Would Free Public Colleges and Universities Threaten the All-Volunteer Military?

Cost of college, 1985 through 2012, compared to other consumer costs (source; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

I'd like to put a simple idea in front of you, a connection between the predatory student debt scam and the military.

Bernie Sanders has argued the public colleges and universities should be free today, for the same reason that public high schools were free in the past. In the past, basic education — initially grade school, then grade school and high school — was considered both a public right and a public good. An educated nation was both a strong nation and a productive one, and in fact, one of the cornerstones of our preeminence in the world through the 1960s was our education system ... and its availability.

Note that through this entire period, private schools — grade schools and high schools — also existed and thrived. The sons and daughters of the wealthy or the religiously motivated always had those options available. There was no "crowding out."

Today, in this complex world, "basic education" means college as well. Sanders' idea is therefore simply an extension of what we've always done, made "basic education" free to the public at public expense, along with other privately financed options.

Note that free public college and university education would immediately alleviate the crushing burden of student debt, at least for new students. So it's a triple win — we'd get a stronger nation, a more productive one, and a less debt-burdened one, all with one stroke.

Free Education and the Military

So where would those students come from? Many would come from the post-high school work force (think Starbucks, Target and McDonald's), but a great many would also come from populations that turn to the military for employment. Which suggests the question — Is America's military and our military engagements a barrier to free public post-high school education?

I think the answer may be yes, given the number of men and women who join the military to get military-financed education benefits. As you'll read, that's 75% of enlistees.

Consider this, from Peter Van Buren, a former State Department Foreign Service Officer, writing at Common Dreams (my emphasis):

Does Free College Threaten Our All-Volunteer Military?

Does free college threaten our all-volunteer military? That is what writer Benjamin Luxenberg, on military blog War on the Rocks says. But the real question goes deeper than Luxenberg’s practical query, striking deep into who we are as a nation....

Right now there are only a handful of paths to higher education in America: have well-to-do parents; be low-income and smart to qualify for financial aid, take on crippling debt, or…

Or join the military.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill provides up to $20,000 per year for tuition, along with an adjustable living stipend. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard is located, that stipend is $2,800 per month. There is also a books and supplies stipend. Universities participating in the Yellow Ribbon Program make additional funds available without affecting the GI Bill entitlement. Some 75 percent of those who enlisted said they did so to obtain educational benefits.

There's that 75% number. Van Buren continues:

Luxenberg raises the question of whether the free (Bernie Sanders) or lower cost (Hillary Clinton) college education is a threat to America’s all-volunteer military. If so many people join up to get that college money, if college was free or cheaper, would they still enlist?

It is a practical question worth asking, but raises more serious issues in its trail. If people are enlisting in significant part because college tuition is not affordable, does that imply tuition costs need to stay high to help keep the ranks filled? That an unequal college costs playing field helps sustain our national defense?

America faces twin problems with respect to higher education — the crushing burden of student debt, and the fiercely escalating price of college, tuition and fees, that this debt enables. I think you could safely say that without the availability of student loans — which are structured to greatly benefit lenders at the expense of student debtors — tuition increases would not be economically feasible.

Put more simply, bankers and other lenders feed on student debt, grow fat on it in fact. Student debt, in turn, feeds the price charged by the colleges and universities who receive most of that money, which then drives the need for more debt. Everyone wins — banks, universities — everyone except students, who are the victims in this scam. Even those who receive "good" educations are sucked dry. All college students today, graduates or dropouts, leave with a mountain of debt they will carry for decades. They leave with the equivalent of a mortgage — but without the house, and often without a decent job to finance it.

Killing the student loan program by killing the need for loans would immediately change the lives of millions of young people, a whole generation. The bankers won't be happy, but their moaning would prove instantly why these loan programs are so prevalent in the first place — to feed the greed, and no other reason.

And once again, private colleges and universities would still exist and would still be free to charge anything they like. Of course, they'd now have to compete with the free universities, something that would likely bring down even those tuition costs. Sounds like a win-win, yes?

But Where Will the Money Come From? Cancel the F-35.

But how would we "pay for it" (assuming that money works differently from the way it does in the real world, that money is a zero-sum game, like gold)? Here's another simple idea, again from the article:

Money matters, but what the country can get for its money is also important. Let’s round off the military higher education benefit, tuition and living stipend, to $53,000 a year. An F-35 fighter plane costs $178 million.

