Essay
In their book titled “AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service – and How it Hurts Our Country”, Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer present a much comprehensive and broader insight into factors behind the absence of children of America’s elite in our All Volunteer Force nor contributing to keep ROTC units off Ivy League and other campuses. The insight given by the authors is largely socio-economic and political as they strive to answer the difficult questions which remain unknown to the public mainly as a result of the country’s and our society’s dislike of THE DRAFT on political and moral grounds. In World War I, the American nation introduced a military draft, THE DRAFT, meant to stop too many children of the nation’s elite from enlisting in the military. It was justified that there was need to prevent the nation from losing too many future leaders in the battleground, effectively spreading sacrifice beyond the nation’s most privileged citizens. This presents a challenge in the current times where the American military is consistently being called upon to intervene in world affairs. The American military is currently at a place where it has to be at the fore front in fighting terrorism, providing humanitarian relief, checking civil wars in many unstable countries, interdicting drug trafficking, stopping nuclear proliferation, among others (Downs et al., 2012). In this regard, it is certain that the American military would continue being asked to do something. Lacking people to do that “something” as a result of growing disinterest in enlisting in the military service among young people poses a great dilemma to the United States.
In their inspiring and compelling cri de Coeur, Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer address the question of what happens to a nation when its elite shy away from serving in the military. Previously, military service was considered by the United States and its citizens as a duty of citizenship just like serving on a jury panel or paying taxes. In the recent years, however, simply being called upon to consider serving in the military for the nation has become increasingly taken as an infringement of an individual’s civil rights (Bacevich, 2005). Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer in their AWOL trace this societal gravitation, positing that the growing rift between America’s military on the one hand and its opinion-making elite class on the other poses a great threat to the nation’s welfare.
The AWOL authors, Kath Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer, both have authority to speak on the topic due to their personal connections to military activities. Roth-Douquet is wife to a Marine pilot and she described herself as a “former, agitator, Ivy Leaguer, feminist, and Clintonite” On his part, Schaeffer is a published novelist, film maker, and painter who experienced his plans for his children come to instant halt upon the enlisting to the military of his youngest son immediately after completing high school. Like any average American parent, Schaeffer envisioned a good life for his children – “top college, good grades, smart jobs, wife/husband, Subaru/Volvo, membership at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, IRA started early, kids, and college find ”
Writing their book in alternating sections, Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer manage to marry their argument to give a convincing case of at least three potentially detrimental implications of a civil-military divide. First, the authors reckon that it significantly dents the ability of the United States to make well-informed and accurate military choices (Kane, 2007). This is because military service is not necessarily a prerequisite for individual proficiency in the conduct of war. One of the nation’s greatest wartime presidents, Abraham Lincoln, is known to have never server in the military notwithstanding the fact that he lived for three months in an Illinois militia. On the plus side, however, it is beneficial to have the input of veterans in our decision-making instruments in the form of members of Congress, presidential advisers, as well as active citizens (Bacevich, 2005). This is especially the case because our civilian leaders lack the intuitive wisdom gained from being on the front line. Further, the problem exacerbates itself in the sense that lack of young Americans enlisting in the military today threatens to result in future crop of leaders that are not veterans, and thus unable to effectively protect the United States from both internal and external aggression.
Secondly, Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer observe that the growing rift between the military on the one hand and the rest of us on the other contributes to the weakening of our armed forces. The lack of broad and ties of the military with the society translates that the military itself becomes “them” as opposed to “us” (Downs et al., 2012). The authors express their fear that such a scenario “will be overused and underled and that support will run out fast for any project that becomes a political liability.” Unlike many of our political leaders today, children of such elite as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill served in uniform during the World War II. While it is difficult to tell the impact of such personal connections on policy, the authors are not mistaken in arguing that “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 (Kane, 2007).”
The third and arguably the most problematic issue with isolating our military that Roth-Donquet and Schaeffer take note of is even less tangible. The authors argue that “when those who benefit most from living a country contribute the least to its defense and those who benefit least are asked to pay the ultimate price, something happens to the soul of that country.” This translates that we have a shortchanged generation of smart, inspired young Americans prejudiced against military service by either their parents or teachers, or both. The parents and teachers wrongfully believe that they are protecting their children and enlightening them respectively. However, in so doing, the young Americans are only being denied a chance to be mature, selfless, and ownership of their own country and give an even better future (Downs et al., 2012).
As relates to this better future, Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer’s book carries an elevating conclusion that reminds us of the age-old rallying call” “Ask not what your country can do for you, but you can do for your country ” We are reminded that the irony that young Americans today would be ready to give service in uniform ahead of personal gain because they have not been called upon. In summation, Roth-Douquet states: I’d like to do something even more radical. I’d like to ask them to serve” (Downs et al., 2012).
The case presented in the book AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service – and How it Hurts Our Country paints a sorry picture of the current state of affairs as relates to military service. Unlike in the past when our esteemed institutions of higher learning were a constant source of highly trained officer that enlisted for military service, the reverse of that trend is happening at the moment. Compared to the 1950s when more than half of our graduates from the country’s top schools served in uniform, today leading universities such as Harvard University is barring ROTC from its ranks. Similarly, less than one of the Ivy alumni are send to serve today. There has been a paradigm shift from the initial belief of our universities that their brightest graduates would take the spirit of free America to the battlefield and bring back lessons to benefit the next generation of our policy makers (Kane, 2007). Also, the political class is largely at fault for its failure to do enough to undertake a bipartisan effort of asking our elite to serve and thus depoliticize this choice. Its silence has perpetuate the class divide on who servers and who does not. As a solution to this problem, AWOL recommends a rethink of our chosen path of privilege i.e. young people to do something that their parents and teachers as well as peers would find disdainful – enlist more to serve their country. The American military represents all of us, our credit or our shame. We all have to become actively vested so as to own that credit or indeed repair the shame.
References:
Roth-Douquet, Kathy, and Frank Schaeffer. 2007. AWOL: the unexcused absence of America’s upper classes from the military — and how it hurts our country. New York: Collins.
Kane, Tim. 2007. Examination of ‘Elites’ and the Military AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service—and How It Hurts Our Country. Retrieved from: http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2007/08/examination-of-elites-and-the-military-awol-the-unexcused-absence-of-americas-upper-classes-from-military-servicemdashand-how-it-hurts-our-country.
Downs, Donald Alexander, and Ilia Murtazashvili. 2012. Arms and the university: military presence and the civic education of non-military students. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bacevich, J. Andrew. 2005. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. London: Oxford University Press.
