The Staff of the United States Army
March 1878

A little more than a decade after the Civil War ended, a U.S. Army colonel sharply criticized the military’s personnel structure—warning that it was fostering apathy rather than bravery or a commitment to excellence.



You’re in the Army—Again
January 1949

by Edgar L. Jones

In the late 1940s, as the government reinstituted the peacetime draft, Atlantic correspondent Edgar L. Jones took issue with the excessive and misleading pains the Army seemed to be taking to reassure concerned mothers.


As if that were not enough to indicate a new way of Army life, General Devers assured the mothers that training instructors, no longer to be thought of as tough drill sergeants, would try “to establish a personal relationship with the incoming recruit,” and that all trainees would be “told the reason for everything they do that is new to them.” The Army’s principal authority on combat training then went on to say that the Army would insist that each trainee write home; that each would be interviewed by his company commander and chaplain, both of whom, in turn, would write personal letters to his mother; and that (the real clincher) “neither he nor his instructors will use profanity.”


The veterans have not forgotten that much the same picture of humanized service in a “civilian” Army was projected for their benefit at the start of the 1940 draft. At that time, too, military leaders were busily promoting the idea that the Army was not so much a militar­ized regime as a glorified trade school in which young men not only equipped themselves for steady peacetime work but also acquired all the wholesome personal qualities that, by implication, their parents, schools, and churches had failed to nurture.

The GI of 1940–1945 was not treated, to borrow another fine phrase from General Devers, as “a person of individual dignity and feelings.” And there will be no sadder Sad Sack than the draftee of 1949 who expects to have a tender regard shown for his individuality.

Vol. 183, No. 1, pp. 31–34

The Draft: Why the Army Needs It
April 1980

by James Webb

When President Jimmy Carter proposed reinstating the draft registration requirement in response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, decorated Vietnam combat veteran James Webb said that registration was not enough: Nothing short of reinstituting the draft, he argued, could save the Army. (In 2006, Webb was elected to the U.S. Senate.)

The volunteer Army is an unmitigated disaster …


The military is not a job, any more than paying taxes is a job … We should all be willing to give a portion of our lives in order to assure that our freedoms will not disappear …

It is fundamentally wrong—and cowardly—in a democratic society to claim that those who stand between us and a potential enemy should be risking their lives merely because they are “following the marketplace,” and the military is their “best deal.” The result of such logic is today’s volunteer Army, a collection of men and women who have been economically conscripted to do society’s dirty work, as surely as if there were the most inequitable draft imaginable.


Vol. 245, No. 4, pp. 34–44

Success Story: Blacks in the Military
May 1986

by Charles Moskos

In 1986, military sociologist Charles Moskos hailed the U.S. armed forces as one of the country’s most successful examples of racial integration.

The record of the U.S. military in race relations is one that deserves recognition … Blacks occupy more management positions in the military than they do in business, education, journalism, government, or any other significant sector of American society …



Vol. 257, No. 5, pp. 64–72

Five Days in Fallujah
July/August 2004

by Robert D. Kaplan

While embedded with the Marines in Iraq, Atlantic correspondent Robert D. Kaplan found himself in the midst of gunfire. Marines, he abruptly realized, are very different from the rest of us.

I had just poured water into the heating filter for a Captain Country Chicken MRE, and was preparing to remove some layers of clothing beneath my flak vest … when RPG and small-arms fire rattled the scrap iron that formed the roof of the filthy garage headquarters …

Smith did not have to order his Marines straight into the direction of the fire; it was a collective impulse—a phenomenon I would see again and again over the coming days. The idea that Marines are trained to break down doors, to seize beachheads and other territory, was an abstraction until I was there to experience it. Running into fire rather than seeking cover from it goes counter to every human survival instinct—trust me. I was sweating as much from fear as from the layers of clothing I still had on from the night before, to the degree that it felt as if pure salt were running into my eyes from my forehead. As the weeks had rolled on, and I had gotten to know the [battalion] as the individuals they were, I had started deluding myself that they weren’t much different from me. They had soft spots, they got sick, they complained. But in one flash, as we charged across [the road] amid whistling incoming shots, I realized that they were not like me; they were Marines.

Vol. 294, No. 1, pp. 116–126