAUREL: Thank you.
CONAN: Appreciate the call. Here's an e-mail we got from Lynn Stubb(ph). `My husband,' she writes, `is a major in the Army. He's been either active or in the reserves for 20-plus years. His civilian life includes being a father to our two children and working for the state of Wisconsin as a 4-H youth development educator for our rural Wisconsin county. He was in the reserves. His unit was activated at the end of January. He's currently in the sandbox.' By that, of course, she means Kuwait. `We sometimes forget that not all of these soldiers are young. Some of them are even grandparents.'
And another e-mail we got from Joseph Galucci(ph). `Dear TALK OF THE NATION, I was'--excuse me, I wanted to get to Carlos' e-mail first. Carlos in San Diego wrote, `Do you have an estimate of how many Latins, Asians and blacks are serving in the military these days? From listening to this show and the networks, I get the impression it's an all-Anglo-Saxon military.' Charlie Moskos?
Mr. MOSKOS: Well, it varies from service to service. If you take the Army, the largest of the four services, it's approximately 8 percent Hispanic and about 22, 23 percent black, 2 or 3 percent other minority, and the remainder, of course, being white. That is the case because of the--it may be the economy. The Hispanic percentage, presuming that that e-mailer's of Hispanic background, isn't as high as it could be because of a high school diploma graduation requirement. For practical purposes, you have to be a high school diploma person to be able to enter today's military. And the Hispanic percentage of that is not as high as it could be. So that's the story.
But it's not just a matter of racial or ethnic backgrounds. It's a matter of class background, too. We don't have--and some of the callers have referred to this--you know, you're not really having that upper class--I...
Mr. LEWIS: I think that's right. I think it's a representation of economics more than race.
Mr. MOSKOS: Right.
Mr. LEWIS: And if you drew the circles around what socioeconomic background, it also would fall in on racial demographics as well, anyways.
CONAN: And now that Joseph Galucci e-mail. `I was wondering if you can ask your guests about how recruiting was affected by September the 11th? Was there a big increase? Can you also, time permitting, comment about Pat Tillman, who recently joined the military and gave up a lucrative pro-football contract with the Arizona Cardinals to do so,' so far as I know, the only prominent professional athlete to do so.
Mr. MOSKOS: Well, it's interesting that he raised that--the recruiters say that there has not been any change, plus or minus, since September 11th; except for maybe the most recent months, where it may be minus because of the Iraq war buildup. Pat Tillman was a notable exception, but he's not a household word. I give the counterexample of my era, when I was a draftee: Elvis Presley was a draftee. We never saw him, but we knew he was 90 kilometers down the road in Germany, and that did make an impression. If Eminem, you know, would join today's military, that would be the significant breakthrough.
CONAN: We're talking with Charlie Moskos and Mark Lewis about today's military, and you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
And joining us now is Steven, who's on the line from Boston, Massachusetts.
STEVEN (Caller): Hi. How are you?
CONAN: Very well, thanks.
STEVEN: Good. I just wanted to sort of add to the discussion by saying that, you know, I'm an Army reservist. I have been since shortly after September 11th, when I, you know, decided basically to sort of give something back to my country or attempt to give something back to my country by going into the military. And, you know, I think it's been a great experience for me. I come out of, you know, a very professional job, and I guess what I wanted to say is that, you know, I think there are a good proportion of the, quote, unquote, "elites" that are willing to do their time to sort of protect the way of life that we have in this country.
CONAN: So tell us more about when and why you decided to enlist.
STEVEN: Well, I think it was about a month after September 11th, and I decided to enlist because I felt like it was very important for me to be able to give something back to my country. You know, I benefitted from a state school education here in Massachusetts, you know, and it was really sort of a personal decision that I felt like it was really important to be able to give something back, in addition to my economic contributions, to the society.
CONAN: And if you're in Boston, apparently, you've not been called up. You've not been activated.
