The dubious use of ‘moral waivers’

November 21, 2006

I can appreciate the fact that military recruiting in the midst of an unpopular war is difficult. I can even appreciate the need to alter minimum standards in order to make it easier to fill the ranks. But “moral waivers“? (thanks to K.Z. for the tip)

A CBS4 investigation shows how the U.S. Army is accepting more applicants with criminal records, including drug problems, through a system of “waivers” to bypass regulations.

With a high demand for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has struggled to meet its recruiting and retention goals in past years. However, in the 2006 fiscal year, the Army exceeded its goal by enlisting 80,635 new troops…. The factors for an increase in enlistment include the change of the age limit from 40 to 42, a lowering of aptitude test score standards and an increase in what the Army calls “moral waivers.”

Nationally, the Army has increased its acceptance of moral waivers from 7,640 in 2001 to 11,018 in 2006.

The CBS affiliate in Denver decided to put these “moral waivers” to the test, seeing exactly who would qualify to receive one. A woman who claimed to have a marijuana possession record, for example, was told, “You could still be an officer with that. It may slow it down a bit … it requires a waiver.”

Upping the ante, the CBS affiliate sent another person into a recruiting station, claiming he was a gang member.

“Does it matter that I was in a gang or anything like that?” he asked the recruiter.

At first, he was told the Army doesn’t accept enlistees who were gang members, but then the senior officer stepped in.

“You may have had some gang activity in the past and everything, ok, and that in itself does not disqualify you,” he said.

Apparently, these waivers are being handed out all the time, for a variety of offenses. From 2004 to 2005, the number of recruits brought into the Army with serious criminal misconduct waiver jumped 54%, drug and alcohol waivers increased 13%, and misdemeanor waivers increased 25%.

Lt. Colonel Reginald Cox, who commands the Army recruiting battalion based in Denver, insisted standards have not been lowered. “These new applicants are doing an outstanding job for their country,” Cox said. “They’re brave. They have courage. They’re living the Army values.”

I agree with nearly all of this. I’m certain these applicants are doing an outstanding job, and their willingness to volunteer for service is absolutely courageous. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re willing to wear a uniform and put your life on the line for your country, you’re a hero.

But that doesn’t change the fact that standards have dropped. Army Secretary Francis Harvey and vice chief of staff Gen. Richard Cody acknowledged a year ago that the Army was using looser Defense Department rules that permitted it to sign up more high school dropouts and people who score lower on mental-qualification tests. People who would have been rejected before are accepted now.

And these waivers further highlight how dire the situation has become. Recruiters are left with, “If you’re not gay, there’s a way.”

Ah, once you reduce the meaning of being a soldier to driving around in a HumVe waiting to be shot or blown up, it becomes so much more easy to fill a slot. Used to be a time when soldiers needed to be able to handle ballestics and computers and analyze intelligence and all that.

But Rummy, he’s transformed the force. Now they’re nothing more than mounted infantry.

I’m going to go dig a foxhole now in anticipation of all the incoming traffic 😉

  • So, in the Army’s view, being a violent criminal is more acceptable than being gay? Just when I think I can’t get any more outraged by the Armed Forces’ screwed-up priorities…

  • The recruiters apparently did not learn much from David McSwane, the Colorado journalism student who caught them on tape helping him to “clean up” before a drug test, and suggesting places to get fake diplomas.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/02/eveningnews/main692497.shtml

    I have to say I disagree with your statement that “if you’re willing to wear a uniform and put your life on the line for your country, you’re a hero.”

    The guys who raped a young girl and murdered dozens of Iraqis wore uniforms and put their lives on the line (for what reason we cannot know), but they were not heroes. And that is just one example, there are MANY others.

    I’m a bit sick of this particular sacred cow. Wearing a uniform and taking risks does not make you a hero. Quite a few people I have met joined the Army because they wanted to blow shit up and get paid to do it. They wanted adventure. Is that being a hero? Not in my book.

  • There was an infamous project done in Vietnam called the Project 100000. It was a way to get these very same people (criminal backgrounds, marginal abilities, poor physical condition) to fill the ranks of depleted infantry units in Vietnam. It turned out to be one of the worst conceived ideas in US Army history as most of these folks (and their units) suffered even worse than those who were qualified under the old standard.