Dropping just one plane from inventory generates enough money for 3,358 years of college money. We could even probably survive as a nation if we didn’t buy four or five of the planes. A lot of people who now find college out of reach could go to school

Let's make that even easier. Cancel the F-35 completely. After all, it's dangerous to operate and barely flies. Reuters:

U.S. sees lifetime cost of F-35 fighter at $1.45 trillion

The U.S. government now projects that the total cost to develop, buy and operate the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be $1.45 trillion over the next 50-plus years, according to a Pentagon document obtained by Reuters.

The Pentagon's latest, staggering estimate of the lifetime cost of the F-35 -- its most expensive weapons program -- is up from about $1 trillion a year ago, and includes inflation....

The Pentagon still plans to buy 2,443 of the new radar-evading, supersonic warplanes, plus 14 development aircraft, in the coming decades, although Air Force Secretary Michael Donley last week warned that further technical problems or cost increases could eat away at those numbers.

You could finance a lot of free public college and university education with $1.5 trillion. Not buying 2500 planes at $180 million per plane would itself save a half-trillion dollars.

As to how we'd fight all of our wars without out-of-options young people forced by circumstances to enlist ... well, maybe we'd have to justify those wars to the public in more effective ways. After all, enlistments in WWII weren't hard to come by.

GP
 

Endangering Military Recruitment To Stay True To Trumpist Bigotry

Unless...

Right-wing extremists and anti-immigrant fanatics Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Steve King (R-IA) offered two amendments Thursday to prevent undocumented immigrants from serving in the U.S. military. Gosar's amendment was defeated 210-211, 30 Republicans crossing the aisle to vote with every single Democrat. King's amendment failed 207-214, with 33 Republicans voting with the Democrats.

Despite representing a district with a large, established and growing immigrant population centered in Austin and San Antonio, Lamar Smith was one of the radical anti-immigrant Republicans to vote for both extremist amendments. We reached out to Tom Wakely, the military veteran and progressive Democrat running for the seat Smith's been in for way too long. He didn't seem as surprised as he was saddened at his opponent's knee-jerk votes.

"If anybody still needed a reason as to why Lamar Smith endorsed Donald Trump, I feel like this anti-Hispanic vote would certainly qualify," he told us. "What's the goal in turning away young men and women who are willing to fight for the United States of America based solely on their immigration status? They're subscribing to the ultimate duty to our nation. We've seen plenty of GOP leaders break away from Trump's rhetoric, but their actions speak louder than their presumptive nominee's words. I personally didn't think that would be possible, yet here we are. Both Lamar Smith and I are from San Antonio, a city known for its proud Hispanic and military backgrounds, and I can't possibly imagine the majority of our constituents agreeing with our Congressman on this vote."

Smith doesn't even try to portray himself as "moderate." He's been in cahoots with the extreme right every since leaving Sacramento for DC. John Katko, who represents a blue district in a Central New York around Syracuse, knows if he can't present himself as "moderate," he doesn't have any chance to win in November. And he still voted for Gosar's scheme. Eric Kingson, the most likely Democrat to face Katko in November, told us today that "the vote is yet another symbol of the dangerous anti-immigrant attitude of the right. To deny a young adult the opportunity to serve and give back the nation that they know as home is cruel and unusual, not to mention terrible military policy. The fact that Rep. Katko failed to vote against the amendment is yet another symbol that he is no moderate, despite his desperate attempts to portray himself as so. He has failed to speak against the dangerous, anti-democratic, blatantly racist rhetoric coming from Donald Trump, and that to me is very troubling. This vote fits the trend of Katko siding with the rise of xenophobia in the Republican party."

Ruben Gallego, a progressive freshman from Phoenix who saw active duty in Iraq as part of the U.S. Army, made the point during the debate that the military needs these recruits and that "we shouldn’t let political posturing stand in the way of our military’s requirement goals." Many Democrats remarked during the debate that Republicans were jeopardizing national security to align themselves with Trump's anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant campaign positions. That's isn't likely to end well for anyone concerned. Please help replace Katko, Smith and other radicalized anti-immigrant Trumpists with progressives like Eric Kingson and Tom Wakely by tapping on the thermometer:

How Badly Will A GOP Filibuster Of DADT Hurt Obama?

