Ann Marlowe

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903791504576587244025371456.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The Wall Street Journal

OPINION
SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

The Truth About Who Fights for Us
In 2007, only 11% of enlisted military recruits came from the poorest U.S. neighborhoods.
By ANN MARLOWE

It should no more be necessary to write this article than to prove that there were Jews killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11. And yet the mythology refuses to die. Just last week, two well-educated and well-known writer acquaintances of mine remarked in passing on the “fact” that those who serve in the U.S. military typically have no other career options. America’s soldiers, they said, were poor and black.

They don’t mean this to denigrate their service—no, they mean it as a critique of American society, which turns its unemployed into cannon fodder. Especially today with high unemployment, the charge goes, hapless youths we fail to educate are embarking on a one-way trip to Afghanistan.

These allegations—most frequently leveled at the Army, the military’s biggest service and the one with the highest casualty rate—are false.

In 2008, using data provided by the Defense Department, the Heritage Foundation found that only 11% of enlisted military recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth, or quintile, of American neighborhoods (as of the 2000 Census), while 25% came from the wealthiest quintile. Heritage reported that “these trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40% of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods, a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.”

Indeed, the Heritage report showed that “low-income families are underrepresented in the military and high-income families are overrepresented. Individuals from the bottom household income quintile make up 20.0 percent of Americans who are age 18-24 years old but only 10.6 percent of the 2006 recruits and 10.7 percent of the 2007 recruits. Individuals in the top two quintiles make up 40.0 percent of the population, but 49.3 percent of the recruits in both years.”

What about the charge that our Army is disproportionately black? This too is false, as is clear from data for fiscal 2010 available on the Army’s website: Whereas blacks comprise 17% of Americans ages 18-39 with high school degrees, they represent only a slightly larger proportion of enlisted soldiers, at 21%.

Meanwhile, whites were significantly overrepresented among enlisted Army personnel in 2010. While 58% of Americans 18-39 years old are white, 64% of the Army’s enlisted men and women are. Whites are underrepresented to a minor degree in only one category, in which blacks are overrepresented: Army officers. While 74% of 25-54 year-olds with bachelor’s degrees are white, 72% of Army officers are white. While 8% of 25-54 year-olds with B.A.s are black, 13% of Army officers are.

Is it true that with a shaky economy, blacks have been driven to enlist in the Army in dramatically increased numbers? The 2010 numbers say otherwise. While 60% of 18-24 year-olds with a high school degree are white and 17% are black, 64% of new enlistees are white and 19% are black.

The missing bit of explanation for Army demographics is that Asians and Pacific Islanders, which make up the fastest-growing American demographic, are underrepresented in the Army, as are Hispanics. The explanation for the former is probably cultural, while for the latter it is a matter of difficulty speaking English. Only 12% of Army enlisted personnel are Hispanic, as opposed to 21% in the 18-39 year old population with a high school degree.

Why do myths persist despite all the evidence? One reason is lack of firsthand exposure to the military: Doing a journalistic embed with American troops or visiting a U.S. military base—or simply having some friends in the military—would disabuse my acquaintances of their beliefs.

This detachment is the result of a withdrawal of our urban elites from military service. And it suits the interests of many members of the urban elite to believe that the military they do not join is composed of poor, uneducated victims of an unfair society.

The hidden assumption in this myth is that an institution that is heavily black is an inferior institution. The myth of the ghetto Army is as nastily racist as it is false.

Ms. Marlowe, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, blogs at World Affairs.

News broke this week that federal prosecutors in New York’s Southern District are investigating Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s older brother Mahmoud on charges that may ultimately include tax evasion, racketeering or extortion. But the recent history of US anti-corruption efforts for Afghanistan raises fears that this probe, too, will be quashed.

The word is that the Obama administration has decided to let Karzai “deal” with higher-level corruption while we focus on the local level. As anyone who has followed Karzai’s actions knows, this is a bad joke.

