Uncle Sam to the liberals: I need you!

AS A NORTHEASTERNER and a child of the left, I grew up knowing almost no one in the military. Shaped by Vietnam and the Cold War, my parents’ generation of progressives distrusted U.S. military power. As a young child, so did I. I remember cheering at the Central Park concert celebrating the end of the Vietnam War. A few years later, I marched enthusiastically with my family to protest Reagan-era draft registration requirements.

But a lot has changed since then.

My own generation has been shaped not by the Vietnam War but by globalization’s discontents: ethnic conflict and the rise of terrorism. With the post-Cold War fragmentation of the Balkans, the Rwandan genocide and a multitude of other brutal conflicts, I -- and many other young progressives -- gradually came to see the U.S. military as an imperfect but indispensable institution for stopping humanitarian tragedies.

Since Sept. 11, the military has seemed even more crucial. Indiscriminate terrorist attacks threaten every dream of peace, and combating globally diffuse terrorist networks requires an unprecedented mixture of criminal investigation and military force.

Although many progressives continue to regard the military with slight unease, no one imagines anymore that we would be better off without it. This week, the Washington Post reported on new classified military plans for responding to terrorist attacks in the United States -- including potential nuclear, chemical or biological attacks so catastrophic that the military might be required to “take the lead” in responding, as one official put it. The term “martial law” was not used, but it was implicit.

Such troubling scenarios would once have seemed the stuff of paranoid fiction. After 9/11, they seem far too plausible.

That’s why I’ve started urging all the bright young liberals I meet to join the military.

Sure, U.S. military policy is flawed in many respects. But that’s not a reason for progressives to shun the military. On the contrary, it’s one of the main reasons that liberals need to reexamine their long-standing aversion to military service.

There is a significant and growing gap between military and civilian cultures. While about a third of the general public identifies themselves as Democrats and another third as Republicans, a January 2005 Military Times poll found that 60% of military respondents were Republicans, 17% were independents and only 13% were Democrats.

A generation ago, the military was far less partisan in its composition: A plurality (46%) called themselves independents, while only 33% were Republicans. On numerous key social and religious issues, military personnel today are far more conservative than the typical American.

In today’s polarized political atmosphere, anyone who finds this troubling needs to be willing to work for change from inside the military, not just from the outside. Otherwise, the cultural and political gap between the military and civilian society will only widen.

The Vietnam War-era draft pulled in a disproportionate number of poor young men because educational deferrals allowed elites to avoid service. But at least the draft covered the whole country. Today’s volunteer military is drawn disproportionately from conservative Southern states and economically struggling rural areas.

Meanwhile, many of the elite universities, which tend to be liberal, booted ROTC off campus in the wake of the Vietnam War. Today, the percentage of students from elite universities who join the military is minuscule.

Progressives should embrace military service because we can’t afford to let the gap between the military and civilians grow. It’s deeply unfair to expect those Americans with the fewest economic opportunities to do our fighting for us. And as globalization and terrorism blur the lines between “domestic” and “foreign” affairs and between “civilian” and “military” affairs, having a military that is regionally identified and politically partisan poses real dangers to a pluralistic society.

Liberals should also remember that the military may have some valuable lessons to teach the rest of us. For instance, minorities make up more than a third of all military personnel, and 20% of the officer corps. That’s a far higher leadership representation than that boasted by Congress or by most big universities and corporations. Unsurprisingly, most minority military personnel think that minorities are treated more fairly in the military than in civilian life. Wouldn’t it be nice to transfer some of that racial egalitarianism to civilian culture?

Progressives need to get over their reluctance to serve in the military. Only when we’re all willing to serve in the military will we have a military that can truly serve us all.