All through the 1600s and 1700s blacks and whites fought side by side in an integrated American Army. Because of the virulently racist sociopaths who ran the show in the South, that ended after the War of 1812-- and stayed ended until the Korean War! Even during World War II, most black enlisted men served as truck drivers and stevedores, although during the emergency of the Battle of the Bulge, Eisenhower made the decision-- not without hysterical opposition from his chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith-- to allow black troops to fight alongside white troops for the first time. Although Smith (who later led the CIA) predicted the American public would be outraged by the notion of integration, the U.S. victory in Europe seemed to take precedence.

After the war it was clear that racist Southern congressional leaders would block President Truman's plan to integrate the armed forces. KKK members like Georgia's Richard Russell played the bigoted role back then that McCain is playing today in the struggle to end Don't Ask Don't Tell. Truman ended the debate in 1948 by issuing Executive Order 9981:

It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale.

There was nothing for the racists to do but fulminate, threaten and pout. And they did. But Truman showed the kind of leadership Americans would like to see from Obama. Today 3 of 4 of Congress' leading voices on the Armed Services committees are out-and-out bigots: McCain (including his wife), Buck McKeon (R-CA), and defeated ConservaDem Ike Skelton. Only Senator Carl Levin backs Obama's plan to end DADT. Yesterday The Hill looked at the choices falling to Harry Reid this month as the Senate takes up a defense authorization bill already passed by the House that includes an amendment-- Patrick Murphy's-- to end DADT. That passed 234-194 on May 27, with 26 homophobic Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with all but 5 Republicans. Of the 26 anti-gay Democrats, only 12 will be back in Congress. The defeated or retiring homophobes are Marion Berry (Blue Dog-AR), Rick Boucher (Blue Dog-VA), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Lincoln Davis (Blue Dog-TN), Chet Edwards (Blue Dog-TX), Bob Etheridge (NC), Solomon Ortiz (TX), Earl Pomeroy (Blue Dog-ND), Ike Skelton (MO), John Spratt (SC), John Tanner (Blue Dog-TN) and Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS).

It remains to be seen how many Senate Democrats will scurry across the aisle to support McCain's threatened filibuster. Joe Manchin (D-WV) was sworn in yesterday. Anyone unsure of where he stands?

But abandoning the effort to repeal the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy would be a political disaster for President Obama, who made a campaign promise to end the ban.

And with a Republican majority in the House and diminished Democratic numbers in the Senate in the incoming Congress, the lame-duck session may be the last chance to repeal “don’t ask” before the 2012 presidential campaign begins in earnest.

If Reid isn’t able to move the repeal through the Senate, Obama will have to explain to his liberal base why he failed to follow through on a central promise from his 2008 campaign.

Both Reid and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), have been vocal supporters of repealing ban. And Levin, together with another chief supporter, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), was able to include a repeal provision in the 2011 defense authorization bill.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the panel’s leading Republican, has been pulling out all the stops to see that provision removed from the Pentagon’s massive policy bill. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), backs him.

The defense authorization bill will not be part of the Senate’s schedule this week. But one of the military officers leading the Pentagon’s study into the implications of repeal is scheduled to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Gen. Carter Ham has been nominated to lead Africa Command and will appear for a confirmation hearing, offering a chance for lawmakers to press him on the matter.

The Pentagon study, which both sides will likely use to make their respective cases, is due on Dec. 1. Results leaked recently to the Washington Post showed the military could lift the ban with minimal risk to the current war operations. But, at the very least, Republicans will insist on hearings on the findings. The pressure of the running clock could further diminish the chances of passage of the defense bill containing the repeal provision.

...Informal deliberations between the House and Senate committees over the defense bill already broke down this week over the politics of repeal. But congressional sources said the committees may attempt to revive discussions next week.

Much depends on how Reid handles the issue. But if Congress fails to pass a final bill, or the final bill does not include repeal, it will deal a blow to the president who has promised both publicly and privately to the gay rights community that the law will be scrapped.

Gay rights activists have become increasingly impatient with the White House on the issue, and tensions have escalated in recent weeks.

Those who want to see the end of “don’t ask” have heckled the president at campaign stops and town hall meetings, demanding to know why he hasn’t done more. Gay rights advocates are particularly upset with the administration’s decision to appeal a court ruling that overturned the military’s policy.