    Rummy’s Pentagon makes the same mistake that his doppleganger, McNamara did. He assumed that infantry is just a bunch of dummies running around getting shot at or blown up. They are not. You need a high degree of intelligence and strong psychological profile as well as a good physical conditioning due to the demanding and very dangerous nature of the job. You want guys who can spot booby traps, who recognize the enemy’s tactics, who can use and understand senses (even smell), with quick reactions, have the ability to think like the enemy, and to deal with sudden changes on the battlefield. That means you need guys with brains (not necessarily Einsteins) and savvy.

    And most importantly, you need good infantry for guerilla warfare. Without it, you might as well go home.

  • Yet more reasons to bow our heads and give thanks for Arlo Guthrie.

    “Mother rapers! Father stabbers! Father rapers.”

    *****

    “Kid? Have you rehabilitated yourself?”

    *****

    “And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both f——s and they won’t take either of them.”

  • We’re the idiots, or whomever you want to blame to think you can take an 18 – 22 year old, with or without high school diploma (for what that’s worth these days) and put them on foot patrol in Bagdad.

    Without knowing the language. With little or no experience with foreign cultures, let alone the long, tortured history in the Middle East.

    Sure, we train them and yes, it takes guts. But they are not in Iraq protecting America (because Iraq was not and is not a threat to us). And they are not as equiped as they should or could be because the administration couldn’t go to the well for what it would cost to do the job right with 400,000 troops.

    Kerry was attacked for his botched joke because it had a grain of truth to it, and the people who attacked him knew damn well it did.

  • Great, let’s send some dim witted 17 year old with a history of drug issues to a country bordering massive poppy/weed fields, with a gun, and see what happens.

    Why does everything in Iraq have to mimic Vietnam so closely ??

    It would interesting to see if there is a correlation between waivers and behavioral patterns once they are in combat. I suspect the correlation is very tight.

  • This just reminds me of the “bad old days” that my section and platoon sergeants used to tell, during the post-Vietnam AVF transition period.

    Officers had to actually HIRE soldiers to be their bodyguards, or kept a loaded .45 when they went into the barracks, or avoided them completely.

    NCOs just waiting to retire, and letting their troops run around like animals.

    Crime everywhere.

    No maintenance on equipment, or no equipment at all.

    If it was the Bush administration’s goal to do what no foreign enemy has ever done, completely destroy the United States Army, then they are succeeding.

  • re: #10. Or the ex-Marine junior officer who told us tales about compartments on the ships were officers and NCOs would not go. Basically drug dens.

    I’m an Air Force Brat. I was eighteen in 1978. There are very good reasons I didn’t follow three older brothers into the military.

  • I was in the Navy from 1972-1974, just prior to what senior military call the “Hollow Army” period.

    The guys I worked with were mostly good folks who hated being in the Navy but recognized that shore duty in Japan was a helluva lot better than being a grunt in ‘Nam. I remember at least one fight with a guy because I had had a couple of years of college and I used a different vocabulary than he did. There were two of us with post-high-school education in that 24-man section, and I think that included the senior NCOs.

    It was a different military back then.

  • Draconian drug laws have created a generation of “criminals”. But the standards have definitely lowered and they weren’t that high to begin with. Politicians with subpar policies have destroyed the credibility of our armed forces, making them tools of immoral purposes.

    The myth of “our boys overseas” which may have had some validity in WWII is now just a phrase that hasn’t been updated. Everybody who is against the war is required to say, “But we support our soldiers.” We’ve already failed our soldiers. Our soldiers are a motley crew of idealistic people misled, criminals and the confused. Like any group they don’t deserve automatic reverence. There’s some bad apples in that barrel.

    Keeping soldiers in the field under pressure for a long time is a recipe for atrocities.
    Have things always been this corrupt or is there a mist of time and youth that has obscured the past corruption?

  • I have to say I disagree with your statement that “if you’re willing to wear a uniform and put your life on the line for your country, you’re a hero.”
    The guys who raped a young girl and murdered dozens of Iraqis wore uniforms and put their lives on the line (for what reason we cannot know), but they were not heroes.     – Racerx

    The two don’t neccisarily need to be mutually exclusive, I suspect it depends largely on what defenition you use for the word hero.

    Why does everything in Iraq have to mimic Vietnam so closely ?? – ScottW

    There’s a saying… Something about disregarding history and being doomed to repeat it.

  • CB said:

    I agree with nearly all of this. I’m certain these applicants are doing an outstanding job, and their willingness to volunteer for service is absolutely courageous. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re willing to wear a uniform and put your life on the line for your country, you’re a hero.

