THOUGHTFUL, AND NEEDED – AT 8:23 A.M. ET:  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates continues to be the most outstanding member of President Obama's cabinet, possibly because he's the only Republican, and therefore retains a level of maturity unavailable to most of the rest.

The secretary is understandably concerned about the growing gap between our military and the civilian population it is protecting.  He states it well:

DURHAM, N.C. — The United States is at risk of developing a cadre of military leaders who are cut off politically, culturally and geographically from the population they are sworn to protect, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told an audience at Duke University on Wednesday night.

In a speech aimed at addressing what he sees as a growing disconnect between the country as a whole and the relatively few who fight its wars, Mr. Gates said that although veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan were embraced when they came home, “for most Americans the wars remain an abstraction — a distant and unpleasant series of news items that do not affect them personally.”

Even after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Gates said, “in the absence of a draft, for a growing number of Americans, service in the military, no matter how laudable, has become something for other people to do.”

That idea is reinforced by an educational system, especially at the college level, that is often indifferent to or even openly hostile to the military.

The defense secretary said that military recruits came increasingly from the South, the mountain West and small towns, and less often from the Northeast, West Coast and big cities. The military’s own basing decisions have reinforced the trend, he said, with a significant percentage of Army posts moved in recent years to just five states: Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas and Washington.

I've often said, to the annoyance of some friends, that if this country is to be saved, it will be saved by the South and the Midwest – the heartland.  The heartbreak here in New York is that we used to be a military center, both active duty and military manufacturing.  The Brooklyn Navy Yard, Floyd Bennett NAS, Mitchell Field, Grumman, Republic.  They are history.  Few know a soldier or sailor, airman or marine.

The speech reflected the issues within the military about the merits and costs of an all-volunteer force fighting two wars for nearly a decade, the longest sustained combat in American history. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Gates said, are the first protracted large-scale conflicts since the American Revolution fought entirely by volunteers, but with a force of 2.4 million of active and reserve members that is less than 1 percent — the smallest proportion ever — of the population it serves.

Read that paragraph again.  Less than one percent of the population.  Remember that figure the next time some whiner announces that America is "overstretched."  We have 1.4 million men and women in our armed forces, for a nation of 306 million.  In World War II we had about 15 million for a nation of only 130 million.  Overstretched? 

Fine reporting.  Worth reading.  Important issue.  At one time, when I was young, everyone had family members in the armed forces.  We felt a part of national defense.  The so-called "anti-war" movement during Vietnam damaged the military/civilian relationship, and there are, sadly, some people who are content with the damage.  They are disgraceful. 

September 30, 2010