Not ending the policy “would be a major setback for gay and lesbian service members as well as the president,” said Aubrey Sarvis, the executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network an organization dedicated solely to repeal.

While the leaked results of the Pentagon’s repeal study put wind the sail of repeal supporters, they had the opposite effect on detractors. The Family Research Council, a conservative organization, is asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates to investigate the leak.

The survey for spouses is even dopier and more sinister than the DADT-repeal survey for servicemembers

Your Dept. of Defense has an urgent message

re. DADT repeal: Be afraid! Be very afraid!

""While it is wise to solicit and consider military spouse input on policy changes that will have a major impact on military families, it is extremely unwise to do so for issues that have minimal impact on spouses while also using poorly designed, biased and derogatory survey instruments."

-- Alexander Nicholson, executive director
of Servicemembers United

by Ken

We haven't talked about these surveys the Defense Dept. is doing to gauge intra-military sentiment about the effects of DADT repeal. We've had details for a while about the survey conducted sent to 400,000 selected servicemembers (active-duty and activated-reserve), which did nothing to contradict one's gut impulse that the only imaginable reason for such a survey was to encourage homophobes to vent their bigotry, and even feel good about it! After all, if the military was so interested in their homophobia, it must be legit.

At least in that case, though, the Pentagon could claim the high ground. While the whole idea of surveying servicemembers before committing to DADT repeal seemed nuts (name another basic policy decision the DoD made based on polling the opinions of the troops), it was hard to see any purpose to the undertaking beyond throwing a monkey wrench into the mechanism of the proceedings. But, as I say, the Pentagon could claim otherwise. The DoD could claim that the purpose of the survey wasn't to decide whether to proceed with DADT repeal but to gauge the kinds of propems it would face in implementing the new policy. Um, okay. I guess.

But now we've got the other survey, sent out to 150,000 military spouses, encouraging them to vent their venom and fear. I'm not the only one who couldn't think of any purpose except to encourage military wives to fantasize about their men being recruited into the Gay Lifestyle, by scorching-hot military gayboys, who as we know can't keep it in their pants -- unlike our sexually upstanding military straightboys. (Or is that the basis of the fear? That gay soldiers and sailors and marines would be as out of control sexually as their straight counterparts?) And of course let's not forget the parallel invitation to male military spouses to imagine their serving wives being lured by lewd lezzies into abandoning husbands and children.

You can see the survey for yourself. A scanned version has been posted by Servicemembers United, which describes itself as "the nation's largest organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans." It would seem merely lame and pathetic if the intentions and potential consequences didn't seem so sinister. Take this chunk, for example, which follows immediately a question about "the most important factors you and your spouse consider when making decisions about his or her future in the military":

16. How important a factor would a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell be to you in making decisions about your spouse's future in the military?
⌈ Very important
⌈ Important
⌈ Neither important nor unimportant
⌈ Unimportant
⌈ Very unimportant
⌈ Don't Know

17. Would a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell affect your preference for your spouse's plans for his or her future in the military?
⌈ Yes, I would want my spouse to stay longer
⌈ Yes, I would want my spouse to leave earlier
⌈ No, it would have no effect on my preference for my spouse's plans for military service in the future
⌈ Don't Know

18. Have you ever recommended to a family member or close friend that he or she pursue service in the military?
⌈ Yes
⌈ No

19. Would a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell affect your willingness to recommend military service to a family member or close friend?
⌈ Yes, I would be more likely to recommend military service to a family member or close friend
⌈ Yes, I would be less likely to recommend military service to a family member or close friend
⌈ No, it would not affect my willingness to recommend military service to a family member or close friend
⌈ Don't Know

Or there's "Assuming you had a choice on where to live, how important would a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell be to you in considering where to live?" And "Assume Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed and you live in on-base housing. If a gay or lesbian Service member lived in your neighborhood with their partner, would you stay on-base or would you try to move out?" The latter is followed up with:

25. While living on-base, which of the following would you do?
⌈ I would make a special effort to get to know the gay or lesbian Service member and partner
⌈ I would get to know them like any other neighbor
⌈ I would generally avoid them when I could
⌈ I would do nothing
⌈ I would do something else, please specify: ..................................
⌈ Don't Know

I especially like that "something else," which provides about a 3½-inch line on which to indulge your spousely fantasies of what you would do if, God forbid, those people should be insinuated among the base-housed regular people. Presumably the Pentagon archives contain records of similar surveys of attitudes concerning being forced to live among people of Polish descent, or Eye-talians. In case you were wondering, no, there are no questions about gays or lesbians the service spouse may already be serving with.