STEVEN: Not yet. Not yet. We're still waiting. Everybody's got their fingers crossed here. We're trying to figure out whether or not we'll be going or not. They're talking about potentially sending us somewhere else other than the Middle East to do a rotation for a group that's currently in Bosnia, so we'll see.
CONAN: Now you signed up in the aftermath of 9/11.
STEVEN: Yes.
CONAN: With the situation today, with the prospect of a war in Iraq, would that have changed your thinking?
STEVEN: No, it would not have. No, it would not have. I think, you know, this was something that I was motivated to do, and I grow prouder and prouder of my military service every day, knowing that, you know, there are a group of my, you know, sort of fellow soldiers out there helping to secure American interests and make things safe for us, and I'm proud to be a part of that fraternity.
CONAN: Steven, thanks very much and good luck to you.
STEVEN: All right. Thank you.
CONAN: Appreciate it.
STEVEN: Bye-bye.
CONAN: Mark Lewis, he mentioned rotating possibly to Bosnia. We forget, in addition to the buildup in the Gulf, there are forces not only in Bosnia but in South Korea, on the border there still, in Germany, and many other places around the world. The US military is stretched.
Mr. LEWIS: Sure. I mean, we've got people in Bosnia, across all the Balkans, Kosovo as well. We've got real deterrent problems in Korea, and these are the kind of things that you've got to measure and weigh how you allocate your forces across the whole spectrum of competing requirements. It's wearing people out in many ways.
CONAN: And what, briefly, would you recommend be done to alleviate that situation? We heard maybe just making the active forces bigger. Is that a solution?
Mr. LEWIS: Well, that's one solution, but I think that there's also a--the services have to take a hard look at themselves and figure out if they're managing their people properly. You know, at any given time, there's about 60,000 soldiers in the Army that are out of pocket. They're moving from one post to another. They're in school systems. They're in medical care, and if the Army got a handle on that and organized themselves properly, if they did away with some of the professions in the military that aren't necessarily military related, like the Finance Corps, for example--you know, if they privatized that or civilianized that, it would free up uniform slots to put in the places where they need the people the most. So that's the first step before they go seeing about increasing end strength.
Mr. MOSKOS: I would say, by the way, though...
CONAN: We're going to have to hear more about that after the break, Charlie. We're talking with Charlie Moskos, a military sociologist, and Mark Lewis at the Institute for Defense Analysis. More with them and more of your calls when we come back. We're also going to hear from two soldiers who were among the first to go in in ground operations of Desert Storm in the last Gulf War about what it's like waiting for war to begin.
I'm Neal Conan. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
Here are some of the stories that NPR is following today. Behind-the-scenes politicking continues at the United Nations as the UN Security Council seeks some sort of common ground on Iraqi inspections and disarmament. And OPEC oil ministers are meeting in Vienna to reassure world markets of adequate supplies of petroleum, should there be a war. Those stories from NPR's Vicky O'Hara and Nick Spicer coming up later today on "All Things Considered."
Here on TALK OF THE NATION, we're talking about today's military. Our guests are Mark Lewis of the Institute for Defense Analysis, and Charlie Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University. Just before the break, Charlie, you were talking about what might be done to improve the situation, not just increase the size of the armed forces but perhaps manage the way troops are handled a little bit better.
Mr. MOSKOS: I think better management can only go so far. I think the crux of the issue, there are not enough people in the armed forces. That's what it has to come down to. And we can talk about civilian contractors, which, by the way, cost a lot of money, too. If you had, there are two options. One is bring back the draft, which is probably not politically feasible; though Congressman Rangel and others have now introduced that bill, and for the first time in a generation, the draft is somewhat on maybe the back burner, but on the public agenda. I don't think it'll happen, though I think it deserves a great deal of support.
More likely, I think, is the idea of having shorter-term enlistments to appeal to college students. Going to Bosnia, as Mark was saying, or Kosovo--I've surveyed students at many universities, and by and large, if it had an overseas tour, that it was short, they would be interested in joining; particularly if their student loans could be forgiven.
