BE ALL YOU CAN BE (please)
I’m normally a pretty positive person. Pretty optimistic. I work hard to see things in their most favorable light.
But, friends. I found this hard to watch. And we need to talk about it.
If you watched that and you have served in the military, maybe you’re wondering… how do I sign up for the military these folks have joined?
We discussed just that in a group text I have with folks I served with for several years—incredible, experienced Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines. We wondered what it might look like had we been interviewed instead:
“When my baby still couldn’t talk, I left her and deployed to Iraq and Syria. When I came back she didn’t know who I was. She was scared of me.”
“I missed my mother’s death. They let me fly back to give the eulogy, and then I immediately returned to Afghanistan to investigate KIAs.”
“I have moral injuries from watching so many people die on large projector screens.”
“I got food poisoning from sweets from a two-year old church care package and got two IV bags after puking out 7 pounds over 10 hours. Back to work the next day!”
“I spent my 36th birthday in a Syrian prison.”
“When my youngest was two he referred to my deployed location as “Daddy’s house.”
“On Day 7 of 184 [of my deployment] my wife texted to say she had her third miscarriage. I was on shift four hours later.”
“I had more Thanksgiving dinners with Donald Trump than my children for several years running.”
I know, I know. It got pretty dark there for a second. And none of us has lost a close friend (or a limb) in combat.
Look, I loved serving on active duty. And I loved deploying—even though I desperately missed my wife and boys. There is nothing in the world more satisfying professionally, and the bonds you make in the deployed environment are incredible. In many ways, the adversity encountered through military service strengthens these bonds.
But we have to be honest with people about the sacrifices military service entails—yes, even when we are recruiting them. We can provide people an honest description of the benefits of military service without patronizing them. We can explain how rewarding military service is in spite of the uncertainty, distance, and (sometimes) danger, without whitewashing the challenges.
Sure, we are grateful for the educational opportunities, health care, occasional four-day weekend, and retirement benefits—but the whole point of military service is that we—the individual servicemembers—are not the point.
The whole point of military service is a willingness to give our lives (and our lifestyle) for the Constitution, our neighbors, and our way of life. That’s why none of the folks in that group text, in our combined 150+ years of service, has ever been able to take 30 days of leave in a single year.
I think we are short-changing potential recruits when we don’t believe in their desire to serve something other than themselves. When the Army returned to its classic ‘Be All You Can Be’ slogan ten months ago, it explained it was “phrase that has inspired many generations of Soldiers, and its promise still rings true today. This is the message for the moment and for the future.” And it is. Because those five words capture the ethos and spirit of military service.
The implied slogan in the ad above—‘Get All You Can Get’—doesn’t push us, doesn’t inspire us, doesn’t call us to self-improvement or self-sacrifice. We owe our recruits better.