NEW YORK — If you listen to President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the United States Army is a mess. Recruitment and morale are plummeting, and even the modest pay increase proposed by the Bush budget might not cushion the fall.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has often expressed his concern that American forces are strewn across the entire globe, spread too thin and unable to respond to threats with the swiftness and agility required by the Information Age.
Scandal regularly erupts throughout the services — from the Osprey controversy of the past few months to the S.S. Greenville collision to the recent death of several soldiers by friendly fire in Kuwait — and each scandal tarnishes what in most Americans’ eyes is a legacy of duty, service and courage. What, you ask, is the Army doing about this?
It’s checked in with the good doctors on Madison Avenue for some cosmetic surgery.
You’ve seen the ads. Replacing its legendary slogan of “Be all that you can be” with the less musical though nonetheless catchy “I am an Army of one,” the new Army television spots focus on individual soldiers who detail how they enjoy pulling triggers, blowing away practice dummies and saving helpless children from angry Serbs.
The ads end with an invitation to the Army’s updated Web site to watch new recruits begin basic training. Illustrating the oxymoronic nature of the term “military intelligence,” the Army believes that showing Joe Twelve-Packs everywhere how they systematically destroy a person’s ego and then rebuild it in the form of a killing machine will result in dizzying numbers of sign-ups. Go figure.
You can say one good thing about these ads, though — the Army has smartly decided to showcase them during CBS’s blockbuster “Survivor,” attempting to link in the viewer’s mind the voyeuristic pleasures of watching Jerri terrorize Kel for chewing on something resembling beef jerky with the non-voyeuristic, patently unpleasurable experience of spending months in the desert lugging 100 pounds on your back while being bombarded with rubber bullets, cruise missiles and camel spit.
But the madness doesn’t end there. No, the Army has an even better way to swell up its ranks. I can only imagine the Army Secretary’s excitement when he announced his plan to his eager staff. This, he must have thought to himself, will be the panacea we’ve needed for so long.
They’re giving everyone berets. Apparently the Army has just become aware of the Kangol fad of the early ’90s.
Some things in this universe we cannot possibly comprehend. Giving every soldier a beret — and what’s more, believing that this policy will somehow increase interest and positive sentiment toward the Army — is one of those things. Still, the policy is only typical of our times for two reasons. One, it presupposes that in order to produce results one must bolster a subject’s self-esteem.
In this case, handing the soldier the beret, a traditional sign of excellence and achievement among the Army’s Rangers, supposedly increases the soldier’s self-esteem and results in a prouder, larger Army. This self-esteem hypothesis has been the policy of our public schools for the past 30 years, and they’re now blowing themselves up, both literally and figuratively.
The Army’s policy is also typical of our times in that it’s a small solution to a gigantic problem. Giving soldiers free berets in order to increase the rosters is just like giving people free cell phones so that they can call the police while they are being assaulted in order to fight crime. Call it the “Third Way,” call it micro-politics, call it whatever you like — absurdity is still absurdity. The Marx brothers couldn’t do better.
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What’s equally absurd is that the federal government will spend roughly $300 billion next year on defense. Imagine spending $300 billion on a party and then finding out that no one wants to come. That’s the situation the defense establishment finds itself in right now. And they honestly believe that funny party hats are going to solve their problems.
To paraphrase Chucky Heston: Berets don’t kill people. People kill people. There will always be some people attracted to the soldier’s life, just as there will always be people attracted to the priesthood, massage therapy and candy striping. So here’s my solution: If $300 billion for toys that occasionally blow themselves up just isn’t cutting it, why not then spend $3 billion solely on the Army of dedicated, disciplined and proven soldiers that we already possess?
Those who choose to serve our nation on the front lines of foreign lands should be treated like the heroes they are, not like cartoon characters that we sadistically watch torture their psyches and bodies on the Web. Get rid of the hardware and focus on the human, or we might end up with an army of none.
