Who makes up our Military

Fire of Liberty

Everytime that I tune in on C-SPAN's Washington Journal to watch various guests commenting on Iraq, I can always be assured that sometime during the program there's going to be some caller who's going to make the comment or what equates our fight to being a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight." What's even worse, is that folks in our government like Representative Charlie Rangel continue to appear on various TV shows and radio programs and continues to push this argument that our military recruiters go into the rural and heavily urban areas of America and lure the poor and mostly minority high schoolers into the military by offering them big signing bonuses and educations while avoiding the more affluent neighborhoods.

Now, I know that if folks like Congressman Rangel and these callers keep on repeating this enough times that they eventually believe that this is indeed the socio-economic/racial makeup of our fighting forces but in reality they are making a spurious inference that is far from the truth. Thankfully, The Heritage Foundation has just finished a study titled "Who Bears the Burden?," whose chief findings were presented in a USA Today Op/Ed by Heritage fellows Tim Kane and James Jay Carafano. What's amazing is that the study just knocks down these absurd claims about the recruiters going after the poor and minorities and makes the case much clearer that more and more of the young men and women who march down to their local recruiters come more from the neighborhoods that are rural but are also from mostly middle-class, white and more educated than what Rangel has been stating as the gospel truth. Don't take my word though, just read what Kane and Carafano had to say in their Op/Ed:

If, for example, we consider the education of every recruit, 98% joined with high-school diplomas or better. By comparison, 75% of the general population meets that standard. Among all three-digit ZIP code areas in the USA in 2003 (one can study larger areas by isolating just the first three digits of ZIP codes), not one had a higher graduation rate among civilians than among its recruits.

In fact, since the 9/11 attacks, more volunteers have emerged from the middle and upper classes and fewer from the lowest-income groups. In 1999, both the highest fifth of the nation in income and the lowest fifth were slightly underrepresented among military volunteers. Since 2001, enlistments have increased in the top two-fifths of income levels but have decreased among the lowest fifth.

Allegations that recruiters are disproportionately targeting blacks also don't hold water. First, whites make up 77.4% of the nation's population and 75.8% of its military volunteers, according to our analysis of Department of Defense data.

Second, we explored the 100 three-digit ZIP code areas with the highest concentration of blacks, which range from 24.1% black up to 68.6%. These areas, which account for 14.6% of the adult population, produced 16.6% of recruits in 1999 and only 14.1% in 2003.

This just goes to show you that more and more of the folks who serve in our all volunteer military are in it more to be soldiers and defend this great nation more out of their love for their nation rather than economic our educational opportunities. (Now I can't knock the young people who do join up for the money and education but I can assure you that they are aware that in a post-9/11 world they will eventually end up getting into a shooting war. What's more interesting is that these young men and women keep re-upping to serve more years serving their nation.) Maybe Representative Rangel should study the facts about our military's makeup rather than flogging a non-existent horse.