CONAN: Let's get another caller in. Dan joins us from San Jose, California.
DAN (Caller): Hi. How you doing?
CONAN: OK.
DAN: Hey, it's interesting to listen to this story and other stories about first people to a conflict or these long deployments (technical difficulties) ships go through, and it's always a 6:00 news story. I wonder if the readers could comment about the submarine service and how they're involved in these different conflicts.
CONAN: Submarines--typically I know that for the ballistic missile submarines, they're typically at sea half the time, aren't they?
DAN: Mm-hmm.
CONAN: So those are tremendously long deployments. I know that they're very difficult and have been for any number of years. Dan, you sound like you know what you're talking about, though.
DAN: I spent nine years on fast attacks out of Pearl Harbor.
CONAN: Those are the Los Angeles class submarines?
DAN: Yeah. Actually, we averaged about 260 days a year deployed.
CONAN: That's a lot.
DAN: Yeah. And then if you figure every fourth day in port was a duty day where you had to be on board, in the course of a year, you might have 60 days where you're not on the boat.
CONAN: Fast-attack submarines are being used in an ever wider number of missions and, of course, at least one accompanies every aircraft carrier battle group wherever it goes; absolutely vital part of the US armed forces, Dan.
DAN: Thank you.
CONAN: OK. Appreciate your phone call. I guess you're not going to disagree with me on that one.
DAN: No. It's just like to bring attention to it, because you always hear about these (technical difficulties) going out, but what you don't realize is that the submarines left a week before and they're coming in a week later, and I think there's some recognition there that deserves a little pat on the back every once in a while.
CONAN: Well, thanks very much, Dan, and you're out of the Navy now?
DAN: Yeah, I've been out for a couple years.
CONAN: OK. Well, thanks very much. Bye-bye.
DAN: Bye.
CONAN: Mark, again, just wrapping up, you know, his experience is not unusual in today's military.
Mr. LEWIS: I think that's right. Of course, I can't speak for the submarine service. That's why they call it the silent service, I guess. It's a strange breed of cat. I'm glad it's him and not me. But everybody's working hard, you know. In Germany, you're on a rotation to peacekeeping once every 18 months probably. That's six months on a deployment, and it doesn't count the three months prior and the three months after that you're recovering or doing the training up for it. It's an enormously fast op tempo that--you know, people don't count the Wednesdays they're not home, for example. Even if they're home on the weekends, you know, they might not be home on a Wednesday for an entire year because they're staying late in the office or they're staying overnight in the field, coming home on the weekends.
CONAN: Wow.
Mr. LEWIS: It's a tough life.
CONAN: Mark Lewis, a research associate at the Institute for Defense Analysis, formerly an officer in the US Army and formerly an enlisted man in the US Army.
Mr. LEWIS: That's true.
CONAN: Thanks very much for being with us. And, Charlie Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, thanks to you as well.
Mr. MOSKOS: Thank you.
Mr. LEWIS: Thank you.
CONAN: They were both here with us in Studio 3A.
For the next few days and into next week, we have a special e-mail challenge for you about Iraq. We want you to send us the quotes that you think best describe or capture this time in history. Yesterday we launched this challenge with a quote from President Dwight David Eisenhower. After that, Michael George(ph) in Cleveland sent us these lines from T.S. Eliot: `We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.'
And from a famous British politician, this, "If you're going through hell, keep going." That quote is attributed to Winston Churchill and was sent to us by David Mullen(ph) in Exton, Pennsylvania. What famous quotes are catching your attention at this moment? E-mail us at totn@npr.org and be sure to put `quotes' in the subject line.
We're talking about today's soldiers as they await the possibility of war. Joining us now are two people who may know a little bit of what they're in for. Greg Downey and Alex Vernon are two former platoon leaders who were some of the first to go in on the ground during Operation Desert Storm back in February of 1991. They co-authored a book. They were among five people who were part of a book called "The Eyes of Orion" about their experiences. Greg joins us from his office in Tucson, Arizona, and Alex is now an English professor at Hendrix College, joins us from his office in Conway, Arkansas.
