Do I number any vets among my readers? Answer in the comments, please.
The reason I ask is that I just read a thought-provoking article in Time which discusses the widening gap between the military and civilian worlds in American society.
The makeup of today’s force misses the heart of American might: the common bond between the U.S. military, and the citizens who supply and fund it, is the fulcrum that leverages U.S. power. Divorced from society, the military runs the risk of becoming little more than rent-a-cops with bigger weapons. And, in fact, as the U.S. pursued two wars post-9/11, it became clear quickly that it could only wage them if it hired costly contractors to do most everything except pull triggers in the war zones (although they did some of that, too). The CIA increasingly is killing purported terrorists with drone-launched Hellfire missiles around the world, with no public acknowledgement or accountability.
I live in a state with a heavy military presence: service personnel and their bases are our second biggest industry behind only tourism. There are a lot of states which no longer have much military presence at all, and if ever there was an occupation that was “out of sight out of mind,” it’s got to be the uniformed services.
The gap is troubling for many reasons, and Mark Thompson enumerates most in his excellent article. I recommend it.
Yes, due to (I consider) misguided anti-war attitudes in the ’70s (and Republican spite toward California, a reliably Democratic state), the San Francisco Bay Area has lost numerous major military installations (and the jobs they carried): the Presidio (which, yes, used to be a U.S. Army base); the Oakland Army Base; Alameda Naval Air Station (my cousin was a senior operations officer); the Concord Naval Weapons Station, site of the Port Chicago disaster; Mare Island Naval Shipyard (my father worked there for 31 years); the Sunnyvale missile tracking station (my first husband worked there when I met him). And, of course, Moffett Field. That probably isn’t all. And they’re all gone. I think the only northern California military installation is Travis AFB near Davis.
I’m also troubled by the lack of connection between the civilian population and the military. First, history hasn’t been very kind to empires that tried to keep their peace with mercenary forces (late Roman Empire, 12th Century Byzantium, etc.) It’s too easy for officials to think they can short the troops’ pay to line their own pockets, only to discover that mercenaries will take their pay in any way necessary. Second, foreign and military policy become more and more opaque to the general population, and they become less and less interested in keeping informed about them, thus ending democratic oversight. And third, the distinction between military and civilian becomes a class barrier as well as one of experience: only people who feel strongly about patriotism (and there are never that many of them) and people who have economic and social needs they can’t meet in civilian life are attracted to the military (and of course the sociopaths and psychopaths who are attracted to the violence and chaos of war, but those we have with us always). As things are now, wanting the economic benefits (retirement pay, health care, education assistance, in-service training) is considered a lower-class stigma by those who don’t need them. And now Panetta is talking about cutting pay and health care and education benefits as part of the deficit deal (can’t cut back on bloated weapons systems contracts because that might affect our military readiness!). And most voters won’t see a problem or won’t care if they do.