NO SHARED SACRIFICE

Recently, a nightly news program profiled a young " hurt locker" type soldier serving in Afghanistan. (Hurt Locker was an Academy Award winner as "best picture" and featured a fearless soldier disarming bombs and blowing up IEDs (Imbedded Explosive Devices). And, here was a real soldier doing his job and saving lives in a real war, not a movie.

What was compelling about this young soldier was the fact that he is somewhat typical of many of our present day soldiers. Not that all of them are "Hurt Locker" types but that they are soldiers who come from backgrounds with limited options. In the case of the one profiled, his Dad was an alcoholic, a drug addict brother, and by his own admission, he was headed for trouble and found an escape into the Army. Good for the Army and good for us. And, he is exactly the type that the military can rescue and use; a kid from a hardscrabble life who has found a home doing the most difficult job in war.

Philosophically, however, there's a deeper story: with only 1% of our country involved in the sacrifices of our two wars, we don't have a clue as to the soldiers fighting our wars. We have an "all volunteer military" which is successful in terms of keeping the ranks filled but a dismal failure in terms of shared sacrifice. When Nobel Prize winner Mort Friedman and then Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, teamed up to get rid of the draft and into the All Volunteer Force, I can't believe that they could possibly have conceived what the eventual impact would be.

The impact has been no real shared sacrifice but it has also produced our two present wars. The President can send us to war without fear of condemnation or political fallout. After all these years at war, we have no national outcry, no marching in the streets, Vietnam style. And why? Americans have no investment, we're content to let the "Hurt Locker" soldiers fight our wars. I am so tired of hearing the politicians talk about the American people. Bullshit. Most people in this country don't really care. We would be lucky if we had half of our people with any real interest in who is fighting our wars. As a nation, we should be ashamed!

CITIZEN SOLDIERS

This is a term I'm not hearing much these days. It envisions the "draft" too much. Over the last 10-12 years, I'd like to know how many letters I've written with an idea of the draft or of late, National Service with the draft as only one among many choices. It is like, "nobody is home."

All the present presidential candidates have good things to say about the troops and the vets. Senator Barack Obama has picked up on the idea that already we have homeless Iraqi veterans and he wants to do something.

Let's face the hard truth here; the vast majority of Americans are apathetic about the military. As a rule, they don't even know anyone in the military. And, stories of kids who had what would considered to be much better options and yet choose the military would be looked down upon. Those of us who believe that a military should reflect its democracy have to feel like someone cryng in the wilderness. What is incredibly obvious to those of us who care and think about it is how unrepresentive we are.

I miss the old days of the draft when soldiers were griping and disagreeing with government, leaders and others about why we were fighting. And, the more telling reason for sure: if we had "citizen soldiers" on a wholesale basis, the President and Congress would be reluctant to send us off to war and that is reason enough to change our system.