To book Frank Schaeffer to speak, please contact Lisa Darden at HUP Talent and Booking Agency (http://www.huptalentandbooking.com/frank_shaeffer.html) by email: ask4darden@aol.com or by phone: (240) 446-1554.
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Ghost Warriors
What happens to a country when its elite won't serve in the military?
Reviewed by Nathaniel Fick
Sunday, June 18, 2006; BW04
AWOL
The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes From Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country
By Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer
Collins. 241 pp. $24.95
In World War I, the United States imposed a military draft for a reason that seems strange today: to prevent too many of the nation's most privileged citizens from rushing toward the sound of the guns. A draft would spread sacrifice beyond the elite, went the argument, and ensure that the country didn't lose too many future leaders. Contrast this with the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, when the New York Civil Liberties Union challenged a federal law allowing military recruiters to contact graduating seniors at public high schools. "Students," the organization's executive director said, "have a right to not be bothered by aggressive military recruiters."
How did we change from a nation where military service was a duty of citizenship -- akin to paying taxes or serving on a jury -- to one where simply being asked to consider time in uniform is an infringement of civil rights?
In their compelling and inspiring cri de coeur , Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer trace this societal shift, arguing that the schism between America's military and its opinion-making class threatens the nation's welfare. Both authors qualify as opinion-makers, and both have personal connections to the military. Roth-Douquet, a self-described "former agitator, feminist, Ivy Leaguer, Clintonite," is married to a Marine pilot. Schaeffer, a novelist, painter and film-maker, saw his plans for his children -- "top college, good grades, smart jobs, wife/husband, Subaru/Volvo, membership at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, IRA started early, kids, college fund" -- derail when his youngest son enlisted in the Marines after high school.
That their stories are rare is a recent phenomenon. In 1956, 400 of Princeton's 750 graduates served in uniform. By 2004, only nine members of the university's graduating class entered the military. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia and many other schools do not even allow ROTC on their campuses. The gulf is growing in Congress, too. In 1971, three-quarters of our representatives had military experience. Now, fewer than a third do, and that number drops with each passing year. Some citizens see no problem with this. We are indeed fortunate not to live in a militarized society, and our hyper-capable armed forces enjoy, at least superficially, broad support from the American people.
But Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer, who've written the book in alternating sections, unite to argue convincingly that there are at least three dangerous consequences of a civil-military divide. First, it hurts the nation's ability to make sound military choices. Uniformed service is not a prerequisite for individual expertise in the conduct of war. Abraham Lincoln -- arguably America's greatest wartime president -- never served in uniform (although he spent three months in an Illinois militia). In the aggregate, however, we benefit from having veterans in every corner of our decision-making apparatus: as presidential advisers, members of Congress and active citizens. Without them, our civilian leaders embody less and less of that visceral wisdom forged in harm's way, and the problem perpetuates itself: If young people don't serve today, then we won't have older veterans in leadership positions tomorrow.
Second, a schism between the military and the rest of us weakens the armed forces. Absent broad and deep ties throughout society, the military becomes "them" instead of "us." Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer fear that such a force "will be overused and underled and that support will run out fast for any project that becomes a political liability." Consider that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, unlike most political leaders today, both had children in uniform in the Second World War. Whether such personal connections actually affect policy is almost impossible to say, but common sense supports the authors' assertion 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."
The greatest problem with an isolated military, however, is even less tangible. "When those who benefit most from living in 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," write the authors. That argument makes for the most powerful reading in the book: "We are shortchanging a generation of smart, motivated Americans who have been prejudiced against service by parents and teachers. Their parents may think they are protecting their children. Their teachers may think they are enlightening them. But perhaps what these young people are being protected from is maturity, selflessness, and the kind of ownership of their country that can give it a better future."
