[extropy-chat] FWD [fantasticreality] Check to see what the Elites are up to...or NOT up to, to be more precise

Thu Jul 20 23:20:06 UTC 2006

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>
>Why Elites are AWOL
>By Patrick Poole
>FrontPageMagazine.com | July 17, 2006
>
>
>What does it say about America that the killed and wounded soldiers 
>in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to hail from Prattville, 
>Alabama, Lincoln, Nebraska, Mansfield, Ohio, or Klamath Falls, 
>Oregon, than New York City, Beverly Hills or Cambridge, 
>Massachusetts? 
>
>
>That's an issue raised by Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer in 
>their new book, AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper 
>Classes from the Military ï¿½ and How It Hurts Our Country 
>(HarperCollins). This is an important analysis that diagnoses a 
>severe illness in our body politic, noting that the children of the 
>cultural elite ï¿½ whether from families involved in politics, 
>business, academia or the media ï¿½ have almost entirely abandoned the 
>military, leaving the defense of our Country and our freedoms to the 
>children of the working class.
> 
>
>What makes this work so important is that they present their case in 
>a very non-political way, with the authors representing both sides 
>of the Red State/Blue State political divide, with Roth-Douquet 
>being a longtime Democrat operative and Clinton appointee, and 
>Schaeffer a committed conservative Republican. 
> 
>
>Another important element is that this book is not written as a 
>dispassionate quantitative analysis published by some Washington 
>D.C.-based think tank, but is a very personal story told by two 
>individuals with loved ones who have served in harm's way in Iraq 
>and Afghanistan: for Roth-Douquet, her husband, a career Marine 
>pilot who has served two tours in Iraq; and for Schaeffer, his son, 
>John, who served tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Both authors 
>share a number of personal anecdotes and reflections as members of 
>the cultural elite that reinforce their thesis. 
> 
>
>The authors present several sobering statistics to help illustrate 
>the problems associated with the cultural elite abandoning the 
>military:  
>
>Of the Princeton University Class of 1956, more than half of the 
>graduates went on to serve in the military (400 of 750); in 2004, 
>that number was less than one percent (9 graduates). Sadly, among 
>Ivy League schools, Princeton is in the lead for ROTC participation. 
>During the 1956 school year, Stanford University had 1,100 students 
>enrolled in ROTC; today, there are only 29. 
>In 1969, seventy percent of the members of Congress were veterans; 
>in 2004, only twenty-five percent were, with that representation 
>falling rapidly. 
>The percentage of members of Congress with children serving in the 
>military is only slightly above one percent. 
>While the old political clans of the Kennedys, Roosevelts and the 
>Bushes have had many family members previously serving in combat, 
>none of these privileged families (Democrat and Republican alike) 
>has any relative in the military today.
>
>These statistics paint a bleak portrait of an entire class that has 
>eschewed military service, which is problematic in itself, but 
>particularly since this class comprises America's opinion makers and 
>cultural leaders. The authors identify several concerns raised by 
>this almost universal trend:
> 
>
>We believe that the increasing gap between the most privileged 
>classes and those in the military raises three major problems: It 
>hurts our country, particularly our ability to make the best policy 
>possible. It undermines the strength of our civilian leadership, 
>which no longer has significant numbers of members who have the 
>experience and wisdom that comes from national service. Finally, it 
>makes our military less strong in the long run. (pp. 10-11).
> 
>
>What is most troubling is that this military desertion is neither an 
>isolated nor a passive trend. The authors document a mindset amongst 
>the cultural elite that is clearly anti-military. A testament to the 
>outright contempt that many bear to our military is seen in the 
>public response to an op-ed by the authors published a few weeks ago 
>by the Boston Globe, A Call to Serve. The op-ed is a suggested 
>commencement address that could be given by leaders of either 
>political party promoting the virtues of military service.
> 
>
>But the Letters to the Editor to that op-ed demonstrate a virulent, 
>almost rabid, reaction to the mere suggestion that Americans from 
>all walks of life should feel compelled to serve in the military. 
