Matthew Ridgway warned against relying on an all-volunteer military

[Bravo Zulu]

Matthew Ridgway warned against relying on an all-volunteer military, and now we can see why, writes former Army official DELBERT SPURLOCK

America's model for an all-volunteer military has now become a casualty of our war of choice in Iraq. The consequences for our military, our young people and their families, and our diplomatic flexibility to sustain our current commitments and to meet future challenges will be significant. None of this is being discussed in our current presidential campaigns.

Gen. Matthew Ridgway would have predicted as much, and some 20 years ago he nearly did.
I was assistant secretary of the Army for manpower at the time and visited with him for two extraordinary hours at his home in the hills above Pittsburgh. The all-volunteer force, enacted into law in 1974, was for the first time becoming a success. That is, the American people were becoming justifiably confident that the Army was shouldering its mandate to deter war or to defeat any foe it was compelled to face.

Acknowledging the Army's recruiting and training successes, Gen. Ridgway remained unpersuaded that the all-volunteer force was sustainable and that it was good for the country. He believed that it was imperative that our "Army be of the people, by the people and for the people."

He thought that a volunteer Army would distance itself from the people in whose name it acted. He also believed that the all-volunteer force made America more likely to engage in future Vietnams. For him the "nexus" between the nation and the battlefield was all that honored the sacrifice and justified a conflict.

Two decades later we fight a vicarious war, divorced from the toll on our volunteers, their families and the long-term costs of their service for the nation, immune from the horrors of our occupation, having ill-considered both the means and ends in sending our Army into the Middle East.

The gentleman that was Matthew Ridgway would never permit himself to say that we have destroyed the all-volunteer force fighting a war of the few, by the few and for the few. But he knew that it was inevitable, and that we would all pay the price for it.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08125/878668-109.stm

Delbert Spurlock is a former general counsel and assistant secretary of the Army ([e-mail]). He lives in Reston, Va.

[MadMaddie]

1. I wouldn't say we, I would say that the Republican party under the

leadership of * has destroyed the all volunteer military and they did it gleefully. They avoided implementing the draft by sending our soldiars over 2, 3, 4 even more times into battle...

Let us remind all Americans that the Republicans did this...to our men and women and yet don't want to give them a GI Bill worthy of their service.

[saigon68]

2. Stunningly True

[Downtown Hound]

3. Ridgway was a brilliant military man

He salvaged the Korean War after both Truman and MacArthur fucked it up. When a man like this speaks, we should listen.