The Rise of the Service Gap
Academics vs. military service.
John Noonan

It seems that every American conflict has been accompanied by paranoia about a military-service gap — the age-old contention that poor men are forced to fight rich men’s wars. Traditionally, the service gap has been a myth, a falsehood designed to stroke society’s bitter underbelly for some sort of political gain. While a service gap between the rich and the poor may have actually existed during the French Revolution or the final days of the Russian czars, it has never been a prominent feature of American history.

Yet as the top tier of American academia grows increasingly hostile toward the military and military service, the service gap may go from fiction to fact. As the antiwar movement has grown, so have so-called “counter-recruitment” campaigns, designed to strip the military of the legal right to recruit on campuses.

There is hypocrisy here, as the same activist element that specializes in counter-recruitment also spends a great deal of time bemoaning the supposed service gap. On the one hand, these activists want to blame the wealthy for exploiting the poor to serve as cannon fodder in today’s wars. On the other hand, they seek to ensure that as many affluent young people are kept out of the military as possible.

[Read on. H/T: Uncle Jimbo]

Contributed by Bill Faith on July 28, 2006 at 10:37 AM | Permalink

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