Lawmaker: Small Towns Pay Higher War Price

(Note : As this story relates to Brownwood)

Published Sunday, March 13, 2005
Lawmaker: Small Towns Pay Higher War Price
By Cory Reiss
Ledger Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Patty Steve says her son Brian Buesing was a typical small-town teenager.
A bit bored in Cedar Key, a fishing and recreation town on Florida's Gulf coast. Flirting with trouble. Uncertain about his prospects after high school.
So after a recruiter for the Marine Corps visited Cedar Key School, she gave permission for Brian to join under age, at 17, right after graduation in 2000.
She says she was nervous. But then she thought: "It's not fair for somebody else's kid to be in the infantry and not my son."
She still believes that, almost two years after Brian became one of the first casualties in the Iraq war, on March 23, 2003. About 1,200 people turned out for the funeral of Lance Cpl. Brian Buesing. Fewer than 800 people live in the town.
As the conflict grinds on with near daily casualties, some members of Congress continue to worry that the cost of war is meted out disproportionately. One member, Rep. Ike Skelton, a Democrat from rural Missouri, says small towns are paying more than their share.
"I want there to be a broader appreciation throughout our country of the contribution that rural America is making within the military," Skelton said.
Skelton makes an occasional tally of the war dead, cross-referencing home towns with Census data. His statistics show that 43 percent of those killed in action in Iraq and 44 percent killed in Afghanistan through mid-February came from towns of 20,000 people or fewer. Less than 23 percent of the U.S. population lives in towns that size.
As the military ramps up recruiting efforts and boosts signing bonuses, experts say the question of who is being enticed becomes more relevant.
The Army, for example, missed its recruiting goal last month for the first time in five years, by 1,900 recruits out of a goal of 7,050. Casualties in Iraq are widely regarded as a reason for the recruiting problems.
The Army responded by boosting enlistment bonuses from $8,000 to $10,000 -- $15,000 for some hard-to-fill specialties -- and is in the midst of increasing the number of recruiters by 950, or 25 percent.
David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, said if the economy were not improving, the military might face charges of "economic conscription" by enticing people who can least afford to say no.
Many people join the military for financial reasons, an old story in economically depressed rural areas. Segal said lawmakers should be watchful.
"They should be concerned about whether our military operations are placing a disproportionate burden in terms of recruits, casualties, on any particular part of the population," he said.
Experts on the military, including Segal, quibble with Skelton's data because it certainly includes small towns that are part of larger metropolitan areas. But they also say it probably reflects genuine trends in who signs up for duty in an all-volunteer force. These questions remain a matter of dueling statistics.
"It reflects a reality of military recruiting and particularly now that we're making so much use of the National Guard," Segal said.
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has consulted with Segal on a broad study of military demographics. Segal said researchers have struggled with how to properly define geographic and other data.
Skelton and Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, a Democrat who has sponsored legislation to restore the draft, asked for the report.
The Army, which has the bulk of the deployed forces, cites statistics that suggest the picture is not nearly as skewed as Skelton's figures suggest. The service has done its own analysis based on Census definitions of "urban" and "rural" that use population density rather than raw counts. An urban area can include less-dense populations if the Census considers them tied to very dense urban centers.
That study says 74 percent of enlisted soldiers were from urban areas last year and 26 percent were from rural areas. That would mean rural areas are over-represented in the Army by only 5 percentage points when compared to populations of people ages 17-39.
Beth Asch, a military recruiting expert at RAND Corp., a think tank, said the services are very sophisticated in how they deploy recruiters and target advertising. The military does tend to recruit strongly in less populous states, especially in the South, she said.
"We actually have a pretty good sense of who is likely to volunteer," she said. "Those characteristics are not randomly spread across the United States."
A study coauthored by Segal in December said that military recruits from Southern states represented 42 percent of the military's new members in 2002, although those states only had 36 percent of the nation's young people ages 18-24. The Northeast had 18 percent of the nation's young people but was underrepresented, with 14 percent of the recruits. Midwestern states showed a lower recruitment of 2 percentage points, and recruitment from Western states was equal to the population group.
Experts say people in small towns, and the South in particular, are more apt to join because there may be fewer job opportunities. The restlessness of youth is another reason. And parents tend to be pro-military and emphasize patriotism in those areas.
"We have to take a serious look on Capitol Hill at the overall recruitment policy to make sure that our country does right by all those serving in the military so that it's equally appealing," said Rep. Mike McIntyre, a North Carolina Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who also is co-chairman of the Congressional Rural Caucus.
Paul Oliver, mayor of Cedar Key, said military deaths shake towns his size more deeply than big cities.
"I don't think there's any greater impact on individuals, but as far as the greater community, I think the small towns are impacted more," he said.
source: http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050313/NEWS/503130448/1039