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Short form: during Viet Nam, a project was instituted to send low-IQ soldiers through training and then into combat. The idea seemed to be that by training them and getting them experience, they’d come home with more useful skills and be less of a burden on society. The actual result was that a lot of them seemed to be untrainable for even the most basic tasks; they sucked up resources that could have been better used elsewhere; they were a discipline nightmare; and they got killed at three times the rate of non-morons. Thus, the project was considered a failure.
Consider this, though: the military tends to make a big deal about how the troops are America’s Best And Brightest. Which means that when the fighting starts, the Best And Brightest End Of The Gene Pool gets drained, while the dummies stay home and reproduce. How is this a good thing?
Further: an argument can be made not to send low IQ soldiers because they’re too dumb to really understand what’s going on. But doesn’t that imply that the other soldiers *are* smart enough to understand what’s going on and fully comprehend the horror of the situation they’re in? Couldn’t an argument be made that you shouldn’t send into harms way those who have the brainpower to truly understand the nightmare they’re in?
Obviously soldiers too dumb to know how to operate a rifle or who to aim it at are unlikely to be of much use in combat; they are quite likely to be a detriment. But if there is a war big enough to merit a draft, does being dumb really earn you a ticket out of service? Perhaps the thing to do would be to use such troops as *actual* cannon fodder. Dump them behind enemy lines with a basic set of tools and instructions to just cause havoc. If they get killed… well, that’s a soldiers lot. If they get captured, the enemy will have one hell of a time trying to interrogate them, and will (depending on the enemy) have to devote their own troops and resources to imprisoning them. But between the time they get dropped off and they get killed or captured, they could be wandering the enemies streets stealing their stuff and setting their stuff on fire and trying to convince the locals to vote for Bernie.