In pointing the way to this better future, the authors place great value on the bully pulpits of public life. "Ask not what your country can do for you" is a long way from our government's post-9/11 exhortation "to live your lives." AWOL 's most heartening conclusion -- that today's young Americans would be willing to put service to country ahead of personal gain -- is also its most maddening, because they haven't been called. "I don't want to draft" young people, Roth-Douquet declares. "I'd like to do something even more radical. I'd like to ask them to serve." A good first step would be asking their parents and teachers to read this important book. ·
Nathaniel Fick served as a Marine infantryman in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the author of "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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 FRANK SCHAEFFER AND KATHY ROTH DOUQUET A call to serve
By Frank Schaeffer and Kathy Roth Douquet | May 25, 2006
HERE IS a commencement speech a leader of either political party should make at an Ivy League college in the next week or so. President George W. Bush or Senators Edward Kennedy, William Frist, or Hillary Clinton would be ideal candidates.
Congratulations on graduating from one of the world's great universities. Congratulations for participating in one of the world's great experiments.
The United States began as an experiment in whether free people of all classes can overcome the obstacles of working shoulder-to-shoulder and govern themselves with nothing but mutually agreed law to bind us. We all understand that in order for this to work there are some parts of our civic life we share a responsibility for. For instance, you are supposed to show up for jury duty and pay taxes. And not long ago military service was also considered a normal part of being a citizen.
At any given moment Americans of all political persuasions are calling for America to intervene in world affairs. To fight terror, provide humanitarian relief, stop ethnic cleansing, spread democracy, interdict drug traffic, stop nuclear proliferation, rescue civilians; the list is as endless as there are American leaders with ideas about how the world should be. That the military is asked to do something is commonplace. What is not commonplace is an honest discussion of who is asked to do that ``something."
Not so long ago our great universities provided countless officers and enlisted troops. They took their training and insight and later became leaders in the larger society. In the 1950s, half the graduates of the nation's top schools served. Our schools believed that their best and brightest would bring the spirit of free America to the field, and bring the lessons of the field home to inform the next generation of policy makers. Harvard University pioneered ROTC, the same school that now bars it from its ranks. The Ivies now send less than one percent of their alumni to serve.
Perhaps it is time you reconsider the chosen path of privilege, or should I say the path chosen for you. Perhaps it is time for a few of you to do something your parents, certainly some members of this faculty, and many of your peers will find outlandish, even disdainful.
I suspect no one has ever asked you to consider volunteering. The nation's leaders, including me, have not done enough to join in a bipartisan effort to ask our most privileged to serve and by doing so depoliticize this choice. By our silence we have acquiesced to what has become a class divide regarding who serves and who does not.
This is not a Republican or Democrat issue but one that confronts all Americans. And it is not about any particular war or whom we voted for. It is about maintaining a strong common defense no matter who is president. It is about fairness and decency and citizenship. It is about caring for our country and a level playing field.
Yes, the military involves risk. And yes, the military isn't perfect. That fact should not close your mind to serving your country. Where are you, our most privileged young people, going to experience the joys of selflessness and sacrifice for the common good? How will our military change and improve if everyone waits for someone else to do it? Where do our social and economic classes mix and learn mutual respect when the wealthy send their sons and daughters to private schools and the poor go to public schools and never the twain shall meet with common purpose?
In the military you will not only serve your country but help close the information gap between the military and your friends, those who are influential in opinion-making and decision-making. That will help our country be more democratic. It might also help keep us out of frivolous foreign entanglements.
America's military represents all of you, to our credit or shame. To own that credit, or repair the shame, it is incumbent on all of us to consider becoming actively vested. It is time to revive idealism for the sake of the American experiment.
Frank Schaeffer is author of the forthcoming novel ``Baby Jack." Kathy Roth Douquet is a former Clinton White House aide. They are the coauthors of ``AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from the Military -- and How It Hurts Our Country." 
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Event | May 5, 2006
PPI Friday Forum: Unexcused Absence: America's Elite and the Military
With U.S. soldiers fighting and dying abroad, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that upscale Americans are largely absent from our Armed Forces. How this came to be, and why it matters, are the subject of a fascinating new book: AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country.
