Sayce W. Falk, an Iraq war veteran who graduated from the Kennedy School last year, said he thinks the volunteer nature of the military has created an insular conflict.
“We have a situation where the same guys are going back [to war] six or seven times in ten years,” Falk said. “Only the guys who want to fight are fighting, and everyone else is less aware of what’s going on.”
Unlike the early years of the war, in which the entire nation paid close attention to the invasion of Iraq, Falk said he thinks that “now everyone just has a fatigue with that kind of news.”
Even Falk—now two years removed from his last deployment to Iraq—said he “can’t even tell what’s going on there now.”
According to Biel, the wars’ lack of immediacy “contrasts starkly” with the Vietnam War.
“The Vietnam War was on the news every night,” Biel said. “Now, think about how many days will go by when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t the top stories, or aren’t even stories at all.”
WHO IS SERVING
The wars’ lack of immediacy for many students may be due in part to who is serving in the war.
In general, the military looks a lot like America—most recruits are middle class, though they draw somewhat disproportionately from southern, rural, or suburban regions. The military is predominantly white, and blacks are slightly overrepresented while Asians are underrepresented.
Although recruits are slightly better educated than the average American citizen, the best educated and wealthiest members of America’s youth population—who often gravitate to schools like Harvard—are underrepresented in the military.
Several times in the past decade, this underrepresentation of America’s elite was brought to the national stage when New York Congressman Charles Rangel, a Democrat, proposed legislation that would reinstitute the draft. Rangel argued that because few Congressman had children in the Armed Forces, they were overly willing to commit the United States to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. By bringing back the draft, Rangel said he hoped to inspire elected officials to think more carefully about the consequences of going to war.
“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq… if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” Rangel told CBS News at the time.
In 2004—the only time Rangel’s bill was brought to the floor of the House of Representatives—the legislation was defeated by a vote of 402-2.
Many studies suggest that the underrepresentation of military recruits from the nation’s top universities may be due in part to the long-term absence of ROTC on Ivy League campuses.
For years, many of the best people at Harvard have “just gone on to do other things,” said Michael Segal ’76, a member of the Advocates for Harvard ROTC.
But when Harvard formally recognized ROTC last March after a forty year stand-off, an opening emerged for ROTC to increase the representation of elite students in the military.
“We would like to persuade more people from the highest socioeconomic group to serve in the military,” Segal said. “The people who meet Harvard’s filter for intellectual abilities and the military’s filter for leadership qualities tend to be really terrific people.”
But, as of now, the individuals who meet both tests are few and far between.