And welcome to you both.
Mr. GREG DOWNEY (Co-author, "The Eyes of Orion"): Thank you, Neal.
Professor ALEX VERNON (Co-author, "The Eyes of Orion"): Thank you for having us.
CONAN: And if you have a question for our guests, give us a call, (800) 989-8255. And, Greg Downey, what was it like? You were getting ready to go into Iraq--What is it?--almost exactly 12 years ago. What was it like on the eve of war?
Mr. DOWNEY: It was a surreal experience, really. I mean, there was a turning point where you knew that was the only way home was through Iraq and through Kuwait. And that's mostly what I vividly recall, is just that feeling that, well, here it is, let's hope for the best, and let's get on with our job.
CONAN: Alex Vernon, was there a lot of conversation before the war started, nervousness about what might happen, discussion about, `What are we doing here?'
Prof. VERNON: That's an interesting question. Since Greg and I were both platoon leaders, conversations like that I tried--unless my enlisted soldiers breached those with me, I tried to have those--share my own fears and anxieties only with my fellow lieutenants, because I didn't want, you know, my soldiers to know about my own fears. But certainly, those conversations were happening. I did have some soldiers approach me individually about their fears, and we talked about them. There was a lot of anxiety, absolutely.
CONAN: Even then in those days, there was concern about chemical weapons, biological weapons, and you guys all got the shots, I'm sure.
Prof. VERNON: Yes, we did.
CONAN: Yeah. And before war happens, how much of your mind is animated by those fears--and, Greg, let me start with you--and how much is animated by fears of how you are going to do, particularly when you have the responsibility for your men and your unit?
Mr. DOWNEY: Well, that's the beauty of training for years. As a soldier, I mean, that's what your life is all about is training for combat. That's the acme of your service. Therefore, your mind is almost desensitized. Obviously, you are afraid. I wouldn't want to be in a foxhole with someone who wasn't afraid because I'd be getting myself out of that foxhole, but you're afraid, but your mission focus is so clear at that point, because it comes down to it that this is life or death. You know, that's about as clear a mission focus as what you can have--all the other distractions are just peripheral to that--keeping your soldiers alive, fulfilling the mission and moving on to the next objective, whatever that may be. So there's a lot of it that you can skew out just because of the clarity of the mission.
CONAN: Alex, is there a lot of concern, though, about, well, screwing up?
Prof. VERNON: Certainly. I certainly experienced that myself, and I'm sure a lot of soldiers experience that. But I guess I would echo what Greg said to a degree. Most of those sorts of concerns--once the mission starts, once you cross the line of departure, you don't have time to worry about those things anymore, so there's a lot of prewar anxiety, absolutely, and fears about performance and getting your soldiers killed. But again, once you cross the line of departure, you don't have time to worry about those things.
Mr. DOWNEY: And, Neal, I'd like to just throw one more thing in there. When I noticed the most anxiety was right after the bullets stopped flying and the dust was settling. That's when the gravity of the event that you've just been through--that's when it hits you. And that's the weirdest thing, I think, that I took in was it wasn't during the battle, it wasn't prior to the battle, it was after the battle. And I think that's when your mind kicks in and and it starts to help you kind of reconcile with what just happened, if it's possible.
CONAN: We're speaking with Greg Downey and Alex Vernon, who participated in the armored assault into Iraq 12 years ago during Desert Storm.
You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
And, Alex Vernon, let me ask you, when the order came, was it a relief?
Prof. VERNON: I think, to some extent, yes, because as I mentioned a second ago, the worrying could stop. I mean, I was holding out to the very end. Tariq Aziz, at that point, was, I think, receiving envoys from Russia to try to avert a war, and I was holding out to the very end that we would not go to war. But once it happened, there was somewhat of relief that those worries were over.