On Friday, May 5, 2006, the Progressive Policy Institute held a Forum where authors Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer explored the deep cultural divide between America's economic and social elite and the working-class men and women who comprise our Armed Forces. One result, they said, is a potentially dangerous lack of understanding and empathy between those in power and those who defend our way of life. As they write:
"We believe that the increasing gap between the most privileged classes and those in the military raises three major problems: It hurts our country, particularly our ability to make the best policy possible. It undermines the strength of our civilian leadership, which no longer has significant numbers of members who have the experience and wisdom that comes from national service. Finally, it makes our military less strong in the long run."
Based on research and including the voices of many young military members who understand firsthand the value of service, AWOL is also written from a personal perspective. Kathy Roth-Douquet is a former Clinton White House and Pentagon appointee, now married to a Marine Corps officer who has been deployed twice to Iraq. Frank Schaeffer is a Republican and novelist in Boston whose son enlisted in the Marine Corps out of prep-school, and was later deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq.
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| Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer present their new book at a PPI Friday Forum |
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DLC | New Dem Dispatch | May 4, 2006
Idea of the Week: Reconnecting All Americans With Our Military
To hear some administration officials and conservative pundits, the main threat to civilian-military understanding these days is posed by those retired generals who have called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as Defense Secretary, in recognition of his many blunders in Iraq.
But in reality, the genuine problem affecting civilian-military relations in this country is the long-standing gap between opinion-leading elites of every political persuasion, and the armed forces -- largely drawn from lower- and middle-class families -- who protect them.
This is the subject of an important new book entitled: AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service, and How It Hurts Our Country. Tomorrow, the Progressive Policy Institute, as part of its Friday Forum discussion series, will host a talk with the authors, Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer.
Roth-Douquet and Schaeffer are eloquent witnesses to the military-elite gap. Both were from privileged backgrounds, and had attitudes toward the military ranging from indifference to hostility. But Schaeffer's attitude changed when his son volunteered for the Marine Corps after graduating from an upper-crust school in suburban Boston, while Roth-Douquet's gradual appreciation for the armed services, earned during her own tenure in the Clinton White House, accelerated upon her marriage to a Marine officer and pilot. Both experienced the incomprehension of their friends and neighbors to any thought of "their kind" serving in the military, and the reciprocal incomprehension of military families to elite -- and particularly progressive elite -- opinion.
AWOL richly documents the rapid reduction in elite participation in the military -- universal during World War II and still strong in the period prior to Vietnam -- and its devolution since then from the student-deferral era that exempted so many young men from that trip to Saigon, to today's virtually military-free elite culture. And its authors warn of the consequences for the dialogue of the deaf so often conducted between civilian and military leadership classes: "There is a mutually reinforcing relationship between the 'leave-it-to-us-professionals' attitude of some of our military leaders and the 'leave-me-alone' or 'not-with-my-child' attitude of many in the upper classes."
Indeed, the military itself has all but given up on broad-based patriotic appeals to service, say Roth-Douquet and Schaffer. "The old, urgent, in-your-face World War II poster, 'UNCLE SAM NEEDS YOU!' has been changed by today's military to read, 'Uncle Sam wants to make you a better job offer you might consider. Got a better offer? Okay, sorry to have bothered you.'" And this attitude has definitely been reinforced by the Bush administration's obdurate refusal to call on all Americans to sacrifice for national security, especially those wealthy citizens who are mainly being asked to chow down on tax cuts.
AWOL offers some prescriptions for closing the civilian-military gap. They include a serious commitment to military recruiting among every element of the population, including elite educational institutions; the Progressive Policy Institute proposal for an education tax credit linked to national service; and a far more robust "citizen-soldier" option as part of the country's national service effort (another DLC/PPI proposal).
What this book most endorses is a much-needed debate over a subject that increasingly demands attention: how policymakers with no personal or familial experience with military service can knowledgeably set national security polices, and how a military estranged from civilian leaders and drawn from a narrow segment of the population can really represent the nation.
Given our overstretched military, and the sacrifices they are making in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is a debate that can no longer be deferred.
