Baltimore Sun
September 28, 2007
Not A Nation At War
By Donald H. Horner Jr.<=
span
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>
Recently at the Naval Academy, there has been a lot of focus on <=
st1:place>America's being "a nation at war." This
emphasis is shared at the other service academies and at military train=
ing
bases. Drill sergeants use the phrase "nation at war" to heig=
hten
the awareness of recruits as they go about the process of training and =
preparing
young American servicemen and women for their shared destiny: Most will
soon be in combat.
The "nation at war" conce=
pt,
however, fails to resonate or meet with much enthusiasm outside the
military. That's because, upon reflection, one finds that America is not really a nation at war. Only =
America's military is at war. And servicemen and wo=
men
know this.<=
o:p>
The war is little more than a headl=
ine or
sound bite to most Americans. It poses no inconvenience and is regarded=
as
little more than a newsworthy nuisance to a public more interested in
following the Major League Baseball pennant races or the recent arrest =
of
O. J. Simpson. The war is background noise.
The numbers back this up. There are=
1.3
million servicemen and women on active duty, and another 1.1 million in=
the
National Guard and Reserves. This represents less than 1 percent of the
American population. Even with the "surge," the Pentagon repo=
rts
there are only about 169,000 troops in Iraq. In sheer numerical terms, the "surge&=
quot;
qualifies as little more than an operational nudge.
The minuscule size of our armed for=
ces
relegates the "global war on terror" to the status of other
out-of-sight, out-of-mind activities. We follow this war about as much =
as
we pay attention to the daily operations of the Department of Agricultu=
re.
It's hard to buy into the "nat=
ion at
war" fiction when the former Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, got canned after proposing that a large=
force
of 400,000 troops would be needed to secure =
Iraq. History has proved General Shinseki
a prescient leader while simultaneously demonstrating that our force
structure remains woefully inadequate for the job it has been asked to =
do.
But it's not only the small size of=
the
armed forces that makes the war increasingly foreign and irrelevant to =
most
Americans. Today, the idea of being a nation at war does not carry the
sense of urgency that it once did. And why should it? Waging the
American-style global war on terror is increasingly a contracted-out
activity. There are more contractors - 180,000 - in Iraq than there are troops in uniform. To an oth=
erwise
uninterested public, this extensive use of contractors has made the cur=
rent
war more analogous to operating a foreign business enterprise than a
genuine conflict of national import.
This shift - from war as a struggle=
for
survival to warfare conducted as an economic activity - increases America's apathy. After all, economic challenges are
nothing new to Americans; they get up and go to work every day trying to
make ends meet.
As military sociologist Charles Moskos and others have said for years, there is a
"great divorce" between Americans and their military. And the=
gap
is growing. Part of the problem, Mr. Moskos
argues, is the disproportionate burden that the all-volunteer force pla=
ces
on Americans from the lower socioeconomic strata of our society.
Less-fortunate youths join the military primarily to find a job. To
economically better-off Americans, the armed forces provide no such
incentive; they don't serve because they have other options. The result=
is
a very small force that most Americans really don't think much about.
Of course, mandatory military servi=
ce - a
draft - would drastically change this outlook. Such a draft could be
designed to equally distribute service requirements among the rich, the
middle class and the poor. The chances of this happening are remote,
however. After all, reinstituting the draft=
would
mean accepting something for which Americans don't seem prepared: the i=
dea
that we really are a nation at war.
Donald H. Horner Jr. is a
distinguished professor of leadership education at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. His opinions do not represent those of the
Department of Defense.
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