How Rangel Gets it Wrong on Facts, Draft

I recently authored a short post titled, Rep. Rangel Smears Military on Fox News Sunday. In the piece I pointed out when Fox journalist Chris Wallace presented Rep. Rangel with the facts about the makeup of our military as found in a Heritage Foundation study, Rangel disagreed and insisted the military is made up of poor and uneducated individuals.

Wallace:

[A] recent and very detailed study by the Heritage Foundation, Congressman, found the following and I'm going to put that up: 13 percent of recruits are from the poorest neighborhoods. That's less than the national average of people living in those neighborhoods. Ninety-seven percent of recruits have high school diplomas. Among all Americans, the graduation rate is under 80 percent. And blacks make up 14.5 percent of recruits for the military; the national average is 12 percent.

Rangel:

[Those] who have the least opportunities at this age find themselves in the military.

Here are the details of the Heritage foundation study:

Nathaniel Ward, writing for the Heritage Foundation, says the Left can’t seem to stop getting the facts wrong on the military. A few weeks back, Sen. John Kerry argued that the military is composed of those who do poorly in school.

Rep. Rangel has now come out with another whopper. In a New York Daily News column arguing for a new military draft to “share the burden” across the population, he states:

The great majority of people bearing arms for this country in Iraq are from the poorer communities in our inner cities and rural areas, places where enlistment bonuses are up to $40,000 and thousands in educational benefits are very attractive. For people who have college as an option, those incentives -- at the risk to one’s life -- don’t mean a thing.

Rangel told Fox News over the weekend that young people join the armed forces only as a last resort. “If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq,” he said, “you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.”

The Heritage foundation points out the myths:

Myth: Poor people with few opportunities enlist, often driven to military service because of structural unemployment.
Fact: U.S. troops come from wealthier neighborhoods than their civilian peers. In fact, the only underrepresented neighborhoods are those with the lowest incomes.

Myth: War is less likely under a draft because policymakers would not want to put their own loved ones in harm’s way.
Fact: There is simply no substance to the argument that a draft keeps the peace, but it must be said that “draft wars” were fought with higher troop levels, and higher casualties. In the last 60 years, America has fought two wars with conscription and two wars without. The logic that conscription was the critical determining variable does not hold.

Myth: The military would obtain better troops through a draft than it has through the volunteer force.
Fact: The all-volunteer force has had immense success in drawing highly motivated individuals through better pay. America’s military leadership is adamantly opposed to instituting a new draft. The generals and admirals argue that a draft would weaken mission capability and create enormous structural and management problems. Morale and force cohesiveness would suffer intensely, particularly with a two-caste military.

The study everyone is quoting:

Who Are the Recruits? The Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Enlistment, 2003–2005
October 27, 2006
by Tim Kane, Ph.D.
(Heritage Foundation) -- A pillar of conventional wisdom about the U.S. military is that the quality of volunteers has been degraded after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Examples of the voices making this claim range from the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Daily News [1] to Michael Moore’s pseudo-documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Some insist that minorities and the underprivileged are over­represented in the military. Others accuse the U.S. Army of accepting unqualified enlistees in a futile attempt to meet its recruiting goals in the midst of an unpopular war.[2] Read it.

Today's article:

No Justification for a Military Draft
by Tim Kane, Ph.D.
November 28, 2006
(Heritage Foundation) -- Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), soon to chair the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, has announced his intention to reinstate the draft. He has offered three different justifications for the reversion to conscription after 33 years of an all-volunteer force: social justice, peace, and better troops. Read it.

It's an unfortunate thing when our leaders not only send our troops into harm's way overseas, but also stoop to using them as pawns in their political parlor games at home.

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