    You are soooooooooooooooo wrong!! Only someone who was never in the military, and never in the military when large numbers of these people wree allowed to serve, could say that.

    I was in the military when it was fairly common for a young offender to be given the choice of “the military or jail” on the theory he would “find himself” and get straightened out in the military.

    By and large it didn’t happen.

    What usually did happen was that these ne’er do wells all found each other (birds of a feather flock together) and formed their own gangs within the unit where they served. I was aboard a ship with a below-decks gang of these guys, and it made life hell for everyone else. There was no way to complain up the chain of command, when the people you were complaining about were living in the racks above and below you. The result was a reign of terror so bad that those of us not in this had to be sure to move below decks in groups of at least three for self-defense. If the senior petty officers knew of this (I’m sure at least several did) they said nothing – so long as “good order and discipline” was maintained in at least the “potemkin village” version. The officers knew nothing of it. Several years after I got out, I ran across one who had been in a position of authority as Assistant Division Officer for the Engineering Division where the majority of the gangsters were (the other being the two deck divisions – which says all you need to know about “snipes” and “deck apes”), and he was absolutely amazed when I told him what had been what.

    Not only are these people a threat when they get together, the “bad apple” does make the rest of the barrel go rotten faster. These guys have a major maleficient influence on the “wannabes.” Shall I mention Pvt. Stephen Greene, murder/rapist in Iraq, allowed in on a “moral waiver” and then given an early discharge for a “personality disorder”, who is now known to be the oranizer/instigator of the rape of a14 year old girl and the murder of the girl and her entire family in Haditha, for which he and three other soldiers now face possibile imposition of the death penalty?

    This sort of thing was not limited to the Navy. When I ran The Oleo Strut coffeehouse in Texas outside Fort Hood, I heard plenty of stories from guys about these “moral waiver” types committing crimes that ranged from petty theft to war crimes in Vietnam. When you put a petty criminal in a place where disorder is the nature of things and give them a weapon is how long it’s going to take.

    In the Second World War, gang types were drafted along with everyone else, they were overwhelmingly involved in crime once they were in the military, to the destruction of “good order and discipline” (which is crucial if you are to keep control of people who have the ability to kill), the tearing apart of morale in units, the creation of ineffective units, and the destruction of the reputation of the Army in the eyes of those we came to “liberate” when they were victimized by these criminals.

    This is absolute insanity, and proof of the moral bankruptcy of the lifer morons running today’s “Action Army” in the face of fighting a war anyone with brains stays the hell away from.

  • As an Army recruiter, I was not thrilled about being selected to be an Army recruiter for a few years. However, I promised myself that I would have to be honest in order to keep my integrity and morals. Lying to anyone is not worth my career, my family’s welfare, and the welfare of the Army. I was a person who walked in the recruiting station on my own. I was a HS grad, 18, no law violations, and no issues. I don’t want to have to talk somebody into joining. Then that Soldier will have regrets, lose focus, and eventually cause harm to himself (or herself) and harm to others. The Army doesn’t need that. Besides, if there were no volunteers, then we would need the draft. I’m not here to say I’m for or against the war. However, there are some bad apples in recruiting. Soldiers don’t respect those recruiters anymore than the American public. I am a Soldier. The Soldiers that I enlisted send me letters of respect and good will for me. Being a Soldier can be rewarding and dangerous. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be the Army.

  • Have things always been this corrupt or is there a mist of time and youth that has obscured the past corruption? — Dale, @13

    Not only have things always been like that, but they’re not limited to US, either, esp if one allows for some adjustments (drafted army vs volunteer one. With the volunteer one always being somewhat “iffy”; vide Foreign Legion)

    An excellent (fiction) book — and a not-half-bad film based on it — is Sebastien Japrisot “The Long Engagement” (WWI)

  • I don’t know why we had these stupid rules in the first place. I’m still clueless as to why the army denies gays. Another good way to increase enlistment would be to actually pay members of the army a decent salary, something they could actually support their families on.

  • I think we should actively recruit gang members, after all they already know how to fight and shoot people down in urban areas!! And perhaps the mafia too … but not the gays. They’ll probably just try to clean the place up a bit and give the Iraquis some cute throw pillows.

  • Want some outstanding commentary on the subject from someone who was there? Check out Amazon.com and get your hands on “Constant Bearing – Decreasing Range: The Collision of Public Policy and National Defense.” You’ll be glad you did it.

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