Buzzfeed: Inside the Real US Ground War On ISIS
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“On a recent afternoon in Washington, DC, a flat screen TV in the office of Seth Moulton — a Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee who served four tours as a Marine in the Iraq War — greeted visitors with some statistics they had compiled. ‘Fewer than 1 percent of Americans are willing and able to serve,’ it read. ‘Sixteen percent of Americans currently have a parent who served, compared to 40 percent in 1990. Eighteen percent of members of Congress are veterans today, compared to 64 percent in 1984.’
The result, it adds, is ‘a longstanding trend: a growing disconnect between American society and the armed forces that claim to represent it.’
Moulton felt the disconnect when he served in the Iraq War, he said, sitting down for coffee in his office — and he thinks the problem has grown worse for the new US war, in part because the Obama administration has been unwilling to level with the public. ‘And I understand why: this is the president who promised to get us out,’ he said. ‘The president who promised to take us out of Iraq, basically as a condition of his election, has now sent almost 6,000 troops back.’”
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