Demographics

NY Times has a really long article on military demographics:

Today's servicemen and women may not be Ivy Leaguers, but in fact they are better educated than the population at large: reading scores are a full grade higher for enlisted personnel than for their civilian counterparts of the same age. While whites account for three of five soldiers, the military has become a powerful magnet for blacks, and black women in particular, who now outnumber white women in the Army.

But if the military has become the most successfully integrated institution in society, there is also a kind of voluntary segregation: while whites and blacks seek out careers in communications, intelligence, the medical corps and other specialties in roughly equal numbers, blacks are two and a half times as likely to fill support or administrative roles, while whites are 50 percent more likely to serve in the infantry, gun crews or their naval equivalent.

This part hit close to home, and was the subject of many dorm room and classroom discussions for me (and an impetus for my joining ROTC):

The disparity created by the Vietnam draft can be seen on the walls of Memorial Hall and Memorial Church at Harvard University, where the names of Harvard students and alumni who died for their country are inscribed. There were 200 Harvard students killed in the Civil War and 697 in World War II, but only 22 in Vietnam.

I was always a little skeptical about race being the most significant disparity between the military and the civilian world, and I think this article bears that out (particularly as it relates to the myths about the 'racist' Vietnam War). Instead, the article makes quite clear that the great statistical disparities are class and geography. Not surprisingly, the military is disproportionately lower and middle class and Southern.

Is it an indictment of this administration (or the one before) to say that the people who are making the wars don't understand the people who are fighting them? I don't really know. My instincts tell me that someone who has never served in the military, never fought with, led, nor cared for soldiers or sailors or marines, is not in the ideal position to make military decisions. I don't think that means non-veterans are incapable of being great leaders or that veterans are incapable of being bad ones. It's just an instinctual feeling that a politician has to have been there to really understand the consequences of his decisions.