>One reader said that the innocuous op-ed was "sadly reflective of a 
>seemingly ubiquitous primitive mentality", and another attacked our 
>civilian military leaders, saying "no clear-thinking, loving parents 
>should entrust their child to these cynical ideologues." These 
>diatribes could easily be entries appearing any day on Daily Kos or 
>the Huffington Post.
> 
>
>The Ivy-covered Halls of Anti-Military Academia
>
>Undeniably, the most noticeable location where this military 
>desertion and the cultural forces that inspire it can be seen is on 
>college campuses, especially in the Ivy League. One organization 
>calling for the reintroduction of ROTC at Ivy League institutions, 
>Advocates for ROTC, maintains an extensive list of articles 
>concerning the status of ROTC at these institutions, as well as the 
>attacks on the program from within academia. As Jamie Weinstein 
>chronicled last year for FrontPageMag.com, The Campus Left's War on 
>ROTC, many elite academic institutions express open contempt for the 
>military and erect obstacles for students who want to serve their 
>country through military service. 
> 
>
>Columbia University, for example, requires their ROTC students to 
>travel to Fordham College to receive their training, and students do 
>not receive Columbia course credit for ROTC courses. When the issue 
>was last put to Columbia students in 2003, 65 percent agreed that 
>ROTC should be allowed back on campus. But that didn't influence a 
>Columbia ROTC Task Force from concluding that the college should 
>boycott the program. This from a college that used to produce more 
>naval midshipmen than the US Naval Academy.
> 
>
>One person to buck this trend in the Ivy League is outgoing Harvard 
>President Lawrence Summers, former President Clinton's Secretary of 
>the Treasury, who has attended every ROTC commissioning ceremony for 
>Harvard graduates during his five-year tenure and openly supported 
>the program. At the 2006 event, Summers offered his thanks to the 
>cadets and expressed admiration for their hard work:
> 
>
>"I thought there wasn't anything more important that someone could 
>do than to serve their countryï¿½so I admire your courage, your 
>devotion as citizens in joining our armed forces at this crucial 
>moment."
> 
>
>It should be noted that Harvard had the first ROTC program in the 
>country. Perhaps due to Summer's boldness in confronting the anti-
>military atmosphere at Harvard, the week of the commissioning it was 
>announced that a new Harvard alumni association had been formed 
>composed of military veterans, the Harvard Veterans Alumni 
>Organization. 
> 
>
>One of Summers' colleagues who has followed his lead is Bucknell 
>University President Brian Mitchell, who spoke this year at the 
>commissioning ceremony for the three Bucknell ROTC graduates. But 
>clearly, Summer and Mitchell are in the minority among university 
>officials in their support for ROTC, and many of our country's most 
>prestigious academic institutions actively supported the legal 
>challenge to the Solomon Amendment, federal legislation that 
>withholds federal funds from colleges and universities that deny 
>access to military recruiters, a law which was upheld earlier this 
>year by the US Supreme Court. 
> 
>
>Many college authorities expressing their opposition to the 
>reinstitution of ROTC and military recruiting on their campuses have 
>cited the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, and yet it is 
>reasonable to ask if whether the military ever allowed open 
>homosexuals into the military if academic officials would suddenly 
>embrace the military. Is it really nothing more than politics that 
>are holding the academic elites back from military service?
>
>
>Political Implications of the Anti-Military Mindset
>
>In their book, Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer note that policy issues 
>related to the military ï¿½ "Don't ask, don't tell", the role of women 
>in combat, and the implementation of affirmative action quotas for 
>military promotion ï¿½ are regularly cited by cultural elites as 
>reasons for their opposition to the military. These political 
>questions could very well be treated differently by Congress in the 
>future as one troubling trend continues unabated: the declining 
>presence of veterans in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
>
>
>As recent as the 1990s, military veterans were over-represented in 
>Congress. For instance, in the 1970s, more than three-quarters of 
>the members of Congress had served in the military. But after 1994, 
>the number of veterans serving in Congress began to rapidly decline. 