The seedy, comical repulsiveness of the enterprise is enhanced by the transparent dishonesty of the people who are presiding over it. You would never guess from this nonsense that there are real issues regarding the military's adjustment, if and when it becomes necesssary, to a staffing policy based on just two criteria: candidates' interest in and fitness for service.

For a more thorough response, here is a press release issued by Servicemembers United, with links to its detailed briefing memos on various aspects of these surveys:

Servicemembers United Blasts Military Spouse Survey on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

Spouse Survey Slightly Less Biased, More Derogatory Toward Gays and Lesbians

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Servicemembers United, the nation's largest organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans, released a briefing memo today that blasted the biased design and derogatory and insulting content of the recent Pentagon survey of military spouses about the impending repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law. The survey, which went out on Friday to 150,000 heterosexual military spouses, contained fewer methodological biases than the previous Pentagon survey, although the spouse survey was more inherently derogatory towards gay and lesbian Americans than the previous survey.

"While it is wise to solicit and consider military spouse input on policy changes that will have a major impact on military families, it is extremely unwise to do so for issues that have minimal impact on spouses while also using poorly designed, biased and derogatory survey instruments," said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and a former U.S. Army interrogator who was discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." "The Pentagon should be concerned with real family readiness issues like excessive deployments, inadequate mental health screenings and support, low troop pay, reductions in housing subsidies for military families, and inadequate spousal employment support instead of spending $4.4 million on a politically-motivated and unnecessary survey about gays and lesbians."

After the first survey of 400,000 active duty and reserve troops was released in July, Servicemembers United led the nationwide protest against the methodological bias and the derogatory content within this survey. Servicemembers United also launchedwww.SurveyRefund.org to demand that the contractor refund the exorbitant sum of taxpayer money - $4.4 million - that was paid for the survey contract.

A copy of the briefing memo on the spouse survey can be found at:
www.servicemembersunited.org/spousesurveymemo

A copy of the briefing memo on the previous survey of active duty and reserve troops can be found at:
www.servicemembersunited.org/surveymemo

A follow-up memo in response to Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell's 30-minute press briefing about Servicemembers United's criticism can be found at:
www.servicemembersunited.org/morrellresponse

Really now, you don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

#

Can we recall that LGBT military exclusion is a national security issue, not just a "gay" one?

by Ken

I'm encountering a lot of understandable and welcome anger among LGBT colleagues, and increasingly in the mainstream media as well, regarding the Obama administration's apparent write-off of any attempt this year at undoing the military's dreadful "don't ask, don't tell" policy of excluding healthy, qualified LGBT candidates from U.S. military service. One pair of points we keep hearing is:

* the role played by the issue's relative importance to the LGBT community (i.e., "Just how much do they care?"),

* and the role played by the importance of the LGBT community to the Obama administration (i.e., "How much do we care how much they care?").

The theory is that the Obama people aren't persuaded that the issue is important enough to LGBT folk, and that the urgencies of LGBT folk aren't important enough to them, to cause the administration to assign the issue immediate priority.

The point I'm not hearing, and it's one point that needs to be made clear in the DADT fight, is that this is at least as much "a national security issue" as it is "an LGBT issue." I've been grappling of some way of communicating this (not that anything I write here will make a difference). While I continue to try to puzzle it out, here is the basic argument:

Even if the Bush regime hadn't done so much to decimate the U.S. military, it strikes me as literally insane to be depriving our fighting forces of the contributions of this entire category of able-bodied and -minded folk who want to serve their country. But when you factor in the state to which our military was reduced by eight years of unchecked Cheneyism, pressuring desperate military recruiters to overlook virtually all service disqualifications except the dreaded LGBT one, the policy of exclusion goes beyond insane. ("Beyond insane" -- I think I've finally found my shorthand description of the mentality of the Bush regime.)

