Considerable ink has been spilled in the advertising world about truth-in-advertising. There are rules about what companies, particularly drug companies, can or can not say in ads. Their claims have to be backed up by research, the drugs must be efficacious for the use claimed, etc. Even the somewhat more slippery world of advertising of consumer goods still has to have some basis of fact to make the claims they make in their ads, enough to pass muster with the Federal Trade Commission, Food and Drug Administration, or the equivalent "watchdog" for the industry.
That being said, let us now contemplate the use of the term "all volunteer army." Everyone knows that not everyone is a volunteer. Yet people who are supposed to be dedicated to accuracy--editors, journalists, copy editors, pundits, and press watchdogs-- (jump)
misleadingly refer to the force as an "All-Volunteer Army."
Don't think this matters? Well, look at how hard the Bush Adminstration is going to squelch the media's use of the term "Civil War" in Iraq. The masters of swift-boating have made a career out of manipulating their media images, as opposed to mastering policy, military strategy or diplomacy, so to them it matters very much. The object of today's dairy is to generate letters to the editor, and other forms of pressure on the media to be more accurate in all of their terms. So my modest proposal is to open up a second front--in addition to the re-definition of civil war--concerning the term "All Volunteer Army."
The inaccuracy in the media's use of the terms All Volunteer Army has allowed the public not to notice the deterioration in the percentage of servicepeople who can not really be counted on as volunteers.
First, let's establish the source of my numbers. This comes from "Legions Stretched Thin: The US Army's Manpower Crisis," by the Century Foundation's Reality Check series, authored by Jeremy Barnicle and Leif W. Haase, 2004.
Start with the stop losses. Some 24,000 were stop-lossed for Active Duty, and another 16,000 reservists felt the pangs of involuntary servitude (or slow-motion Russian roulette). Add to this that some 40 percent of the 145,000 or so in Iraq are from the Guard and Reserve, which gives you about 56,000 who would mostly rather be in their home state for one-weekend a month drills, and two-weeks summer training.
So with 96,000 mostly involuntaries out of 1.4 million on active duty, that leaves you with about 6.85 percent mostly non volunteers. Conversely, that leaves you with a force that is about 93.143 percent volunteers.
So, if we're going to be pure in our use of language, it's time to ditch the term "All Volunteer Army." How does Ivory soap enter into it? Glad you asked. It serves as a benchmark. Ivory used to brag in commercials that it's soap was 99 44/100th percent pure. It no longer uses that tag in commercials, and the world of advertising, especially post Nader, has looked for more accuracy and less fluff in ad claims.
The point being that if, even in the old days of less relaxed ad rules, even Ivory Soap wouldn't claim that it's soap was "all pure" even though there might be enough evidence for it, allowing for rounding; Then how can supposed guardians of the language be so lax as to continue to tout the term "All Volunteer Army" when the percentage of volunteers is about 6.3 percent below even the standard where Ivory Soap felt it couldn't stretch the "truth" any more.