I agree with Henry Allen, the writer of this letter to the editor in the Washington Post. Legend has it that the social distinction between officers and enlisted in the US armed forces originated in the training imparted by Von Steuben at Valley Forge and that it was maintained over the past centuries on the basis pf an actual social difference in the origins of the two groups.
Be that as it may, there is no longer any significant social distance in the backgrounds of the people who make up the two groups in the armed forces. The officers and "men" of the volunteer and reserve forces of the United States are recruited from the same strata of society, are similar in education and in motivation and the maintenance of any sort of distinction in privilege between the two segments of military society is simply unjustifiable.
That is not to say that there should not be officers and enlisted ranks. There should be such distinctions in rank. They are necessary to the functioning of any military force, but the artificial social distinction between enlisted and officer ranks should be abolished.
It should be possible for any soldier to progress up the ranks of the armed forces and to make a smooth transition from the top enlisted rank to commissioned status without the artificial barriers now placed in path of such promotion. To make this "jump" now requires the passage of a host of artificial impediments and a good deal of luck. That should not be.
Officers like David Hackworth, Audie Murphy and John Vessey had all come from the ranks. There should have been more like them. pl
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030801500.html
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