>According to figures from the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, 
>of the 535 current members of Congress, only 167 are military 
>veterans ï¿½ less than one-third. 
> 
>
>There are several answers to why the downward trend in 
>representation by veterans is occurring, but two stand out 
>prominently: the increase of women members in Congress, and the 
>retirement of the World War II-Korea generation: in the 108th 
>Congress, there are 84 women (14 in the Senate, 70 in the House), 
>and yet only one, Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM), is a military veteran; 
>and only 38 veterans from the WWII-Korea-era still serve. The latter 
>trend of WWII-Korean War era veterans retiring can only continue 
>when considering that only 10 current members of Congress began 
>their military service in the all-volunteer era beginning in 1973.
> 
>
>With this trend in mind, a question should be asked: as the personal 
>connections between members of Congress and the military grow more 
>distant, are our elected officials more or less likely to send 
>American forces into conflicts with no identifiable military outcome 
>or absurd rules of engagement? And are they more susceptible to 
>withdrawing our military from conflicts due to political pressure 
>rather than strategic military reasons?
> 
>
>There are some additional statistics that should be observed from 
>House Committee's data on veterans in Congress:
>
>Representation of veterans in the Senate (39 percent) is higher than 
>that of the House (31 percent). 
>In the House, 49 veterans are Democrats, 72 are Republicans. 
>In the Senate, the military service split is more evenly divided 
>politically: 16 Democrats, 18 Republicans, and one Independent (who 
>caucuses with the Democrats) ï¿½ mirroring the political 
>representation of the Senate. 
>Overall, 31 House members and 10 Senate members are combat veterans. 
>Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) is the only Congressional Medal of 
>Honor winner currently serving in Congress. 
>Only 14 Congressional members have retired from the military, and 
>only 6 from active duty.
>
>The authors of AWOL identify several cultural problems that have 
>begun to develop that have significant political ramifications. One 
>is that those currently serving in the military are rapidly flocking 
>to the GOP.
> 
>
>In 1976, most of the military identified themselves as Independent, 
>while 33 percent identified as Republican (still a larger proportion 
>than the general public). But the members of the armed services have 
>since abandoned this neutrality. Now 56 percent consider themselves 
>Republican, and only 15 percent consider themselves Independent. 
>(pp. 152-153)
> 
>
>Meanwhile, the cultural leaders in the US vote overwhelmingly for 
>Democrats, which has created a glaring gap in the electorate:
>
>The divide between military and civilian life is self-reinforcing. 
>And it is becoming increasingly political. The majority of military 
>personnel identify themselves as Republicans. And a disproportionate 
>number of academics and those in the media identify themselves as 
>Democrats. In other words, our nation's defenders mostly vote one 
>way and those who shape opinion (and educate our elites) mostly vote 
>another way, at a time when the political and cultural divisions in 
>our country are deeper than ever. (p. 142)
> 
>
>According to the authors, this self-perpetuating political divide 
>between the mostly conservative military versus a vastly liberal 
>cultural elite and their dominance in political and cultural 
>institutions could have potentially catastrophic implications down 
>the road:
>
>Our elected leaders and our cultural leaders depend on the health of 
>the military to protect a huge array of vital interests. A military 
>that distrusts the decision making of those civilian leaders could 
>potentially undermine their leadership, by withholding information, 
>tailoring actions, or otherwise acting too independently. One can 
>hardly image a worse scenario in a democracy than to have an 
>unbridgeable gap develop into an us-and-them mentality between the 
>military and the civilian culture and leadership. (p. 173)
> 
>
>To their credit, Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer pull no punches in 
>presenting the flip-side of this marked political divide. They 
>charge that this rift breeds "military exceptionalism", where the 
>members of the military begin to believe they are better than the 
>rest of the country they are charged to defend. One study they cite 
>(p. 150) states, "More and more, enlisted as well as officers are 
>beginning to feel that they are special, better than the society 
>they serve." 
