Last month, the attack submarine USS Greeneville, with 16 civilians aboard, negligently sank the Japanese fishing boat Ehime Maru, causing the loss of nine lives. That qualified as an accidental tragedy. But in response to that accident, strong voices are urging that organized civilian visits with the U.S. military be discouraged and curtailed. That would be nothing less than a tragic mistake.
Since the end of the military draft in 1973 and the post-Cold War shrinking of the services, a gulf has been growing between the swelling majority who have never worn their country's uniform and the increasingly isolated minority that has. Separation can breed ignorance, and ignorance can too often spawn suspicion between Americans out of and in the military.
On the value of civilian Americans and active duty Americans getting to know each other better, no one is more persuasive than Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, who speaks for his comrades: "We are not a mercenary force. We are fellow citizens."
The admiral's statistics are compelling: In 1984, one out of two fathers of an 18-year-old son had served in the military; by 2005, just one out of six such fathers will have had that experience. Most young Americans are without any personal role model with military experience.
A couple of years ago, I was able to spend eight days with young American warriors. On an Army transport plane, I chatted late at night with a young paratrooper in full battle gear, right up to the moment she calmly walked out the open door and jumped into the North Carolina darkness. After a day and a night with 6,000 sailors on a Navy carrier, we were catapulted off the deck in a plane, which in four seconds went from zero to 200 miles per hour. We met young Marines who staged an amphibious landing and watched the remarkable Coast Guard (with fewer personnel than the New York Police Department) demonstrate a risky rescue at sea. To borrow from the commercial, the week cost me $2,200, but the experience was priceless.
The U.S. military is the most racially integrated sector of our national life. It made me remember that the first time I ever slept next to or took orders from an African-American was at Parris Island, S.C., thanks to the United States Marine Corps.
Values do make a difference. You will meet young American men and women who believe in what they are doing, who believe in and rely upon each other. That's not all bad. Very few of them would probably qualify for admission to Harvard or Stanford Business School. But how many MBAs or CEOs will ever know what it's like to have somebody next to you in a moment of maximum peril who shares your values, who knows his job thoroughly, who will not run when things go bad and who gives a very large damn about your survival?
But make no mistake about it. The U.S. military urgently needs exposure to American civilian values. Politically, the officer corps has become almost monolithically conservative and Republican. More than 30 years ago, Richard Russell, the respected and powerful conservative Democratic senator from Georgia, warned that the end of the draft would inevitably mean the end of the continuous and healthy civilian influence on the military and the end of positive civilian exposure to military life. Richard Russell was right. Americans in and out of the military need to spend much more time together.
American hero John McCain said it best: "Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought, nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war ... only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the cruel and merciless reality of war." But our young men and women in service can teach us all about sacrifice, honor and duty.
Mark Shields is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.
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