To the Editor:
In a review of Morris Janowitz’s The Professional Soldier [September], Andrew Hacker, arguing from the Korean prisoner-of-war camp scandal and the general combat record of “our civilians-at-arms,” concludes that “Americans are not cut out for being good soldiers.” . . .
Nevertheless, snafued by mistaken strategic assumptions, the American soldier in Korea fought well enough to bring to a halt the massive Chinese attack. . . . Going back a bit further, the Americans who fought at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Salerno, Anzio, the Rapido (where they were butchered), the hedgerows, Mortain, Bastogne, and the Roer River, against foes who certainly were the best around at the time, did not do too badly either. . . .
Of course Americans have run away on occasion—but even the Japanese surrendered in Manchuria in 1945. It is just possible that survivors of the Japanese elite officer corps might point to Mr. Hacker’s explanation—what can professionals do with civilians-in-arms who surrender?
Interview and questionnaire sampling procedures to determine such deeply mysterious matters as the behavior of men under extreme stress may, just possibly, not be the conclusively revealing affairs they are often taken to be. And the encouragement of such devices by a professional class like our own Pentagon bureaucracy does not suggest the objective, truth-seeking quest one might suppose. . . .
David Driscoll
Brookfield Center, Connecticut
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Mr. Hacker writes:
Mr. Driscoll raises some vital questions in his letter. The problem, we agree, is not one of cowardice. In stress situations our soldiers have usually done well. The question at issue is whether the American fighting man is a “good soldier” by comparative standards. Do American soldiers require so many material comforts that their combat effectiveness is disproportionately impaired when such resources are in short supply? Our minimum requirements in the field are high indeed compared with those, of other armies. How far are American soldiers responsive to military discipline and unquestioning obedience? Lacking a class-based officer corps or an authoritarian outlook, we are again at a comparative disadvantage. Will American soldiers possess a sense of purpose or a vivid idea of what they are “fighting for” in future wars? In terms of ideological commitment, our civilians-at-arms face morale problems that do not plague other nations. These are questions about American society as much as they are about the military establishment. Mr. Driscoll is correct in saying that the answers transcend “interview and questionnaire sampling procedures.”
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