When you then factor in specialized areas like linguists and translators, where we are known to be perilously short-handed and the shortage is known to be wildly exacerbated by LGBT exclusion, the case becomes unarguable to me that defenders of the status quo, and in general opponents of welcoming LGBT candidates into our armed forces, really don't care about the nation's security -- or at least not as much as they care about maintaining their personal bigotries.

WOULD McCAIN INSTITUTE A DRAFT IN JANUARY? OR WOULD HE WAIT UNTIL FEBRUARY?

Art by tw3k: More war means a draft. Period.

Maybe I've just missed it-- perhaps because of all the breathless distractions about Obama's pastor and bowling score-- but I could swear the corporate media isn't informing their audience that a vote for John McCain is a vote for the re-instatement of a military draft. Now, call me naive, but I have to believe that even his barbeque buddies would agree that most voters would be more interested in a discussion of the prospects of a draft-- something McCain's plans absolutely guarantee-- than in Obama's lack of skill on the bowling alley. (John Stewart actually showed a clip of some Fox talking head suggesting he should have "stuck to the hoops.")

Last week I was reminiscing about my very first arrest, which was for protesting against the draft in 1967. If the media is able to mislead voters drastically enough so that McCain actually gets into the White House, there will be many more arrests at many more protests all over America.

McCain's policies-- whatever the meaning about his constant rhetorical stumblings about Iraq and Iran, Sunni and Shi'a, and 100 years in Iraq-- can't be put in place without a military draft. (By the way, when I was protesting in 1967 Nixon was coming up with a strategy about how to make the American people vote for him-- by claiming to have "a plan." McCain also claims to have "a plan"-- to capture Osama bin-Laden-- so one wonders why he doesn't share this with his pals George W. and Cheney.)

Republicans are forever hectoring about how we should just do whatever the generals tell us to. That's typical right wing cynicism since generals don't make policy in the U.S.-- elected officials do-- and since every single general who has spoken out professionally in a way that didn't hew completely to Bush-Cheney dogma has been sacked. So listen to the generals? Which ones? The Bush toadies or the ones who helped Darcy Burner come up with the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq?

Today's Washington Post mentions a hearing yesterday at the Senate Armed Services Committee in which Army Vice Chief of Staff, General Richard Cody, put his career in jeopardy, like so many before him have done, by implicitly criticizing the incompetence of the Bush Regime.

"I've never seen our lack of strategic depth be where it is today," said Cody, who has been the senior Army official in charge of operations and readiness for the past six years and plans to retire this summer.

This morning Brandon Friedman at VetVoice analyzed the session in light of McCain's aggressive military agenda.

Cody laments the "lack of balance" in today's Army, and says the "current demand for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the sustainable supply and limits our ability to provide ready forces for other contingencies... Current operational requirements for forces and insufficient time between deployments require a focus on counterinsurgency training and equipping to the detriment of preparedness for the full range of military missions." The stress on the fighting men and women, their families and the equipment is at dangerous levels.

Bush's response is to just stay the course and then get out of Dodge... and leave it for whomever comes in after him to sort it out. McCain would institute a draft and pour billions of more dollars into the military. (I think he wants to make up for all that time he lost sitting ignobly in the Hanoi Hilton; lots of wars out there to be waged if one wants to.) The draft is the only difference between Bush and McCain I've seen in regard to Iraq.


UPDATE: WILL CONGRESS ASK PETRAEUS ANYTHING USEFUL?

When the Republican nominee for president in 2012 puts on his fancy dress uniform next week and marches into Congress to be questioned, it's unlikely anything beyond a polite and meaningless piece of kabuki theater will be played out. But... just in case, David Corn asked some national security experts for the questions Congress should be asking Petraeus. I hope some members of Congress see the list and get some ideas from it. Some of the ones by military officers who wished to remain anonymous are particularly... provocative.

Quote of the day: Hey, Jack, in our brave new world of Bushonomics, this probably qualifies as not merely a "job" but likely an entire industry

"I got a real job now. I talk homeless people into joining the Army."
--long-lost con-man brother Eddie Donaghy (pronounced "Dona-H-ee"--guest star Nathan Lane [right]) to NBC president Jack Donaghy (pronounced "Dona-GH-ee," of course--incandescent series regular Alec Baldwin [below]), on last night's episode of NBC's 30 Rock, "The Fighting Irish"

NOT ALL THEM ROCK STARS ARE LIKE NEIL YOUNG. TAKE GODSMACK, FOR EXAMPLE...

