<<< it's just hard for me to imagine making kids with 1600 SAT scores ordinary infantry during Vietnam, or now.>>>
One of the reasons I love our military is that it is really a meritocracy. It is color blind, gender blind, social class blind, and ethnicity blind.
They choose the officer corps for their intelligence, athleticism, scholarship, honesty, and integrity.
In the enlisted ranks they have a battery of aptitude tests that puts people with special skills or aptitudes into positions where they are needed. If you have an aptitude for language, they will send you to language school. If you score high enough, across the board, on aptitude tests, you can select the area you go into - not necessarily into the infantry.
Of course, things can get screwed up. Especially when politicians start intervening.
Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld are into micromanagement. They choose targets during times of war and they select personel based on agenda.
This is as opposed to Roosevelt and Truman during WWII whose mission statement to the Generals was basically - Go win the War - letting the professionals do the work. |
