Monday, November 20, 2006

Who Will Cry for the Little Boy?

Who will cry for the little boy?
Lost and all alone.
Who will cry for the little boy?
Abandoned without his own?

Who will cry for the little boy?
He cried himself to sleep.
Who will cry for the little boy?
He never had for keeps.

Who will cry for the little boy?
He walked the burning sand.
Who will cry for the little boy?
The boy inside the man.

Who will cry for the little boy?
Who knows well hurt and pain.
Who will cry for the little boy?
He died again and again.

Who will cry for the little boy?
A good boy he tried to be.
Who will cry for the little boy?
Who cries inside of me?


The above is excerpted from Who Will Cry for the Little Boy? by Antwone Q Fisher.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

A win for the US

You may be thinking I am referencing the Democratic wins in last night's election, but I am not. I am referencing the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. Whether or not the election pushed towards this is speculation, the simple fact is that Rumsfeld is now on his way out officially and maybe the US can start writing a new chapter in our history that is a little more sensible and respectable.

US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld stepping down

which is a little different tune than what was being pushed out on the 6th of November, where the response was to "shrug it off." At least now President Bush will hopefully be accountable for his decisions and not able to "shrug off" criticisms.

Military media call for Rumsfeld's resignation

Monday, November 06, 2006

Is our military smart or dumb?

I actually find this question to be kind of a pointless question as there is no set ruler for what denotes smart or dumb. But what we can look at is the educational level of the military versus citizens. I want to preface this with: ALL STATISTICS ARE BULLSHIT! Numbers can be manipulated to say whatever you want. I started analyzing the numbers due to this article:

John Kerry: U.S. Soldiers Not 'Smart'

Furthermore, there is a reference to another study that claimed that the US military is more educated the general public (this I found hard to believe). The referenced study is linked here:

Who Bears the Burden? Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Recruits Before and After 9/11

What is interesting about this study is that it doesn't reference any recent data (2004 or 2005), yet this is the study that was being utilized to make a claim that our military was educated better than our citizens. So I decided to do some research.

ALL MY DATA CAME FROM THE US MILITARY AND THE CENSUS!!! I did this purposely as I figured it was the most forgiving source for analyzing the data. For education levels of the military, I took the data from and utilized 2005 and 2004 datasets:

Army G-1 Human Resources

To compare the data to the citizens, I took the general population data from the US Census located here:

Educational Attainment 2005

We could argue the validity of the numbers, how the data was attained, but the fact is simple: this data came from the government that is attempting to sell the public how educated and "of the people" our military is. So their data should support this claim. Does it?

Here are the results of the data that I came up with:






Military Overview
NumberHS/GEDAABA/BSMA/PhD
1,390,093991,543135,256136,14260,037
71%10%10%4%

* Total % with HS/GED: 95%
* Total % with Some College or AA: 24%





Citizens 18-24 (numbers in thouands)
NumberHS/GEDAABA/BSMA/PhD
28,0098,38411,1412,25886
30%40%8%0%

* Total % with HS/GED: 78%
* Total % with Some College or AA: 48%






Citizens All Ages (numbers in thousands)
NumberHS/GEDAABA/BSMA/PhD
230,43769,44659,27636,52018,226
30%26%24%8%

* Total % with HS/GED: 88%
* Total % with Some College or AA: 58%

No matter how you interpret these numbers, there is no way to make a case that the military is more educated than the general public. A couple key things to denote:

1) Comparing 18-24 year olds to military seems most compatible, but military includes officers in that comparison which skews the comparison.

2) The military does seem to have a higher percentage of high school diplomas than the general public (this was the claim made to prove more education in the Heritage report), but what becomes quickly apparent is the quick drop off of education above the high school and/or GED level.

3) The education of the military is generally decreasing as we are longer in Iraq (this should not be a shocker).

In the end, if you want to make a straight up comparison of education levels, the military is not as well educated. It would be more accurate to say that the military is more minimally educated than the general public.

I would be fascinated to compare the education level of the average soldier to the average Senator and determine what the differential is there.

All these stats do not say nearly as much as the simple quote by Sartre:

"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die."