Low Hanging Fruit

The Army drops its IQ...again. Apparently the percentage of new Army recruits with high-school diplomas has dropped from 94% in 2003 to 70.7% percent in 2007. The Pentagon has a goal of 90%. And of those with a diploma only 44.6% score in the upper 50th percentile on the Armed Forces aptitude tests, down from 56.2% in 2005.

And so...

In order to meet recruitment targets, the Army has even had to scour the bottom of the barrel. There used to be a regulation that no more than 2 percent of all recruits could be "Category IV"—defined as applicants who score in the 10th to 30th percentile on the aptitude tests. In 2004, just 0.6 percent of new soldiers scored so low. In 2005, as the Army had a hard time recruiting, the cap was raised to 4 percent. And in 2007, according to the new data, the Army exceeded even that limit—4.1 percent of new recruits last year were Cat IVs.

I know that any branch of the military is not made up of free thinkers but must they be dumb too? Dumb scares me more than smart. What will this do to the already high statistics of the abuse of female soldiers in the Army?

And who are these people who are graduating from high school but can't really pass an aptitude test? Even more fallout from our lacking education system.

That aside, the author sites four clear issues with this whole idea of a stupid Army:

1. Is that really fair to the "downtrodden?"
2. High school dropouts drop out of the military too, henc more recruitment of dumb people.
   
3. "A dumb Army is a weak Army."
   
4. Soldiers need to be particularly bright given today's approach to "battle." We don't fight big battles anymore, where the reds are on one side and the blues are on the other and someone yells Charge! and everyone runs in. We live in a world of insurgencies and ground covering. Soldiers are face to face with people and so must have people skills. Dumb people don't have people skills in the sense that we are talking today.

The Army's 2006 field manual on counterinsurgency, which was supervised by Gen. David Petraeus (who is now trying to put its principles into action as U.S. commander in Iraq), emphasized that successful counterinsurgency operations "require Soldiers and Marines at every echelon to possess the following"—and then the authors recite a daunting list of prerequisites, including a "clear, nuanced, and empathetic appreciation of the essential nature of the conflict," an "understanding of the motivation, strengths, and weaknesses of the insurgent," rudimentary knowledge of the local culture, and several other admirable qualities.

I don't know. I am not a fan of war and I hope that my son never makes the choice to join the military. Given our current regime and executive power players, I can't imagine why any smart person would join the Army. But I also think that it is just asking for trouble to recruit from the most low hanging of fruit.

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