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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/267841_focus30.html
Too few are carrying the burden of war
Sunday, April 30, 2006
By PHILIP GOLD
GUEST COLUMNIST
Some issues don't go away, no matter how intently we ignore them. They don't go away because we know, in a dim, dark 3 a.m. kind of honesty, that our refusal to consider them can't go on forever.
Since conscription ended in 1973, we've been told that our volunteer military, no matter how competent and admirable, would be "unrepresentative." We've also been told that this military, its officer corps especially, would become "estranged" from the civilization it exists to protect. We've also told ourselves that it didn't really matter whether the military became a servant class, dutifully available for whatever missions might be sent its way, or a festering flotsam of fascism or (to some, even worse) fundamentalism. It didn't matter because our wars would be quick and victorious, our peacekeeping and humanitarian operations short and altruistic and pure.
It matters now. Who serves in our wars -- and who does not -- are issues that the American people cannot no longer refuse to face. Fortunately, a wave of new books, brought out by commercial publishers and written by concerned citizens for general audiences, is upon us.
The first two, "Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq," by Dr. Ron Glasser (Braziller), and "AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service" (HarperCollins), by Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer, are out now. More will follow.
(Full disclosure time. I've known Ron Glasser for several years. When I learned about "AWOL" a year ago, I tracked down Kathy Roth-Douquet and have e-mailed and chatted with her since.)
These books matter. Neither is academic or policy-wonky. Both are written by people with significant experience and personal involvement in their subjects. Both are intended to do something ever more rare in this country: speak to Americans in words of passion but passion informed by reason. In the end, both books are statements of belief in the essential honesty and goodness of the American people.
In 1968-69, Glasser was an Army doctor stationed in Japan. Overwhelmed by Vietnam medevacs, his hospital's commanding officer assigned him to help out in surgery. Glasser protested that he was a pediatrician. His colonel, a tough old Sherman Potter type, replied, "We'll let you treat the little wounds."
Glasser grew up fast. He also started writing. When he finished his Army tour, he tried to sell a book. No publisher would have it. Harper & Row said yes, then sat on it for six months, then called him to New York to tell him that it was brilliant but "the salespeople" didn't want it. Through a fortuitous sequence of events, George Braziller, head of a fine-arts publishing house, learned about the rejection. He read the manuscript that night and offered Glasser a contract the next morning.
Thirty-five years later, "365 Days" is still in print.
When the Iraq war started to sour, Glasser, now a prominent Minneapolis pediatric nephrologist, noticed that new kinds of wounded were coming back. Thanks to improved body armor and lack of enemy artillery and mortars, there were fewer traditional gunshot and fragmentation wounds. But because of the wide use of improvised explosive devices such as suicide bombs, there were far more serious wounds to limbs and closed head injuries. Gone was the "Million Dollar Wound" that got you honorably home but still reasonably intact. Now the military was doing amputations at a rate unknown since the Civil War and dealing with head injuries that could only be described as "polytrauma."
Glasser wrote about it in a July 2005 Harper's Magazine article. Braziller, now 90 and still running his shop, read it, then told him to crank out another book. Fast. Glasser wrote it in six months while maintaining his full-time medical practice.
"Wounded" tells it to the American people like it is and warns that these new wounded are going to require expensive lifetime care from a Department of Veterans Affairs that will be struggling with Vietnam vets for the next three decades.
Toward the end, "Wounded" shifts from medicine to note who's not coming home shattered in body and spirit: America's more privileged sons and daughters. The book does not demand a new draft or national service. It simply states that the present situation, where a small minority of volunteers carries the entire burden, is neither just nor, in the long run, sustainable.
"AWOL" makes the same point, in far greater detail. Kathy Roth-Douquet is a Bryn Mawr graduate with a Princeton master's degree and a law degree. A former Clinton White House staffer, she's now married to a Marine with two Iraq deployments, so far. Frank Schaeffer is a successful novelist who thought little about the military until his son put off college to join the Marines. Three well-received books ensued: "Faith of Our Sons," his own memoir; "Keeping Faith," co-written with his son; and an anthology of letters, "Voices From the Front."
