Booze and Broads No More

Soliciting a protitute is now a criminal offense in the Military
by William M. Arkin

With President Bush signing the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act  servicemembers convicted of patronizing a prostitute can now receive a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and one year of confinement. 

Of course, ever since the United States military deployed to the Persian Gulf after Saddam invaded Kuwait, the once famed culture of booze, drugs, and prostitutes so characteristic of the American military presence in Southeast Asia has disappeared. Alcohol and pornography are even officially banned from military possession in the Middle East. 

There is no question that the U.S. military has transformed  since it started fighting its dry wars in 1990. The deployed force faces fewer disciplinary problems associated with the availability of alcohol and drugs; one might say it is a prerequisite for fighting in most of the Middle East. On the other hand, the American military is increasingly dominated by evangelical Christians, a phenomenon that must also have profound effects in that very fight.

A couple of months ago, I was down at Maxwell air force base in Alabama and though the President was struggling at the time with Valerie, Harriet, and Katrina, all the talk in Montgomery was about something else: the social stuggles within the U.S. military… 

I know it’s near impossible to characterize an entire institution without committing immense over simplification, but observing the junior service from the very rear of the front for a few days left a strong impression of something very much awry. 

No sooner had I arrived at Maxwell that news came of remarks by Air Force Academy football coach Fisher DeBerry, who said that other schools had advantages over his in sports because they “had a lot more African-American players [who] ran a lot faster.” 

DeBerry’s remarks come on the heels of the appointment of a new superintendent at the troubled Colorado Springs academy. Since 2002, the Air Force’s premier officer feeder school has been rocked by cheating scandals and challenges to the “honor code,” disclosures of rapes and sexual assaults, all followed by revelations of evangelical goon squads rampant on campus. 

Strong leadership at the top might have softened the impact of this profusion of collateral damage, had it been that there was strong leadership. Instead the Air Force was instead facing its top civilian acquisition official — Darleen Druyun — admitting that she favored Boeing in contracts before she went to work there. Her shameful behavior ultimately led to the resignation of Secretary James F. Roche and opened the way for a brutal fight with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) over a multi-billion dollar lease of Boeing aerial refueling planes, a battle that resulted in three other senior Air Force officials resigning or leaving. 

Then the Air Force’s top lawyer, Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Fiscus, was forcibly retired for having had sexual relations with 13 women, some of them under his command. 

There wasn’t a soul at Maxwell then, nor throughout the Air Force, that wasn’t looking to the new Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael (“Buzz”) Moseley for salvation. Moseley and others in the Air Force “leadership” promised reform and an end to an era of denial. So far the service has been pretty quiet — read not in trouble — since Moseley took over. 

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005 signed by President Bush yesterday amends the military manual for courts-martial — the Uniform Code of Military Justice — making the punishment for using a prostitute the same as that for being a prostitute, says John Awtrey, director of law enforcement policy and support for the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. 

It isn’t that the military has all of a sudden become some political correct and anesthetized Care Bear factory; it is just that it — like American society — has fundamentally changed. 

Today the American military struggles to address sexual assault, cheating, racism, religious intolerance, suicide, and the integrity of its own leaders while it is ingesting more and more young men and women to fight, and toiling on behalf of a greater and greater polarized America.

Some are patriots drawn to service; some are just 18 year olds looking for a job; many are drawn by a like-mindedness associated with the military lifestyle. Listen to the words of the young soldiers and Marines in Iraq and you here their sense of solidarity and obligation to their “buddies” and their units; dare I say the military is taking on the attributes of a gigantic mega-church. 

In some mythical olden day of military service, when broads and booze were intrinsic to the male-dominated culture, when gays were swept under the rug, and prostitution and fraternization were politely ignored, the volcano of testosterone focused the institution solely on fighting.  Oh there were rules to be broken, and there were problems galore, and the level of indiscipline and crime — say for instance when I was in the Army in the mid-1970s — was frightening. 

Today in comparison the military seems, despite the litany of its social struggles, downright middle class. There is absolutely nothing wrong with holding the military to the same standards of society, in fact, with laws like the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, they are held to a higher standard if for no other reason then their lives are more controlled and more regimented. 

But the military is no longer American society — it is something else. The military undeniably is attracting young men and women from a certain segment of our society: southern, rural, overwhelmingly conservative.

Pretty soon they’ll be wanting Sundays off.