> 
>
>Another serious problem they identify is that the striking political 
>shift amongst those serving in the military is that the military 
>itself may be abandoning political neutrality, which in the long-
>term could undermine the civilian control of the military ï¿½ one of 
>the most notable hallmarks of American democracy and what has given 
>our republican political system very uncharacteristic longevity. A 
>clear delineation between civilian and military must be maintained 
>in order for our political system to work:
> 
>
>Whether or not to use military action is an important issue. And it 
>is crucial for society to engage in asking hard questions. But that 
>questioning has to be done by civilians, not soldiers (who should 
>consider the legality of their individual actions in war, but 
>not "Is this the most successful policy?"). And some civilians have 
>to be willing to relinquish the perquisites of a citizen for a space 
>of time and become soldiers. This act ties the military back to the 
>citizenry and makes action legitimate. To abandon either the 
>citizen's connection to the soldier or the soldier's traditional 
>faithfulness is to undermine our nation's ability to act. (p. 138)
> 
>
>According to the authors, there is only one way to reverse these 
>potentially devastating trends:
>
>The only credible way to alter perception and begin to depoliticize 
>the military is for Democrats, liberals, and others to being to 
>publicly, consistently, and loudly advocate for broad participation 
>of their own in military service. If they do not, they can hardly 
>complain that the military is alienated from their values and 
>politics. And if Democrats do not follow words with actions ï¿½ in 
>other words not just talk about it but actually serve and encourage 
>their children to serve ï¿½ the trend of the military representing one 
>political party will harden into a fact. And that fact will change 
>the American landscape in what seems to us to be a very dangerous 
>way. (p. 154)
> 
>
>The Rise of the American Anti-Military Culture
>
>Perhaps the strongest element to Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer's book 
>is their discussion of the cultural trends that have driven the 
>cultural elite from military service. According to the authors, the 
>dramatic shift seen in attitudes of the elite during the 20th 
>Century can be traced to a combination of cultural factors.
> 
>
>The development of what the authors call "rights consciousness" is 
>one factor to blame for the cultural shift by the elite against 
>military service. As the Supreme Court applied a radical 
>interpretation of the Constitution, identifying a long list of 
>individual rights never mentioned before by the Court, an expansion 
>of legal rights ensued, which would have implications for perceiving 
>the duty of Americans to provide for the country's defense.
> 
>
>As a result, individuals felt they had a right (among other things) 
>not to be forced to go to war; they had a right not to be drafted 
>(although the courts did not agree with them on this point). For the 
>first time, citizens in large part felt fully entitled to their 
>citizenship separate from duty such as military service. (p. 117)
> 
>
>One cultural area where this new "rights consciousness" was seen was 
>in the mid-century development of a new social grouping ï¿½
> "teenagers". No longer were adolescents expected to rise to 
>adulthood and seize personal responsibility as adults, but to wallow 
>in their adolescence free from responsibility but with increasing 
>levels of personal freedom. The result has been a social disaster. 
> 
>
>Parents, too, bear responsibility for this development, as many have 
>taken extraordinary measure to isolate their children from the real 
>world and insulate them from the consequences of their poor 
>individual choices. In many cases, children are rarely prepared by 
>parents to handle the momentous choices that society thrusts upon 
>them. Relating this development to the military, this is seen in 
>the "Not My Child" syndrome, where America's military forces are 
>supposed to be comprised of someone else's children, a phenomenon 
>personified by America's Griever-in-Chief, Cindy Sheehan.
> 
>
>America's involvement in Vietnam plays a large role in cultural 
>perceptions of the military. Beginning in the Vietnam era, not 
>serving in the military came to be seen as a virtue, not a vice. 
>While all American wars have been controversial to some degree, in 
>no way had anti-war sentiment been so widespread or become so 
>embedded in our political, academic and media institutions. 
> 
>
>Never before in American history had the moral certainty with which 
>opponents of the Vietnam War expressed their view been as 
>widespread. And those protestors won ï¿½ the war ended with a U.S. 