I used to be a judge every year at the WBCN Rock'n'roll Rumble in Boston. One year, 1991 I think, there was a cool young band called Seka in the finals and they really blew me away. They won and I signed them to Sire Records. Seka, the porn star, for whom the band named itself, threatened to sue and the band changed their name to Strip Mind. We put out an album called WHAT'S IN YOUR MOUTH and a (now very rare) maxi called "Jingle My Bells" (which includes sludge and punk versions of "O Tannenbaum" and "O Christmas Tree"). And then the band broke up and disappeared. Except for the drummer, Sully Erna.

The drummer became the founder and lead singer of what would become one of the biggest bands in the country, Godsmack. A little Alice In Chains derivative for me but I was damned happy to see someone I knew achieving success. Good boy, I thought. Not my kind of music personally, but... good boy.


Well... maybe not such a good boy. Godsmack-- who are, after all, from Boston (not Dallas or Boise or Tuscaloosa)-- started getting a reputation for supporting Bush and the war against Iraq and being aggressively pro-military. To be honest, I didn't dwell on it. No one is perfect and I guess in the back of my head I was kind of happy for the huge success Sully and his pals were having. And last week, that success culminated in the release of their inventively-named fourth album, IV. It immediately went to #1. That is so awesome! From my years in the music biz I know what a great feeling that is; I mean only one record per week goes to #1. I would have been so happy for Sully and Godsmack if I knew. But I didn't. I was too busy listening to LIVING WITH WAR by Neil Young streaming for free on the Internet all week to have noticed IV. But if I would have heard about it, I would have been happy... or happyish I guess.

But then my pal Jay Babcock, publish and editor of ARTHUR Magazine e-mailed me. Now ARTHUR is my #1 favorite music mag in the whole world. I love it. And Jay isn't derivative of Alice in Chains-- or anything else-- at all. He's a unique, creative, idealistic true believer. And he's not some kind of liberal publishing magnate. Jay struggles to make ends meet, keep his magazine going, keep his household functioning, keep his cool philanthropic projects-- always aimed at making the world a better place for everyone-- going every single week. Jay told me about Godsmack's #1 chart debut.

And that's not all he told me. Mostly he told me about the interview he had done with Sully on the phone last week. It sounded pretty brutal. You see, Jay feels strongly about the military aggressively luring confused and desperate young kids-- many right out of high schools-- into the Bush Regime's war-profits-schemes. So here's Sully and Godsmack licensing songs to the military to use for their teenage recruitment programs and here's Jay who kind of thinks bands shouldn't be doing that. That's a call that had all the makings of an explosive situation. And the makings exploded.

If this interests you at all, you should read the whole transcript of the interview here at the ARTHUR website including the comments from Godsmack fans and detractors. Or you can listen to the interview as an mp3. This morning Jay wrote "an afterward" on the site too, part of which I'll use as an intro to the segments of the transcript I'm going to reproduce for you here:

I suppose to a degree it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, but… lives are on the line. People need to be held accountable. I’ve been trying to interview this band since 2003. I finally got my chance. It’s stimulated a ton of discussion — check out blabbermouth.net’s various threads, or the number of blogs and rock news sites that are now picking this up, or the comments below, or the endless barrage of juvenile hatemail we’ve been receiving — and it’s embarrassed the band into silence on the issue, which is better than the jingoism they’d been spouting previously.

Finally: Please keep in mind that Sully is a MILLIONAIRE living in a comfortable life. His band is using their music to help recruit poor, under-educated, foolish, impressionable kids into the military at a time of worthless, pointless war, the consequences of which we — all of us — will be feeling for the rest of our lives. If he doesn’t care to discuss this — all of this — he shouldn’t do interviews… especially with anti-war publications.

Referring to Greg Goldin's 2003 article in the L.A. WEEKLY, “Selling War: How the military’s ad campaign gets inside the heads of recruits,” Jay didn't exactly get the interview off to a palsy-walsy start.

JAY: So I notice you guys have been really involved with promoting the military.

SULLY: Well, they actually came to us, believe it or not. Somebody in the Navy loves this band, because they used ‘Awake’ for three years and then they came to us and re-upped the contract for another three years for ‘Sick of Life.’ So, I don't know. They just feel like that music, [laughs] someone in that place thinks that the music is very motivating for recruit commercials I guess. And hey, I'm an American boy so it's not… I'm proud of it.

