Little Genuine Support for the Troops in Iraq

The Army doesn't see much genuine support from the American public for the troops in Iraq. A NYT story on American troops in Germany being reassigned to Iraq says their commanding general told the families not to go back home to the States, because they wouldn't find much support there. They would find more support at their Army base in Germany. The article said:

One thing General Hertling pointedly did not suggest was for the families of the soldiers to return to the United States. The Army’s goal is to create a support network strong enough that the spouses will decide to wait out the deployment on the base in Germany, a country that many of them scarcely know and that pointedly declined to take part in the Iraq war. “We tell them, ‘You will not get the support you think you will, if you go back home,’ ” he said in an interview.

But it also demonstrates, General Hertling said, how the gap between American society and its volunteer military has widened as the Iraq war has dragged on. “Many people there have just moved on,” he said.

The extension of the last deployment — which came at the last minute after some troops had already reunited with their families in Germany — strained relations between the families and the Army. “There have been so many changes in what we’ve asked soldiers to do, that we may have put spouses in a position where they question what comes next,” said General Hertling, who has had two sons and a daughter-in-law serving in Iraq.

For most Americans, supporting the troops means putting a bumper sticker on their car, or watching a program about the Army on TV. The real way to support the troops is to enlist in the Army or the Marines to go fight. Because nobody does that, those in the service go back to Iraq again and again. Bush and Cheney don't care. They were both draft dodgers during Vietnam who have contempt for the military; to them, serving in the military is something that poor, stupid people do who can't get a real job working for Halliburton or the Texas Rangers.

To me an example of contempt for the military is that the last two Democratic candidates for President, Al Gore and John Kerry, were both Vietnam veterans. The public said, "Naw, we don't like veterans. We didn't serve, and we don't trust those do-gooders who did serve. Give us a draft dodger." And the public got what it deserved: cowards who were afraid to fight in Iraq, who got us into a horrible war that will destabilize the Middle East because they were afraid to fight hard enough to win. Why? Because they would have to raise taxes and re-institute the draft to get enough soldiers to fight and win the war they started. Cowards! Republicans, draft dodger Rudy Giuliani included, are cowards, except for John McCain, Chuck Hagel, and a few other veterans.

I'm not happy with Sen. John Warner, who was Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee during the invasion of Iraq and during the first years of the war, although he is a veteran. He did not support the military, and has let Bush and Cheney virtually destroy the military by not providing the necessary manpower and equipment to fight the war in Iraq. Warner just got an award from the George Marshall Foundation, but instead of an award he should have gotten a censure for doing the exact opposite of what Marshall did to build up the Army to win World War II. It's time for Warner to go. He has failed his country.

Military Service Unimportant in Election

Reuters reports that few of the candidates for President have served in the military, and says that is no problem, because the general populace also has avoided serving and doesn't care about military service. All people care about today is money, not service. That's reflected in the makeup of the candidates, most of whom are millionaires, or billionaires, if you include Bloomberg.

This country has changed a lot. I think it's sad, but maybe when history looks back on it, it won't be so bad. Who it is bad for are the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. This report shows more clearly that average Americans won't fight for their country. They let somebody else, probably somebody poorer who needs the money, do it. Families of New Yorkers in particular got millions from the government if they were killed in 9/11; now they party and profit from the stock market, while their poorer fellow citizens from southern and western states that New Yorkers spit on, die in Iraq and Afghanistan. Families of soldiers who die in combat, and families of victims killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, have gotten nothing close to the millions that New Yorkers got for 9/11.

Religion of Veterans

This information about the religion of military service members in 2001 comes from the Population Bulletin for December 2004, page 25. It states that "Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims are underrepresented in the military relative to their share of the civilian population."