Schaeffer and Roth-Douquet met at one of his book signings while her husband was in Iraq. A long-distance collaboration ensued. Schaeffer brought his literary stature and contacts. Roth-Douquet found time away from her duties as a squadron commander's wife, mother of two young children and part-time lawyer to pursue her old love of writing.
"AWOL" is personal, tales of two upscale overachievers who discover the humanity, the dignity and the value of the military world. It also explains the basics of that world. The primary audience is, as Roth-Douquet describes it, people who are both "inordinately influential and inordinately ignorant" of the military. It is a book for everyone who believes that the military is "not our kind, dear." It explains. It challenges. It cajoles. Its final message:
Sharing the military burden is politically desirable because the people will not forever sacrifice themselves on behalf of elites who don't. Sharing the military burden is politically wise because it makes this country less apt to launch off into ill-conceived adventures. Sharing the military burden is morally desirable because it produces better leaders and better citizens, or at least people a bit less given to conflating their interests and preferences with the entirety of the universe. Sharing the military burden is morally wise because ...
Why?
And therein lies the issue America dares not face. Whatever your opinion of the Iraq venture (which I've opposed since 2002), we're certainly in for decades of nasty happenings, at home and abroad. Add to this another reality now upon us, climate change and its potentially catastrophic long-term effects, and it's clear that national security now means something far more encompassing than it did during the Cold War, or even World War II. From Osama to Katrina, we're vulnerable as never before. For centuries, one of the blessings of being American was that we could make the same fatal mistakes, over and over. That's gone. It is time for the citizenry to re-engage in the common defense.
But what exactly, nowadays, is the common defense?
"AWOL" reaffirms military service as we now understand it: full-time duty in the active forces or part-time duty in the National Guard and the service reserves. Service, in other words, as the federal government has structured it, in no small measure for its own convenience. But there is another way of understanding military service. As the Founding Fathers did.
To the Founders, as to much of the world today, defense was a continuum, with individual and local self-defense at one end, major crises in the middle and federal foreign war at the other end. That's why the Founders cherished the militia ideal; it could function across the entire spectrum. But the Founders never intended that citizen obligation provide the federal government with a blank check on the bodies of the people.
The direct federal draft constitutes such a blank check, and is abhorrent. Wisely, since 9/11, the administration has refused to consider it. But they're making an even worse mistake. Since 9/11, the active forces have grown by only 50,000 people. Today, at the very moment when they should be expanding for the post-Iraq/post-Katrina world, they're actually shrinking. There are many reasons why, but one seems as clear as it has remained unuttered and unutterable:
The Pentagon has given up on the American people as a source of adequate numbers of qualified men and women. They're prepared to work the present force to exhaustion and death, while spending trillions on questionable weapons. They're inviting future disaster and, deep down, they know it.
And that is why it is now the moral responsibility of the people to create a new debate on citizen service. Not a rehash of old wars and old arguments, but a reasoned consideration of how to make the Founding Fathers' vision effective in the 21st century. Both "Wounded" and "AWOL" offer some ideas, but neither seeks to provide answers. Rather, these are "gateway" books. You read them to realize how urgent this issue really is. You pass through them on your way to addressing the hard choices ahead.
And as you do, you thank the authors for bringing you to it with intelligence, clarity and respect.
Philip Gold's next book, "The Coming Draft? America's Military Meltdown and the Future of Citizen Service," will be published by Random House/Presidio in September. He may be reached at aretean@netscape.net.
© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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| AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country |
In his forward to AWOL General (Retired) Tommy Franks says: "AWOL is powerful and compelling. It is sure to spark dialogue on issues of patriotism and service to our country. The book is both a love story and a hard-hitting account of military life."
Michael O'Hanlon, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution says: "For such a provocative and hard-hitting book, AWOL is also rather fair and balanced--and generally quite persuasive."
NBC anchor (ret.) and author Tom Brokaw says, "AWOL is a powerful and timely account of those missing in action -- the privileged class of America staying out of uniform and out of harm's way."
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