I think you misread my article. I advocate shrinking the Military-Industrial-Complex (that fights blitzkrieg-style waars) and building up a Sysadmin-Industrial-Complex (which will help build functioning governments in the third-world gap).

Eddie,

Agitation-propaganda like the youtube video is definitely helpful, but it’s a short-term solution until the complex can get up and running. We want job security to be on the side of the good guys.

Seerov,

Excellent comment.

While this is disturbing, it has been mentioned that new barracks are being built. Problems with paint peeling, and ceiling tiles falling down, and broken toilets should have all be taken care of by the people who didn’t deploy. So it is these people who failed.

With that being said, it should be obvious that US military personal should be taken better care of. The military needs to attract high quality people and this doesn’t help.

I’m especially worried about the Army. I’ve been reading reports and talking to my connections about the quality of recruits. My contacts on Sand Hill (Infantry basic training) have told me stories about gang members and all around punks. This is a dangerous situation in today’s media world where one mistake can be an international incident.

The Army needs to figure out how to attract high quality people. I think that better pay and more benefits is the way to go however, some have pointed out that people are more willing to volunteer when they feel a sense of duty. And if this is so, then the Army will need to think of ways to get America’s young people to feel a sense of duty. How this is possible with today’s education system and popular media is difficult to say?

Soldiers need to be more like rock stars. They need to be “hip” and serving the country needs to be looked at the altimate in being “cool”. This is tough to achieve without the proper socialization, as it may be difficult to make soldiering “hip” with just a PR campaign?

They have staff members set up for things like this but they end up getting overloaded with other responsibilities. This is similar to what happened at CFAY Yokosuka until 2005… it took a murder and a variety of accidents for a flag officer to get involved and devote time to fixing the issue.

Personally, I don’t think any amount of military might can produce true and lasting security.