President Eisenhower’s Commission on Veterans’ Pensions–the Bradley Commission—voiced concern in 1956 that if exclusive emphasis was placed on granting generous post-service benefits to prospective soldiers, then military service would become a mere negotiated economic relationship between the citizen and the state. On the eve of transitioning to the All-Volunteer Force nearly a decade later, the New York Times expressed a similar fear—that using postwar benefits as allurements for recruits shattered the concept of democratic civic virtue and civic duty embodied in military service. If unchecked, they feared the practice would create a “permanent privileged class of veterans, a postwar mercenary class uncongenial to the national heritage” that would “solidify…the concept of veteran versus citizen.”
Over the space of forty-two years, the last fourteen of which the United States has spent sending those military recruits to war, such fears have not materialized. Perhaps surprisingly, much the opposite has occurred. The Pew Research Center’s 2011 survey of the military, “War and Sacrifice in the Post-9/11 Era”, found that 58 percent of post 9/11 veterans say that the terrorist attacks were an important reason why they volunteered. In the “After the Wars: Survey of Iraq and Afghanistan Active Duty Soldiers and Veterans” conducted in 2013 by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family foundation, 89 percent of respondents declared that if they had the chance to make the decision again, they would choose to join the military, even considering everything they now knew about military service. And the comprehensive 2014 Annual Military Family Lifestyle Survey released by Blue Star Families showed 91 percent of its respondents believed in the importance of serving in the military or other national service.
