Civics lesson

Military pay lags 14 percent behind the civilian sector. More than 12,000 soldiers and sailors qualify for food stamps. Health and education benefits dwindle. Gulf War veterans are told the sickness is all in their heads. The four branches of service warn they’ll fall 10,000 recruits short this year.

And Congress’ response — after it lards up the Defense budget with $4 billion worth of planes, ships and home-district projects the military does not want — is to talk about reviving the draft.

Pro-conscription lawmakers say kids today have no sense of civic responsibility. Laying the gross generalization aside, that may be a problem. It’s just not this problem.

For the military’s most dire personnel shortfall is not in the type of personnel a draft would fetch — the recent high-school graduate with marginal academic accomplishments and no particular career goals. The military is unable to retain its most-highly trained members, such as pilots and computer technicians, and the college-bound, high-achievers who would take their place simply aren’t interested. If past drafts are any indication, they no doubt would be exempt under a new one.

Here’s an example of what low pay, uncertain benefits and a what-have-you-done-us-lately attitude yields: The Air Force spends more than $9 million training each of its pilots. Yet an Air Force pilot with nine years’ service is paid less than one-third what a private-sector counterpart can expect. No wonder they bail out at the earliest job offer. And unless the nation is willing to hand over the keys to an F-16 to a C-average 18-year-old, the expertise gap will continue to grow.

Since the last draft ended at the close of the Vietnam War, a parade of military and civilian experts has warned that the high-tech military of the future could not function with personnel serving two-year stints. For nearly a quarter-century, common-sense proposals have been made: Military pay must at least keep up with inflation; the complicated array of pay scales, benefits and allowances must be replaced with straightforward compensation packages the prospective recruit can compare with what the private sector offers; pay rates must take achievement and accomplishment, not just length of service, into account; except for times of crisis, postings must be as stable as possible so military families can enjoy a semblance of family life.

Those proposals have, of course, been ignored. Even worse, the prospective recruit sees the neglect heaped upon veterans and can only conclude that while the corporate employer may not be any more caring, it could not possibly be more hypocritical.

If Congress is serious about military preparedness, it could prove it scrapping the $4 billion in pork-barrel projects and use the money to give every man and woman in uniform a $2,500 raise. It could use what’s left over to restore the funding taken away from the Veterans Administration. It could stop preaching civic responsibility and start practicing it.