>withdrawal, and the protesters' version of the war is the one that 
>has held the most sway in the post-Vietnam understanding of that 
>period, at least among our educated urban classes. As a result, many 
>of the protesters' premises about the war have remained firmly in 
>place for them as they've aged, and even as certain facts have come 
>to light that might arguably undermine some of the antiwar movements 
>certainties. (p. 119)
>
>
>The cultural dominance of the anti-war narrative after Vietnam is 
>acute in academia, which many anti-war protestors never left, but is 
>perpetuated as well in our entertainment and media industries. 
>Hollywood's version of the Vietnam War can be seen in a long string 
>of anti-military films, such as Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, 
>and Full Metal Jacket, while Mel Gibson's pro-military We Were 
>Soldiers is the rare exception. The anti-war narrative still reigns 
>in Hollywood, as seen in the recent film, Jarhead, and emboldens 
>many A-list entertainers, who feel free to openly criticize the 
>military and the current administration's war policy, despite the 
>fact that virtually no A-list celebrity criticizing our war effort 
>against terrorism or complaining of abuses by members of our armed 
>service has ever served in the military they are quick to deride.
> 
>
>The media have also embraced the anti-war narrative. Ignorance of 
>military affairs, if not open contempt for them, severely limits the 
>abilities of the media to accurately portray the many dimensions of 
>military actions. Instead, media coverage of conflicts is extremely 
>myopic, focused almost exclusively on corruption or casualties. One 
>only needs to pick up any major newspaper or watch network news to 
>see that these types of corruption or casualty stories 
>overwhelmingly dominate current media coverage. And while most 
>mainstream media reporters in Iraq huddle in the relative safety of 
>Baghdad's Green Zone, only a few intrepid reporters ï¿½ mostly 
>independents and freelancers, such as Michael Yon ï¿½ are actually 
>engaged in first-hand coverage of current combat operations.
> 
>
>The anti-war narrative has also had a profound effect on our 
>nation's military policy. Post-Vietnam conflicts are expected to be 
>short-term, relatively bloodless affairs, characterized by remote 
>push-button warfare. Boots on the ground and flag-draped coffins are 
>to be avoided at all cost. But as we've seen in the post-9/11 world, 
>this military policy is unrealistic and our national reluctance to 
>engage in any conflict beyond in-and-out operations has actually 
>resulted in the escalation of threats against America 
>internationally, which is perceived by its enemies as lacking the 
>will to fight. 
> 
>
>But the shift in perceptions against the military is not just the 
>result of merely cultural factors; it has been birthed from an 
>entirely new worldview fueled by both theological and philosophical 
>presuppositions. 
> 
>
>The authors identify a significant theological shift that occurred 
>in the early 1900s, when a liberal or "modernist" theological 
>movement began to take over the major Christian denominations in 
>America. Rooted in radical criticism of the Bible and embracing the 
>implications of Darwin's evolutionary theory, a new cultural vision 
>was birthed based on the inevitable triumph of man and the 
>deprecation of old Puritan orthodoxies that assumed the depravity of 
>man.
> 
>
>The main point of modernist theology was the notion that the divine 
>will of God was going to be seen in the secular progress of man on 
>earth rather than in terms of theology, let alone divine 
>intervention. We were to no longer think in terms of good and evil 
>but in terms of progress from a less enlightened state to a more 
>enlightened state. In the future mankind would not only have 
>progressed technologically but morally. We were going to become 
>better people. We would outgrow things like crime and war. In fact 
>we would outgrow the need to have countries. And in that new and 
>better world who would need a military? (p. 115)
> 
>
>According this new improved vision of mankind, good and evil were 
>antiquarian concepts considered by the cultural elite to be held 
>only by the ignorant, unwashed masses. In our thoroughly secular 
>age, it is easy to dismiss religious factors in shaping cultural 
>trends, but the proof of what the authors are identifying is seen in 
>the formation of the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact 
>developed by France and the United States after World War I, which 
>outlawed war altogether. 
