Only voluntered in Vietnam.

Inspired by a recent thread i ask:
What if in 60s,at Vietnam war time, the US Army was voluntered like today?
 

nova2010

Banned
Inspired by a recent thread i ask:
What if in 60s,at Vietnam war time, the US Army was voluntered like today?

My thread you mean. In my view it would be worse than nowdays in Iraq apart the very poor (those who live in ghetos) none will wish to go there maybe at first with good propaganda but after seen what is going on in Vietnam none. Recently i saw a documentary on TV saying that nowdays more than half of those who fighting on Iraq are former members of crimical gags or right-wing extremists. Keep in mind that unlike Vietnam Iraq is a flat and very urbanized country (only 20% live in countryside). So streat fighting is something that the US soldiers are familiar with (what the difference for them if are fighting in the streats of LA or Baghdad) Vietnam on the other hand is a country with mountains and deep jungle and the majority back then lived in rural areas. the enviroment is going to be too allien for them as in OTL.
 

HJ Tulp

Donor
My thread you mean. In my view it would be worse than nowdays in Iraq apart the very poor (those who live in ghetos) none will wish to go there maybe at first with good propaganda but after seen what is going on in Vietnam none. Recently i saw a documentary on TV saying that nowdays more than half of those who fighting on Iraq are former members of crimical gags or right-wing extremists. Keep in mind that unlike Vietnam Iraq is a flat and very urbanized country (only 20% live in countryside). So streat fighting is something that the US soldiers are familiar with (what the difference for them if are fighting in the streats of LA or Baghdad) Vietnam on the other hand is a country with mountains and deep jungle and the majority back then lived in rural areas. the enviroment is going to be too allien for them as in OTL.

Nonsense.

Already the vast majority of the soldiers stationed in Vietnam were volunteers.
 
My thread you mean. In my view it would be worse than nowdays in Iraq apart the very poor (those who live in ghetos) none will wish to go there maybe at first with good propaganda but after seen what is going on in Vietnam none. Recently i saw a documentary on TV saying that nowdays more than half of those who fighting on Iraq are former members of crimical gags or right-wing extremists. Keep in mind that unlike Vietnam Iraq is a flat and very urbanized country (only 20% live in countryside). So streat fighting is something that the US soldiers are familiar with (what the difference for them if are fighting in the streats of LA or Baghdad) Vietnam on the other hand is a country with mountains and deep jungle and the majority back then lived in rural areas. the enviroment is going to be too allien for them as in OTL.

Rubbish, study after study have shown that the US Army in Iraq is not made up of Crims and Nazi's. In fact it is better educated and born higher on the socio-economic scale than the national average along with scoring higher on IQ tests. The Military doesn't want, and doesn't take, drug addled moron criminal's, despite the idiotic ramblings of Hollywood types who haven't met a soldier in their life.

See this for pointing out that the only way the US Army is different from the norm is by being Whiter, more Rural and more Southern than the average, hardly news.
 
Rubbish, study after study have shown that the US Army in Iraq is not made up of Crims and Nazi's. In fact it is better educated and born higher on the socio-economic scale than the national average along with scoring higher on IQ tests. The Military doesn't want, and doesn't take, drug addled moron criminal's, despite the idiotic ramblings of Hollywood types who haven't met a soldier in their life.

See this for pointing out that the only way the US Army is different from the norm is by being Whiter, more Rural and more Southern than the average, hardly news.

Your linked source flatly contradicts your claims. It states that the standards for mental capacity WERE lowered, and that the socio-economic profile of the enlisted is below "middle class".

I'm not offering any of my thoughts on the matter, but at least pick a source that agrees with you.
 
Your linked source flatly contradicts your claims. It states that the standards for mental capacity WERE lowered, and that the socio-economic profile of the enlisted is below "middle class".

I'm not offering any of my thoughts on the matter, but at least pick a source that agrees with you.

I fully understand that they lowered their standards in 2006-2008 and until the recent recession were less picky, but the have raised them again as higher unemployment has eased recruitment and they have always excluded the bottom 25% of the population, i.e. cat 4.
If you think about that it is logical that the active duty cohort has a higher median IQ than the general population because the bottom 25% is removed.
As to the socio-economic distribution it is distorted but not in the way you claim. The top (Princeton grads) and bottom (people with serious criminal records, low IQ, drugs problems) are excluded leaving just the middle, i.e. Small town, semi-rural America. That said you are probably right and the median enlisted soldier is probably slightly below the US median.
 
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I fully understand that they lowered their standards in 2006-2008 and until the recent recession were less picky, but the have raised them again as higher unemployment has eased recruitment and they have always excluded the bottom 25% of the population, i.e. cat 4.
If you think about that it is logical that the active duty cohort has a higher median IQ than the general population because the bottom 25% is removed.
As to the socio-economic distribution it is distorted but not in the way you claim. The top (Princeton grads) and bottom (people with serious criminal records, low IQ, drugs problems) are excluded leaving just the middle, i.e. Small town, semi-rural America. That said you are probably right and the median enlisted soldier is probably slightly below the US median.

Understood; wasn't arguing with you, just pointing out that the source did highlight slightly different things than you did.
 
Recently i saw a documentary on TV saying that nowdays more than half of those who fighting on Iraq are former members of crimical gags or right-wing extremists.

So streat fighting is something that the US soldiers are familiar with (what the difference for them if are fighting in the streats of LA or Baghdad)


I wonder how much shit would hit the fan if I wrote the prejudiced nonsense quoted above about a nation and a military other than the United States and the US Army?
 
I wonder how much shit would hit the fan if I wrote the prejudiced nonsense quoted above about a nation and a military other than the United States and the US Army?

Not a lot, unless there happen to be a lot of people from that country here.

On the question above, I thionk we need to keep inmind that the job profile of infantryman has changed considerably between 1968 and today. A US Army still to some extent wedded to tactical and logistic doctrines of WWII and in need of significant numbers of infantrymen to fight a dangerous and quite possibly nonetheless unpopular war amid a relatively good economy - not a dream scenario for recruiters.
 
A volunteer army would be very different and therefore the war would have been fought very differently. Perhaps a look at the way Britain fought its counter-insurgency wars after the 1957 defence white paper would give some clues.
 
I wonder how much shit would hit the fan if I wrote the prejudiced nonsense quoted above about a nation and a military other than the United States and the US Army?

None at all, really. Happens all the time here. The amount of outrage is proportional to board representation of said nation.
 
Except that you're all ingoring the fact that the majority of American personnel in Vietnam were volunteers. Even more so in the the early years of the war.

Your question is flawed.
 
Except that you're all ingoring the fact that the majority of American personnel in Vietnam were volunteers. Even more so in the the early years of the war.

But there were not enough volunteers to fully staff the military at the time. Here are the induction statistics: http://www.landscaper.net/draft70-72.htm#Induction Statistics

Many young men enlisted because they had a hard time landing a civilian job if they had not yet met military obligations.
 
The war goes on longer, probably. There's going to be a lot less domestic opposition to Vietnam with no draft in force. That was part of Nixon's brilliance: he shut up the hippies when he ended the draft, thus giving him a much freer hand to act without strong domestic opposition to the continuation of the war.
 
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