JAY: You're proud of recruiting your fans into the military?

SULLY: Well, no. [laughs, then playfully] Don't be turning my fucking words around, you!

JAY: Well, tell me what you mean. You said your music is powerful, it's got an effect, like you said, and you're letting the military use it. The military, who are they recruiting? 18-to-30-year-olds, right?

SULLY: I guess… I don't know what their recruit age is. I know it's at least 18.

JAY: Yeah, they do down in the high schools now.

SULLY: My thing is… Listen, here's my thing with the military. I'm not saying our government is perfect. Because I know that we make some mistakes and we do shitty things BUT, BUT. You wouldn't have your job, and we wouldn't have our lives, if we weren't out there protecting this country so we could lead a free life. So there's kind of a ying and a yang to that. Sometimes it's not always the best choices that we make, or we stick our noses in other people's shit, but at the same time, we protect this place enough that we're able to like pursue careers and do what a lot of people in other countries aren't able to do. They're kind of picked and they're chosen to be whatever they become… I'm, I'm, I'm proud to be an American, I'll tell you that.

JAY: So your country, right or wrong?

SULLY: Uh, no. Not right or wrong. But I'm proud to be an American. I love my country. I've seen the depressions and how people live in other countries and how they're told what to be, and they don't have the choices that we have. I do love that about our country. So, you know… And I actually sympathize with a lot of the soldiers, and the military in general, that are trained to go out and protect FOR us, and what they have to go through, it's really kind of shitty in a sense that these young kids have to go over there and die, sometimes, for something that isn't our fucking problem. And that kind of sucks. So what I have to do is at least support them, because they don't have the choice that we do.

After some more sparring, Jay and Sully got into it pretty heavy.

JAY: Well I have a quote from you here: “We've always been supportive of our country and our president, whereas a lot of people I thought”—and you said this in 2003, to MTV News, you said—”a lot of people I thought lashed out pretty quickly at what we did and I thought the government did everything pretty cleanly and publicly as possible.”

SULLY: Yeah…?
 
JAY: Well, what are you talking about?

SULLY: That was my opinion at the time. The whole war thing, and trying to keep us up to date like… If you remember, back in other wars, we didn't have the opportunity to follow it through the media, and CNN, and the news—live updates and that kind of thing. And I thought that for the most part you know we were allowed to follow it as best we could through the media sources that were feeding us information.

JAY: [incredulous] You didn't think the media was being controlled by the military?

SULLY: Well, it could be. I don't know.

JAY: You didn't look into it?

SULLY: Listen. Are you a fucking government expert?

JAY: I'm not telling people to go join the military and then not knowing what the military is doing.

SULLY: I don't tell people to go join the military!!

JAY: You don't think using your songs—the POWER of your music, which you were talking about—has an effect on the people that hear it when it goes with the visuals that the best P.R. people in the world use?

SULLY: Oh man, are you like one of those guys that agrees with some kid that fuckin’ tied a noose around his neck because Judas Priest lyrics told him to?

JAY: You were telling me how powerful your music was, and what age the people are that listen to it, and you must have thought, ‘Well the Navy sure thought it was useful,’ so you tell me.

SULLY: Hey, listen. The Navy thought…. It's the same reason why wrestlers work out to the music, and extreme motocross riders listen to the music and do what they do. It's ENERGETIC music. It's very ATHLETIC. People feel that they get an adrenaline rush out of it or whatever, so, it goes with whatever’s an extreme situation. But I doubt very seriously that a kid is going to join the Marines or the US Navy because he heard Godsmack as the underlying bed music in the commercial. They're gonna go and join the Navy because they want to jump out of helicopters and fuckin’ shoot people! Or protect the country or whatever it is, and look at the cool infra-red goggles.
 
JAY: You said to MTV, “We're not a very political band but we're supportive of the U.S. military and how they approach things.”

SULLY: Listen. Someone turned that around. I never said “and how they approach things.”

This led to the explosion I was talking about and to Sully slamming down the phone on Jay and refusing to get back on with him, even after Jay promised the publicist he would just talk about the songs on the new album (IV). Only read the transcript if you don't mind a little a lot of foul language.