I spend a lot of time thinking about civil-military relations. Not the kind I did in Bosnia and Afghanistan, serving as the link between the local civilian population and coalition forces, but the kind we deal with right here at home every day. I’m concerned about the way our military, veterans, and civilians see each other and interact. Because what I see is not encouraging.
But here’s an uncomfortable truth: veterans, you are just as guilty of poisoning the relationship as those civilians are. It’s getting worse, and we all need to stop.
So many of you who were quick to point out that “respect is earned, not given” while in uniform seem hell-bent on demanding the respect of people whom you’ve never met simply because you raised your right hand and swore an oath.
“When we assumed the soldier,” George Washington once wrote, “we did not lay aside the Citizen.” I’ve always loved that quote because it so perfectly encapsulates the idea that we come from civilian life into the military, serve our time, and eventually become civilians again. The days of spending your entire life in the military like Winfield Scott, who was first commissioned in April 1808 and didn’t retire until November 1861, are long gone.
The simple fact, veterans, is that you are part of an exclusive club that civilians will never completely understand. You can either help them understand it, or you can make things worse. It’s your choice.
Our military is comparatively small
Even though the war has lasted for almost 17 years, we have fought it with one of the smallest wartime end strengths. In the Civil War, more than 2.6 million men served in the Union Army. By the end of World War II, there were more than 12,200,000 men and women in uniform, more than 8.2 million of them in the Army alone.
At the height of the Vietnam War in 1968, more than a half-million service members were deployed to Vietnam, while scores more were stationed in Korea, Germany, and the Continental United States. That deployed force is itself larger than today’s active duty Army of 476,000 soldiers
But the current conflict is the longest in the nation’s history to be fought completely with volunteers. Only around one percent of the population of the United States has served in uniform since September 11, 2001. That is why, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2011, only a third of people between the ages of 18 and 29 had an immediate relative who had served in the military. By contrast, for those between the ages of 50 and 64, the number is 79 percent.
Fewer than one in ten people living in America today have served in the military at any time, peace or war. Since the end of conscription in 1973, the nation has increasingly outsourced its national security to a professional warrior caste. Plato divided the population into three groups: the Guardians, who make the laws and run the government, the Producers, who get stuff done, and the Auxiliaries, the warriors who protect the others. The U.S. is beginning to resemble Plato’s model.
But that, fellow veterans, does not make the Producers any less patriotic than us Auxiliaries. Nor, for that matter, does patriotism depend on any particular political point of view, or support for any of the current operations underway around the world. The U.S. is not, for better or worse, the world of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, where people gained the right to vote only through military service.
Stop belittling civilians who haven’t served
Twitter is bad for your blood pressure. It merely intensifies the tribal division that is rapidly becoming the norm in America. But the practice of dismissing civilians as “fake patriots” because they didn’t serve has got to end. Both left and right are guilty of it. And it’s unbecoming.
By the logic of “you can only be a patriot if you’ve got the paperwork to prove it,” 99 percent of the country are fake patriots. This concept is counter to everything we’re supposed to stand for as a country. Veterans, we’re better than this.
This most recent reflection on the sad state of civil-military relations was prompted by a put-down of a conservative pundit by a member of what I’ve come to call the hipster-veteran brigade, those fashionably liberal young veterans who joined the Obama administration after their tours in Iraq. But it could just as easily have been an eagle-tattooed Trumpster.
As the population grows and the size of the force remains static or grows only slightly, the percentage of the population who have served will only continue to shrink. It’s uncomfortable, and sometimes downright annoying, to have random strangers walk up to you in an airport to “thank you for your service,” or to see someone whose willingness to “support the troops” extends only to a yellow ribbon magnet.
I’ve realized one thing over the years: they almost invariably mean it sincerely. When confronted with a warrior, people just don’t know what to do. So they express their gratitude. Or because they carry some guilt over not serving, they compensate with exaggerated expressions of patriotism. This does not make them bad people; it makes them people.
Our national policy is that we maintain an all-volunteer force, and a moderately sized one at that. It is not fair to blame a civilian for not serving, or for not understanding what military service is like. Military service is not the only way to serve the country. In the words of poet John Milton, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
So veterans, you can do your part to improve civil-military relations. Instead of calling someone a “fake patriot” for expressing a political idea with which you disagree, try either engaging them respectfully, or not engaging them at all.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Note: Today marks one year and 255 entries since my first Daily Intel. I’d like to thank ClearanceJobs for providing me with this forum, but I’d especially like to thank all of you readers for making it possible… even the fans who come back periodically to remind me that I’m wrong. Here’s to the next year’s worth!
