This tireless poet is no longer with us.

Pete Seeger, RIP

Turn, turn, time has passed.

The first syllable of the voice of a generation came from his mouth, and the song reached full voice in 1969 in the Summer of Love. If you weren't born yet then, I pity you. A time of fear, love, change, pervasive uncertainty, misplaced certainty, hate, and some of the most powerful music ever performed, and Pete's music led the way...

The most incredible one sentence description I've ever heard of an equally incredible period of time. I still feel very blessed to have lived through that period.

I've often wondered if ending the draft has had the unfortunate effect of people either becoming too self absorbed and unaware not only of the pain of war, but the concept of service to one's country; and a few too many chest pounders wearing flags and verbiage of "supporting the troops", but well knowing their sons and daughters won't have to pay the price.

When your country's actions and decisions are guaranteed to personally affect the path your life will take, if not your own mortality, you tend to be much closer in tune and get constructively involved with what's going on..

If conscription was universal, and suffrage was only given to those who performed conscripted service satisfactorily, it just might work out. I refer you to "Starship Troopers" by R. A. Heinlein.

Vietnam was a conscript war, but the conscription was by no means universal. It was a war fought by blacks and poor whites for the most part, led by ambitious ROTC graduates who didn't have a clue and even more ambitious ring knockers with only a trace more of a clue.

This was the only successful tactic of that war. Send out a small group of well armed troops with a good radio. Wait until enough people shoot at them. Then call in the arty and bombers and kill the shooters. Repeat until done. Put the arty and the jets where the bad guys have trouble reaching them, mountain tops for the arty and lots of barbed and dogs for the airfields. THere was no successful strategy used in that war. You can't beat an enemy who has a resting/hiding/supply place you can't/won't enter. And you can't trust an ally who spends more time smuggling smack than fighting your common enemy, who may also be his supplier of smack.


"And it's one! two! three!
What are you fighting for?

"Don't ask me, I don't give a damn.
My next stop is Vee Et Nam!

"Well, it's five! six! seven!
Open up the pearly gates,

"Be the first one, on your block,
To have your son come home in a box,"

Agreed..... but I wonder if today's wars are fought by an even larger percentage of the poor, no other opportunity population.. Fair amount written about recruiting centers being located in poor areas..

Another aspect that has been clearly documented.. back in my day when many from a larger cross section of the population had to serve, employers (many having experienced military service themselves) saw value in returning vets in terms of their maturity and leadership training.. but there has been some documentation of today's employers havingreluctance in hiring returning vets over concerns about PTSD, brain injurys from IEDs, etc.. and general view that some employers having little to no military experience themselves don't know how to relate to vets.

I guess the $64 question is does today's "voluntary" system tend to concentrate more irreparable damage to those who do serve (repeated, near back to back deployments) than under the old draft system?

I guess it would take some serious research to know for sure.

In my day, there seemed to be more of a sense of you will have to spend your time in harms way, and then you will get an r&r assignment or two to recuperate. One exception area that has been researched was that in the Vietnam era, Navy carrier pilots.. were in short supply and there is no way to fast path the training and qualification of pilots for carrier landings.. My brother had a long period of back to back deployments as a F8 carrier pilot.

I researched how one of his friends was killed in a carrier landing attempt.. trying to land a shot up aircraft that normal procedure would have been to punch out and ditch it at sea.. As to why he didn't divert to Da Nang wasn't explained.. that was the normal procedure for a carrier aircraft that had hung ordinance (released, but didn't detach from the aircraft situation) The shortage of aircraft led to trying to land damaged aircraft when procedure would have been to ditch it.

I found all this info in a thesis written by a career Navy officer as part of his graduate degree work. It may not be generally known but all career officers at the appropriate point must obtain advanced degrees (e.g. at least a masters degree which involves doing research in their chosen field and writing a thesis on the subject.) Have read a few major court marshall proceedings also. Can be some pretty amazing reading of the candor and open critique of lessons learns when things go bad, wrong decisions made. It overall does come across that military leadership in general really does try to learn from their mistakes. Fort Leavenworth (Army), and the Monterey Post Graduate School (Navy) web sites can offer some very interesting reading..