> 
>
>By 1933, sixty-five nations had signed on to the treaty banning war, 
>including Germany, Italy and Japan. And yet, by the end of that 
>decade, the world would be engulfed in yet another world war that 
>would claim the lives of tens of millions of soldiers and innocent 
>civilians. That notwithstanding, the theological vision of an 
>enlightened evolutionary humanity was not abandoned after World War 
>II, but reinvented, as seen in the birth of the United Nations.
> 
>
>Part of that post-World War II reinvention was the rise of 
>postmodernism. No longer was there any belief that could be 
>identified as objective truth; the concepts of good and evil were 
>said to be constructs used by the privileged classes to preserve 
>their power. According to the postmodernists, mankind needed to be 
>freed from objective truth to usher in a new era of anarchism:
>
>
>Americans have always been individualists. But this individualism, 
>which became more robust in the 1960s, has since been reinforced by 
>the postmodernist movement of the late 1970s and the 1980s. This 
>movement argued that truth is relative, that those who win the power 
>struggle get to define the truth, and that new or different "truths" 
>can be equally valid to different peopleï¿½And there certainly is no 
>national truth that overrides individual preference. In this context 
>the call to national service is hard to make. There are no national 
>let alone universal truths, just individual experiences. So the 
>military has to be pitched as just one more personal choice. (pp. 
>127-128)
> 
>
>The consequences of this new worldview have been catastrophic for 
>the military. In psychology, character traits inculcated by military 
>training are deemed slavish, intended for weak-minded individuals 
>prone to an authoritarian personality. 
> 
>
>In fact, the requirements of military life demand a rejection of the 
>postmodern worldview. The postmodern ego that withholds all 
>commitment and demands a perpetual veto, stands in stark contrast to 
>the life-and-death necessities of military service, which demands 
>all soldiers to take responsibility for others serving with them and 
>to put collective interests ahead of personal ones. Military 
>training itself is intended to push recruits well beyond their own 
>expectations, which runs counter to the lowest common denominator 
>system exemplified by our government-run education system, where 
>personal strengths are restrained and weaknesses indulged to 
>ensure "fairness". 
> 
>
>Sadly, even military recruitment today is predicated on the 
>postmodern worldview. The familiar recruiting slogans of "Be All 
>That You Can Be" and "An Army of One" are expressions of the radical 
>individualism that is antithetical to the realities of military 
>life. Then again, this is probably a concession by military leaders 
>to the audience they must recruit from who have been seeped in the 
>new postmodern worldview most of their lives. 
> 
>
>Confronting the Problem
>
>Overall, this book is successful because they stick to the topic at 
>hand ï¿½ the cultural elite's abandonment of the military and the 
>consequences thereof. They resist the temptation to get into the 
>larger, more political, public policy issues that are very 
>important, but not germane to their thesis. 
> 
>
>However, Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer don't dismiss that there are 
>real military policy issues that must be addressed apart from the 
>cultural problem they identify. For instance, they note the chronic 
>understaffing of the military and the overall decline in military 
>spending, but it is relegated to a footnote: 
> 
>
>Since 9/11 we have not had a national war effort. Our military is 
>0.4 percent of the population, and though it seems to be terribly 
>understaffed, there is no serious political effort to increase the 
>size ï¿½ so that a tiny proportion of the population bears an enormous 
>burden in this war. At the same time, the military budget is a 
>smaller proportion of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) 
>than it was at any time from the 1940s to the mid-`90s. We spend 
>about 3.7 percent of our GDP on military activities today, compared 
>to about 4.4 percent in 1993 (post-Cold War, pre-War on Terror), or 
>to 9.2 percent, in 1962, between Korea and Vietnam. (p. 169)
> 
>
>In our day and age when everybody has an opinion on every topic, 
>whether they are informed or not, it is easy for writers to wander 
>off the path. Not here. The authors stay on target and they should 
>be commended for their discipline. 
> 
>
>There are many positive things to say about this book. The writing 
>is very accessible and non-technical, and the personal experiences 
>of both authors resonate on virtually every page. It should be 
>required reading for military and political leaders alike. 
