Bruce Cohen @ 21, Patrick @ 27: Could the statement "The original
idea of a citizen army was that most citizens would have an
understanding of the military by being in it for awhile; this
hasn't worked well for some time because even the citizens who have
enlisted for a term aren't in the same position as career soldiers
and often never do get to understand them" be related to the facts
"100,000 enlisted soldiers out of 250,000 available men" be related
by the ratio of how many men you would have in your circle of close
acquaintances who have any experience of military life?
I'm thinking here that in a population of 250,000 where 100,000
have such experience, then if you have 25 acquaintances who you
might consider 'close', 10 of them would have experience in the
military. Compare the current numbers: a population of 165 million
men (or so) and a standing army of... what? 2 million? Five
million? It certainly isn't anywhere close to 66 million.
Yes, I'm ignoring women in the military. No, I am not a
mathematician, but I can wave my hands in the air and pretend. It's
kind of fun.
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