In July, two US-advised task forces in Afghanistan, the Major Crimes Task Force and the Special Investigative Unit, arrested a senior Karzai adviser, Mohammad Zia Salehi. Salehi was allegedly using bribery to obstruct a probe of the New Ansari Exchange for laundering opium profits and aiding the Taliban.

This was not minor stuff: New Ansari has moved $3.1 billion in cash out of Afghanistan since 2007. But Karzai yelped about violations of sovereignty, and the United States turned a blind eye when Salehi was released.

Then, early this month, Afghanistan’s largest bank, Kabul Bank, part-owned by Mahmoud Karzai, nearly collapsed amid allegations of insider loans gone bad. America pressed for a probe of the bank, which our government uses to pay the Afghan army, police and schoolteachers — but there has been no word recently on what’s happening.

There’s also Task Force 2010, a military effort launched in June under the leadership of Rear Adm. Kathleen Dussault. This was to oversee Pentagon contracting to ensure it wasn’t benefiting Afghan thugs or subverting our war strategy. It was focused on southern Afghanistan and the delicate role of another Karzai brother, Ahmad Wali, who is suspected of links to the opium trade and the insurgency. But Dessault, a logistics expert who holds two-star rank, was just replaced by an Army brigadier with no contracting experience after only four months on the job.

In yet another failure of American nerve, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee decided this summer not to release a potentially explosive report on Afghan corruption.

“The US stand on corruption within the Afghan government lacks consistency and continuity,” says 2009 presidential runnerup Dr. Abdullah. (Like many Afghans, he has just one name.) “In Afghanistan, concerns about deep-rooted corruption are beyond the issues of good governance and rule of law, it also fuels insurgency and jeopardizes the efforts against terrorism.”

That is, tolerance of corruption among Afghanistan’s rulers is the quickest way to further destabilize Afghanistan.

In a land that has no system of political parties and precious little civil society, stolen money translates directly into political clout. Many Afghans fear that President Karzai has used the vast financial resources we have put under his control to buy this month’s parliamentary elections, just as he bought last year’s presidential vote.

Afghans are largely uneducated, but not stupid. A June poll of Kandahar citizens found 70 percent believe that local officials make money from drug trafficking, and an astonishing 64 percent state that government administrators in their area were connected to the Taliban insurgency.

Yet even in the alleged Taliban heartland, Afghans value democracy: 40 percent stated that democracy was important to them, and 72 percent would prefer their children to grow up under an elected government rather than the Taliban.

As if to quash such hopes, US commanders in Kandahar brought the entire militia of Afghan warlord Gul Aga Sherzai into the Kandahar police in July. Indeed, we’ve empowered a variety of Afghan thugs — such as Border Police boss Abdul Razik, widely rumored to be a player in the heroin trade — on the thin rationale that they provide useful intelligence.

Gen. David Petraeus’ Counterinsurgency (COIN) Field Manual says with simple good sense: “The primary objective of any COIN operation is to foster development of effective governance by a legitimate government.”

Or as Col. Brian Mennes of the 82nd Airborne says of his Afghan deployment, “What I found is that the most we could hope to do was to impress the Afghans that we were good people. That we would live out our values in front of them . . . and leave them with the impression that the flag on our uniform was a symbol of hope, like it has been for so many throughout history.”

We need to show Afghans that everyone is subject to — and no one above — the law. Otherwise, as Afghan diplomat Ahmad Wali Masoud says, “The culture of corruption Mr. Karzai has encouraged will continue probably for decades.”

The existing anti-corruption teams must be urged forward with the same vigor they would use in the United States. The mess at Kabul Bank — and allegations of equally lax procedures at other privately held Afghan banks — must be scrutinized just as they would be here.

After all, American taxpayers are footing the bill for the Karzai family’s shenanigans. The next time President Karzai whines about sovereignty, President Obama should remind him in no uncertain terms at whose grace he became and remains president. If he doesn’t like his situation, he’s more than free to leave.

Ann Marlowe on RTTV 6/21/2010 on McChrytal controversy