Religion

When sociologist Morris Janowitz
reported on the social origins of soldiers
in 1960, he was able to identify
general patterns and trends in their
religious affiliation, albeit from fairly
poor data. He found an overwhelmingly
Protestant majority, disproportionately
Episcopalian, but with an
increasing representation of Catholics
and a small percentage of Jews. Soldiers
were less likely to be Catholic
than the general public, but the military
reflected the general range of
religious diversity in America.33
While Janowitz was writing about
the conscription-era military and his
data on religion were weak relative to
other variables, his findings provide a
baseline for studying the religious
affiliation of today’s volunteer military.
There are few comprehensive
statistics on religious affiliation in the
civilian population, in part because
the principle of separation of church
and state precludes federal statistical
programs, such as the decennial census
and current population surveys,
from collecting data on religion. We
do know the civilian American population
has been moving away from
the traditional Christian religions and
toward other religious groups or
eschewing any religious affiliation.34
This latter trend is particularly pronounced
among young adults, exactly
the age groups most likely to enter
the military. In general, the armed
forces show lower religious affiliation
than the civilian population, even
among civilians ages 20 to 39 (see
Table 5). A larger share of military
than civilians reported they are Christians
but are not Roman Catholic/
Eastern Orthodox or Protestant, or
do not specify a denomination. This
category includes such Christian
groups as Mormons, Seventh Day
Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses,
as well as the Christian and Missionary
Alliance, Church of God, Seventh
Day Adventist, and Assemblies of
God. Smaller Protestant groups have
been increasing since the 1960s,
while the older, larger Protestant
denominations such as Presbyterians,
Episcopalians, Lutherans, and
Methodists have declined. But religious
affiliation data are often inconsistent
because of the different ways
the data were collected and analyzed:
Religious affiliation for military personnel
is recorded regularly by the
Department of Defense, while religious
data for civilians is obtained
from surveys such as the results from
the 2002 General Social Survey (GSS)
conducted by the National Opinion
Research Center reported in Table 5.
About one-quarter of the American
population considers itself to be
Roman Catholic, according to the
GSS survey. Catholics are slightly
underrepresented in the armed
forces, as are almost all other traditional
religions.
There have been indications of
increasing religious diversity in the
armed forces, including growing
numbers of Muslims.35 However,
Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims are
underrepresented in the military relative
to their share of the civilian
population. The number of American
military personnel who claimed to be
atheists or to have no religion was
slightly higher than the GSS estimate
for civilians ages 20 to 39, the age
range for about 80 percent of military
personnel. About 11 percent of military
personnel did not provide religious
affiliation data or claimed affiliation
with other religions, almost
four times as high as the GSS data for
the 20-to-39-year-olds. Other recent
surveys also have reported greater
identification with no religion or
other nontraditional religions than
the GSS, but results vary greatly
depending on how data are collected.
Recent data suggest that military personnel
generally have a lower affiliation
with mainstream religious
groups than the general population."

Jews Served in Greater Numbers in World War II

Although the above article indicates that Jews currently serve in the military in numbers smaller than their general share of the American population, they appear to have served in greater numbers in World War II.

A Jewish publication, JewishJournal.com, states that Jews served in World War II in greater numbers than their portion of the general population. The article says:

"Approximately 550,000 Jewish Americans served in the armed forces during World War II, about 4.23 percent of the total number of troops. Both Roosevelt and General Douglas MacArthur praised their bravery specifically. During the war, 52,000 Jewish soldiers received an award or decoration of some kind and 11,000 were killed."

Another article says:

"When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States declared war on Japan and Germany, American Jewish men and women responded to their country's call for the armed forces. More than 550,000 served in the Armed Forces of the United States during World War II. About 11,000 were killed and more than 40,000 were wounded. There were three recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, 157 received the Distinguished Service Medal and Crosses, which included Navy Crosses, and 1,600 were awarded the Silver Star. About 50,242 other decorations. citations and awards were given to Jewish heroes for a total of 52,000 decorations.

"Jews were 3.3 percent of the total American population but they were 4.23 percent of the Armed Forces. About 60 percent of all Jewish physicians in the United States under 45 years of age were in service uniforms."

From a JTA article about Jewish veterans buried in Arlington Cemetery:

"Poch, a conference planner who has made it his hobby -- and mission -- to chronicle the cemetery's Jews, has cataloged the location and history of the 2,500 Jewish dead buried at Arlington.
"Poch, who twice crisscrossed the cemetery's 250,000 graves looking for Jewish veterans, frequently returns to the cemetery with interested Jewish tourists.
"For Poch, who performed two years of non-active, stateside duty during the 1960s, this has become an imperative.
"'There's a myth that Jews don't fight and don't serve,' he said during a recent visit to the cemetery.
"'I want to know who these people were,' he said, pointing to one of many graves he has catalogued."

It's not scientific,but 2,500 Jewish graves of 250,000 total Arlington graves is only 1%, half of the 2% of the population that is Jewish.

However, a page on the Arlington Cemetery web site says there are 1996 Jewish veterans buried there; the other 500 or so are apparently family members of veterans. More than 300,000 people are buried at Arlington, according to the web site. Again, it looks like less than the 2% of the general population.

Another Jewish web site lists 1,633 Jewish veterans of World War II buried in American cemeteries overseas run by the American Battle Monuments Commission, and 519 veterans of World War I. The Commission says its cemeteries hold about 125,000 total war dead. This would be almost the 2% general Jewish population (about 1.7% of graves versus about 2.2% of population).