Stanley McChrystal: recommendation

Transcript context

…Now, of course, your father was a general. You come from a military family. Why is it that military recruitment, right now, is so well predicted by having had a parent in the armed forces? What’s driving that? And how can we take advantage of that to recruit additional people? Well, we’ve taken advantage of it to the point where it may be counterproductive now. When I would travel the battlefields and go to small bases, invariably, the sergeant or lieutenant in charge was the son or daughter of a friend of mine. In one way, it’s comforting because you know people have entered the service with open eyes and clear expectations, and they make good soldiers, but you don’t want a soldier class in America. You want military service to be spread across the nation geographically and sociologically. I actually think that that aspect of the all-volunteer force has weakened us a bit. We have created a bit of a warrior caste, and it’s insular. You grow up in it. My family was very much that way, and I think that it’s not healthy for the long-term good of the force. We need to look at another way of recruiting, and try to go out and get a broader cross-section of America, and keep bringing that in because when we talk about diversity, it’s not about race or gender. It’s about different perspectives and different experiences and different talents. The military has to avoid the idea that we recruit best from the Midwest or the South and a certain demographic because it single-threads us. How much do you worry about what is sometimes called “the woke”? A sometimes extreme set of political views — do you think it turns some young people against the military or diverts their attention from the possibility of a career in the military? There have been some recent military ads that seem to be trying to appeal to the woke people. How does this picture fit together for you?…

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