The Christian Science Monitor had a fascinating front-page feature the other day. The headline accurately sums it up: ?Despite hardships of war, many soldiers reenlist.? It gives a few anecdotal examples of soldiers, Marines even National Guardsmen deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan that, perhaps contrary to expectations, are choosing to reenlist to continue the fight:
What is perhaps most significant is that they continue to volunteer. In a normal year, the Army National Guard expects 18 percent of its soldiers to leave because of retirement, injury, and death, or because they do not reenlist. This year, the attrition rate is only 18.9 percent. Meanwhile, reenlistment rates for the Army and Marines are either exceeding goals or are within a few percentage points of them. Some data even show that reenlistment rates are higher for units deployed overseas than for those that have remained at home.
In some ways, this is the first prolonged test of the all-volunteer military, so experts didn’t know what to expect. But clearly, the response has exceeded expectations.
I note this piece not to renew a debate over Iraq (though I have no problem engaging in it) but rather to observe something interesting about political debate. I know I have read, just in the past couple of weeks, several articles from war opponents fretting that reenlistment rates are low, as is morale, and that the all-volunteer force has been stretched beyond the breaking point.
We see this kinds of disputes all the time, including here in NC on state and local policy matters. What gets disputed isn?t just basic principle but facts and figures. Is NC the highest-taxed state in the Southeast? Depends on your measure of taxation (per-capita or as a percentage of income, the latter showing a higher ranking) and your definition of ?Southeast? (does it include Kentucky and Mississippi, if so we?re 3rd in taxes rather than 1st).
Are reenlistments among veteran units high or low? Perhaps they aren?t as high as in peacetime, but they could also be higher than is typical or might be expected during wartime. Different analysts, faced with the same raw data, will often draw different conclusions. The best way to improve the debate on such issues is to report the various conclusions and try to understand how each one was derived.
Unfortunately, what happens instead is a version of the old saw that when the facts are against you, argue the law, and when the law is against you, argue the facts. If neither works, blame Haliburton or Enron.