CONAN: Greg Downey, I wanted to ask you a little bit about any advice you might have for your contemporary--your successors, the men who are in the M1-A1 tanks and in the Bradley armored vehicles, the guys who might be leading the assault into Iraq this time around. What are your concerns for them? What are you thinking about, given your experience?
Mr. DOWNEY: Yeah. My first bit of advice would be trust your instincts, trust your gut feeling on how to take action. The diciest time of the Gulf War, the first Gulf War back in '91, was post-cease-fire, and reason being is because the rules of engagement changed. That is the toughest in terms of making ethical, sound decisions that protect not only your soldiers but also the Iraqi civilians. That's when I faced probably my biggest dilemmas on what actions I were to take, simply because post-cease-fire, it's ambiguous. You know, you have your set of rules for engagement, but you have to be very careful about how you employ those because you don't want to endanger your own soldiers, and at the same time, you have to balance the need to protect the civilian population, as well as the Iraqi army, you know, if they're not doing anything wrong.
So at some point in time, there will be a cease-fire. That is when I would tell my soldiers to be the most vigilant if I were over there right now. These soldiers are trained. They're trained to conduct warfare. What we aren't very well trained to do is post-warfare. It's really not in our training sequence to learn how to establish a DMZ that is, you know, based on force protection of your own, at the same time based on eliminating any collateral damage. So, to me, that's what I recall the most, is just the uncertainty of `How do I handle this?' because I was never taught on whether I let, you know, this Iraqi family through the DMZ without searching their truck or something.
CONAN: Alex Vernon, for the most part, your tanks operated in the desert, the open desert. There's a prospect now of urban warfare. Is that something that would frighten you?
Prof. VERNON: Absolutely. Tanks don't work very well in the cities. Their advantage is their armor, their long-range--every advantage a tank has is pretty much eliminated inside the city, and I really particularly fear, if we do have to go urban warfare, maybe we can avoid that scenario, but our technological advantage will be much decreased if we have to fight in the cities.
CONAN: Greg Downey, you guys were both young men 12 years ago. A lot of people would still regard you as young men. Do you think you're better equipped now to do what you did then?
Mr. DOWNEY: Absolutely. I think Alex put it best. A lieutenant needs the physical abilities and resilience of a 19-year-old but the maturity of like a 40-year-old, just in ways of handling the soldiers better. I mean, the older you get, the wiser you get. Your emotions are a little more in line with where they need to be when it comes to leadership. But, you know, the Army--platoons win battles in the military. That's what wins the battles are platoons, and we have to have confidence in our young men that are leading these platoons, these young lieutenants, that they're going to do what is right based on the guidance and the information they receive on the battlefield. So I have the utmost confidence in them, but at the same time, I'm a realist. I know that I would be a better platoon leader today from the mental standpoint than I would have been 12 years ago.
CONAN: And, Alex, we just have a minute or so left, but I was wondering if you could talk for a moment. We keep hearing a lot about the shock and awe that aerial bombardment might cause. You were in a tank. That's a very scary implement, isn't it?
Prof. VERNON: Being in the tank or receiving the aerial bombardment?
CONAN: Well, both, but I meant being outside watching a tank go by. I mean, it's a visceral experience.
Prof. VERNON: Absolutely. And one of the powers that people attribute to tanks is what we call its shock effect, that just by having that tank barrel down upon you, whether the guns are blazing or not, doesn't matter, the shock of that 70-plus-ton vehicle coming at you is frequently enough just to, I don't know, paralyze a soldier standing there in its path.
CONAN: Seventy tons--you're going to feel it before you see it.
Prof. VERNON: Exactly.
CONAN: Yeah. Thanks to you both very much.
Mr. DOWNEY: Thank you.
Prof. VERNON: Thank you, Neal.
CONAN: Greg Downey was with us from his office in Tucson, Arizona. Alex Vernon was with us from his office in Conway, Arkansas. Both were platoon leaders during the 1991 Gulf War and were among the authors of a book called "The Eyes of Orion," which tells about their experiences.
In Washington, I'm Neal Conan, NPR News.
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