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
Number	HS/GED	AA	BA/BS	MA/PhD
1,390,093	991,543	135,256	136,142	60,037
	71%	10%	10%	4%

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

Citizens 18-24 (numbers in thouands)
Number	HS/GED	AA	BA/BS	MA/PhD
28,009	8,384	11,141	2,258	86
	30%	40%	8%	0%

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

Citizens All Ages (numbers in thousands)
Number	HS/GED	AA	BA/BS	MA/PhD
230,437	69,446	59,276	36,520	18,226
	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."