New study highlights the widening disconnect between the nation’s troops and its civilians
Americans for generations have fretted over the relationship between the military and civilian society, over how the one institution fits within the other, how the broader population receives and perceives its soldiers. But as the U.S. approaches the 10th anniversary of the launch of the war in Afghanistan this week, this much is novel: The longest war in U.S. history is being fought by the smallest percentage of its population.
The resulting implications — which Jeff Shear touched on for Miller-McCune.com earlier this year — are unsettling. As these wars have moved off of the front page, and as the soldiers fighting them have moved into sixth and seventh deployments, is a disconnect evolving between the country’s servicemen and civilians? Can the U.S. make good decisions as a country about war when so few feel personally invested? And what does it mean to welcome home a soldier when so few people really know where he or she has been?
The country plows toward this latest anniversary with retiring Navy Adm. Mike Mullen’s observation about the nation’s civilians ringing in the air: “I fear they do not know us.”
That quote from the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to this year’s graduating class at West Point prefaced a massive new study of veteran and civilian public opinion in the post-Sept. 11 era released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. The quote also popped up repeatedly during a discussion Pew hosted Wednesday to publicize the results.
The center surveyed nearly 2,000 veterans and as many civilians about their expectations of each other, their views on who should (and has been) carrying the burden during wartime and whether these wars have been “worth it.”
One of the central findings was that post-Sept. 11 veterans appear to agree with Mullen. And — more surprisingly — the public does, too…