The Volunteer Army and the Lack of Major Protests

Yesterday evening we were watching the "Honor Roll" of our dead military service members in Iraq and Afghanistan and I said to my husband, "Each of these people volunteered to serve their country, and look how the country has repaid them, by spending their lives in a war that should not have happened." Some, perhaps many, believed in the mission. Some served in spite of misgivings, but they all served us and were willing to chance death to do it. They ranged in age from 18 to 43. One was a woman in the Navy. We see a brief flash of a photo on the screen with their name, rank, age, and home town, but none of us know the stories of their lives and deaths.

Our President says we should not leave because of those who have already sacrificed their lives, but why should more make that sacrifice because someone else has?

My husband asked why we didn't see the major war protests that we did during the Vietnam War, and I said, "Because there is no draft." Partly it's because we don't have the larger numbers of people in our armed forces that we did in that war, and not as many deaths (yet, and I hope there never will be!), but a big reason for it is that most of our young people don't feel threatened. They don't fear having to serve in uniform and risk their lives, because no one is forcing them to do it. And those who volunteer can be "brushed off" in some sense as having "asked for it."

Meanwhile, fewer and fewer of our Congress members and administration have ever served in the military. They have little understanding of either military life or tactics, much less strategy, yet they are the ones expending the lives.

We are paying a high price, not only in lives, but in broken bodies, broken families, and the monetary costs of the war.

If you have not read Woodward's STATE OF DENIAL and Ricks' FIASCO: THE AMERICAN MILITARY ADVENTURE IN IRAQ, please do so. And also the article in the Army Times, "The Seven Pillars of Modern Iraq." You can find the link on this page.