Donīt know if this was meant to me, but here goes.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Ranger
I think that the argument that draftees are automatically somehow inferior to volunteers is simply absurd.
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Not as persons. I meant in training. A volunteer is a career man, He is there for the long haul, and he has plenty of time to get familiar with every kinds of ordenance. But the draftee is only there for a few months, and often enough he doesnīt want to be there. There are two completely mind sets here:
One is there because he wants to, he wants to be a soldier, and participate in battle.
While the other wishes he could be with his girlfriend, or playing NINTENDO,or whatever. He is in the military because he is forced to.
Of course if you in a war fighting for your life, you have all the motivation you need to be good at what soldiers do (killing), but often enough the training is not present, and many donīt get the chance to learn how to keep his head down in a firefight.
What i was trying to understand, is the unusuall high ammount of "accidents" and "friendly fire" incidents in Iraq. The Reserves and National Guard are not full-time soldiers. They either
have been in the military, and did their program years ago, and thus are not in contact with the latest developments in military training, or have been on and off the military life.
Either way, they are not nearly as well trained as the career types. And that lack of training might get you killed in many stupid ways.
And assuming there will be a draft in the US in the near future, we can expect any cherry fresh out of boot camp to get sent to Iraq, in rotation for other troops. How will they perform?
I was obviously not in Vietnam, and everything i know about i got it from the media, and third hand information. But i believe iīm right when i say that the "cherries" had a bigger percentage of getting killed in the few days after arrival at the front. Why?
Well, they felt cocky, over confident, they didnīt know who they were fighting, and their training was highly inapropriate for that type of guerrilla combat. And they were kind of "ostracised" by their own mates. No one wanted to be next to a "cherry" in a firefight, because the "cherry" was a magnet to enemy fire. For a "cherry" to survive, he would have to get through the first weeks on his own.
The thing is, the draftees are often used to cope with man power shorteages, and they get sent to the field before they are ready, while the career types have spent years getting ready for the moment of truth. Both are "cherries", as they both havenīt seen combat before. But the volunteer has a few things in his favour:
More training, and he is mentally prepared.
Of course there are exceptions, but generally this is the way it goes.
It doesnīt mean the draftee is a lesser man than others.It only means that he had less preparation, either physical or mental.