I’m back at the Service Nation summit, with a newfound understanding of journalists. If I were one, I would have had to have tossed off a story on what the candidates for President said yesterday, for the late night news or morning newspaper, before I had a chance to think about it. Perhaps that explains a lot. I’ve heard repeated calls to service at intervals throughout my adult and near adult life, and definitely see something different here. The Service Nation summit includes both social service organizations and foundations, and the military, together as examples of service. I’m not sure that would have been the case 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. And during their interviews last night, both candidates spoke to the relationship between the military and the broader country, and how it needed to change. Not the military, the respect and appreciation for the military in some parts of the country. Such as ours.
Both candidates agreed that our all volunteer military is the best it has ever been, but the interviewers spoke about declining reenlistments, falling standards, with 30 percent of new military personnel not high school graduates, and strained military families. Speaking first, Senator McCain said a larger military force would reduce the stress on individual soldiers, and higher pay would aid recruitment and retention. Senator Obama, speaking second, agreed that the military should be larger, and pay should be raised.
Senator McCain also pointed out that the university where they were speaking, Columbia, has banned the military from the campus since the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Asked about this issue Senator Obama, a Columbia graduate, said that banning the military from the campuses where the nation’s brightest and most influential went to school was a mistake, and agreed that Columbia should allow the ROTC back on campus to allow its students the choice of military service. Even as students outside the building protested the war.
It was Senator Obama, in fact, who went on at length about the need for large parts of the country, and segments of the population, to re-connect with the military. Had he been President on 9/11, he said, “I would have asked very explicitly for young people to engage in community service and military service. I was listening earlier of the discussion about who serves in our military. And I think that had the President very clearly said this is not just going to be– a– a war of a few of us, this is going to be an effort that mobilizes all of us– I think we would have had a– a different result.” He said there he’s met plenty of people with friends and relatives in the military in small towns in the Midwest, Southwest or South, and few in the major metropolitan centers.
He was also quoted as saying that as a young man he had considered entering the military himself, and might have done so if there was a war on when he was young. “There's no doubt that if there are wars going on and some are being asked to sacrifice their lives then I think you have to ask yourself why them instead of you? And so I think there are special obligations– during wartime. But, look, we need the military– we always have potential conflicts around the world.” “I do think that– over the last several years, the fact that the burden has been shouldered by such a narrow group– is a problem. And– how we treat those young people, by the way, when they come home continues to be a problem.”
This could be considered a departure for a candidate whose initial movement was driven by opposition to the war in Iraq. Or it could be considered evidence that the post-Vietnam is over and appreciation of our military has fully recovered, regardless of the particular conflicts elected officials choose to send our services into. But the change is striking.
As it happens, I’m a couple of days older than Senator Obama, and thus have had similar historical experiences. Based on my SAT scores, I was heavily recruited by the Navy to go to Annapolis, and receive an education for free. I had not applied; at the time, in 1979, no one wanted to be in the service, and they were desperate. Times were difficult, and my family was struggling. But I decided that I couldn’t go to Annapolis because in the end I couldn’t kill anyone and in the end, in exchange for that free education, that is what you agree to do if necessary. Of course plenty of folks go to the service academies and become conscientious objectors when hostilities break out, and that is wrong. But the cost of my college education was a great burden on my family, some thing I think about even today.
Military service, however, is something someone has to do, all of us have to concede. And as Senator Obama said “I think you have to ask yourself why them instead of you?”