Army Anxiety: Have They Had Enough?

Early in March there was a popular news story about U.S. soldier, Robert Bales, who went on a "shooting rampage" in a southern Afghanistan village. Bales slipped away from his base early one morning and went from house to house, killing 17 Afghans- most of which were women and children.

Bales is a married man with two children back at home. An interview with Matt Lauer can be viewed here, in which Bales' wife defends her husband, saying that "he would not do that." Bales was unexpectedly deployed a fourth time, which his wife says was "a big shock" because he was not on schedule to do so. Lauer asks the question: "Is it possible that this is just the stress of war?"

This incident reminds me of some research I came across while working on my junior theme. During the Vietnam War, there were over 500 incidents of "fragging," an episode in which U.S. soldiers murdered their own officers. Although a different situation, "the stress of war" was regarded as the main factor behind these episodes. 

However, there is a big difference between the Afghanistan War and the Vietnam War; The Vietnam war had a draft. To me, this makes the incidents with the Vietnam soldiers less surprising because I would expect that a greater number of soldiers were fighting against their will--making them more susceptible to well, going crazy.

But if incidents like Bales' are still occurring, what does that suggest about our military today? With an absence of a draft is there the same amount of stress amongst soldiers? Maybe this war has just dragged on too long?

War Today: A Shared Sacrifice?

"Society is set up in such a way that it's the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters" (112), Jack Gladney tells his wife, Babette in Don DeLillo's White Noise, in trying to reassure her that their family will not be affected by the "Airborne Toxic Event," the large amount of toxic chemicals which have recently been released in the air. Jack believes that families who are not among "the poor and the uneducated," are safe from "disasters."

While researching my junior theme, I found this to be true when it comes to the "man-made disaster." My question is: Why hasn't America had a military draft in the past thirty years?

Part of the answer to this question is that the military largely recruits economically suffering Americans. This shown in Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, when he captures recruiters for the army approaching high schoolers in Flint, Michigan. This is a town in which the public high schools had a graduation rate of only 54.6% in 2008 (source).

Moore also makes a point when talking with Congressman John Tanner in Washington DC about the War in Afghanistan:"There's not that many Congressmen that've got kids over there, and in fact, only one." Moore makes the point that affluent families are not being affected by the war nearly as much as poor families. 


When there was draft, every family in our country felt the weight of war, not just the "poor and the uneducated"ones. How does this affect your opinion on whether or not America should have a draft?