THOSE WHO SERVE – AT 11:41 A.M. ET:  On this Memorial Day weekend, we reflect on those who serve in the armed forces of the United States.  Retired Marine Colonel Mark F. Cancian, in the Kansas City Star, gives us some poignant facts about service today:

The Memorial Day weekend is a time when we remember the nation's shared sacrifices in war. All told since 1775, more than 1.2 million Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice in our nation's conflicts.

Over the decades, however, the shared element of this sacrifice has waned. Although Americans have been wonderfully supportive of their service members in the recent conflicts, many have also observed that, with few exceptions, the nation's elites - the politically powerful, office and rank-holders, influential, wealthy and highly educated among us - do not typically have their children at risk in today's wars.

And...

But is there is one group among our great nation's leaders and elites whose children are very much at risk. The children of those in the military itself. Many of the generals and admirals who lead our armed forces today have children who are also serving.

Indeed, studies have shown that one of the strongest indicators for whether someone will join the U.S. military today is whether they have a parent who has served. A recent government study found that more than 61 percent of the Marines serving in Iraq in 2004 had at least one parent who was or had been in the military. I saw this vividly myself during my last tour in Iraq. Half of the senior officers on our command staff had children that were in the military, many of them deployed to combat at the same time as their parent.

Military service has become a family tradition and collectively these families have formed a small "military tribe" within our broader society.

And...

I hope that on this Memorial Day we can for a moment think about our military tribe. Families that at their core are not much different from other American families, the nation entrusts them with its safety and security and its future as a free people. They comprise less than 1 percent of our citizenry but bear disproportionately the burden of sacrifice.

Very well said. 

When I was much younger, it was expected that most young men would serve at least some time in the military.  We were still under the influence of the great World War II generation.  We had learned the lessons of that war, especially the lesson of unpreparedness.  But since the 1960s, and especially since the end of the draft in 1973, most Americans have grown more and more distant from direct participation in national defense.  Today, only a small number of families send someone to military service.  I'll bet that most Americans don't know a soldier, or even a soldier's family.  It is an unhealthy situation.

We are seeing small, but encouraging, signs of change.  Three Ivy League colleges – Harvard, Yale, and Columbia – have recently welcomed back ROTC units.  We hope this is the start of a cultural shift, possibly caused by generational change, that will bring Americans closer to those who defend them. 

May 29, 2011