> 
>
>The one weakness of the book, however, resides in the book's 
>conclusion. Having spent two hundred pages of insightful, 
>informative, compelling and quick reading, the authors' suggestions 
>for correcting the cultural problems they identify falls flat. 
> 
>
>First, they rightly recommend a shift in national policy related to 
>the military:
>
>The grunt on the ground is best equipped, best trained, and best 
>served when the opinion makers have a personal stake in his or her 
>well-being. We submit that the best planning for warfighting is not 
>done by political leaders who are in a hurry to "get it over" before 
>the political winds shift, because support for a war in not deep and 
>shared by all. It is time for a midcourse correction in the policy 
>of the all-volunteer military and how it recruits. (p. 201) 
> 
>
>They also make several nip/tuck policy solutions, but the only real 
>substantive suggestion they make for addressing the abandonment of 
>the military by the cultural elite is a national service draft. On 
>this recommendation, the authors diverge as to whether this draft 
>should be mandatory (Schaeffer) or voluntary (Roth-Douquet). Unlike 
>previous drafts, they agree that exceptions that favored the elite 
>(college deferments, etc.) should be very limited, if not eliminated 
>altogether, to increase the fairness of the process.
> 
>
>In her discussion on this proposal, Roth-Douquet notes that the 
>political will for a compulsory program of national service does not 
>exist, and is not likely to be a viable political option anytime 
>soon. Schaeffer responds by saying, "It will take strong medicine to 
>break the self-reinforcing cycle of selfishness presently endemic to 
>this culture." (p. 230). Admittedly, both arguments have merit.
>
>
>Leaving aside the issue of a mandatory vs. a voluntary draft, they 
>suggest the creation of a "National Service Gateway", which would 
>combine recruiting for all four branches of the military, along with 
>AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, and even the Red Cross, with both males 
>and females required to register with the Selective Service System. 
>Existing college aid programs would be replaced with tax credits, 
>loan forgiveness, etc. contingent upon service in one of these 
>programs. Taken at face value, this seems to be an efficient 
>concept; but the authors are intending to increase participation in 
>the military, and making it just one option among many robs it of 
>its unique position in protecting our society and puts military 
>recruiting into an even more competitive environment.  
>
>
>Furthermore, it seems that the last thing needed in our country is 
>yet another federal program where hundreds of thousands 
>of "volunteers" are placed on the federal dole. Are AmeriCorps 
>and "volunteer" programs like it something that we as a nation 
>should be perpetuating, let alone expanding? And what, if anything, 
>does this proposal have to do with resolving the cultural problem 
>they identify ï¿½ the absence of the elite from the military?
>
>
>Understandably, the bipartisan authorship of this book ï¿½ one of its 
>strengths ï¿½ limits from the beginning the policy prescriptions made 
>at the end. As a result, their primary recommendation ï¿½ 
>the "National Service Gateway" ï¿½ seems to have the all the flaws, 
>convolutions, and enormous price tag for taxpayers as most pieces of 
>the bipartisan legislation passed by Congress. And if our authors 
>can't even agree whether it should be voluntary or mandatory, can we 
>really expect 535 members of Congress to reach a consensus? But 
>since the authors do such a good job of identifying the cultural and 
>political trends, and diagnosing the cultural causes, in the end 
>they can be forgiven for falling short on their proposals for 
>solutions. The authors admit that they intended to initiate a 
>conversation, not to solve it.
>
>
>The most prominent implication of Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer's AWOL 
>is that the abandonment of the military by our cultural leaders 
>demonstrates a loss in faith in democracy itself. That is a problem 
>that extends well beyond discussions of national security, military 
>service demographics and how we recruit. That America's cultural 
>elite have gone AWOL from military service is a problem that should 
>be the topic of conversation by both major political parties and 
>media commentators of all stripes. With the increasing rise in 
>influence of these same cultural elites while the demands on our 
>military are higher than at any point since the Vietnam War, this 
>book and the discussion it hopefully engenders arrives none too soon.