CHAPTER 5

 

Public Opinion, Military Justice,
and the Fight against Terrorism
Overseas

Benjamin Wittes and Cody Poplin

Of late, public opinion concerning America’s wars—and its confrontation with terrorists overseas—has been volatile and internally conflicted. Americans want to see tough action against our enemies, but we are also suspicious that such action is not doing any good and pessimistic about the prospects for success of military and covert endeavors. The military is by far the most trusted institution in American life, and Americans clearly believe in giving the troops a relatively free hand. But that feeling coexists with real concerns that—across a range of areas—our policies have not made us secure, despite what leaders of the military may say.

The result is solid, sometimes overwhelming, public support for actions such as drone strikes,[1] a new authorization for the use of force against ISIS,[2] detentions at Guantanamo Bay,[3] harsh interrogation methods,[4] surveillance of public spaces,[5] and military trials.[6] But at the same time, even as 63 percent of Americans approve of the campaign against ISIS, 58 percent say the campaign is not going well.[7] More than 60 percent say we are not prepared for a major cyber attack, a problem more than 90 percent of those polled describe as at least somewhat “serious.”[8] And while 72 percent of respondents in one poll say the government is doing “well” in reducing the threat of terrorism, 64 percent of Americans are nonetheless at least somewhat worried that another terrorist attack will take place soon inside the United States. What is more, those saying our counterterrorism policies do not go far enough outpoll those saying they go too far by double digits.[9]

Public opinion on these matters also fluctuates enormously in response to events, the most recent of which tends to play an outsized role in conditioning attitudes. For example, while today people worry that government counterterrorism policies are not aggressive enough, before ISIS began beheading people, when the media were more focused on the Edward Snowden revelations, the public believed by an even wider margin that they went too far.[10] And this wavering of confidence, in turn, followed a long period in which the public was enthusiastic about even relatively intrusive surveillance policies. More generally, public hawkishness increased substantially after ISIS began its campaign of wanton violence; whereas people were previously war weary and disinclined to favor renewed involvement in the Middle East, ISIS’s barbarism left Americans angry and favoring military action.[11]

A number of factors contribute to both the volatility and the conflicting feelings evident in public opinion data about military and intelligence activities. One is that there is a causal relationship between people’s worry about terrorism and their support for strong measures against it; that is, the pessimism people feel about policy outcomes is causing the support for strong action. People are worried about terrorist attacks, so they want to see action to reduce the likelihood of their taking place.

At the same time, the vacillation and contradictions also reflect a competing tension in public attitudes, as the perceived need to do something about threats clashes with a certain fatalism and war weariness born of years of conflict that has not ended with decisive victory and whose results have fallen well short of the promises made by war proponents.

Another related factor is the genuine intractability of the long-term, difficult problems we employ military and covert tools to address. It just is not clear with respect to these problems what the appropriate or optimal use of these tools looks like, so mixed feelings are often a sign of good thinking.

Finally, there is the issue of what, at any given moment, is the most salient threat in the public’s mind. The Snowden revelations came long after the fear associated with 9/11 had faded, so people looked at aggressive government surveillance programs and saw them as a threat. By contrast, after ISIS reared its head, people’s sense of the threat from government receded as they looked to the military to conduct operations against a force of particular barbarity.

All of these factors contribute to the apparently split personality of Americans with respect to their attitudes about confronting overseas terrorists. Yet the data collected for this project suggests another factor: one that is less discussed but may lie beneath the inconstant and inconsistent attitudes towards military tools for counterterrorism. Specifically, the data suggest both that Americans think they know a great deal more than they actually do about the military and that the public expects wildly inconsistent things from it in general. More particularly, the public has a weak understanding of matters related to justice, crime, and law as these things pertain to the military’s chain of command and unique institutional structures. The result, we suggest in the discussion that follows, is that the public is ill positioned to develop solid, stable, or even internally consistent views of how the military and the intelligence community might reasonably be used in a complex conflict that integrates elements of traditional warfare with elements we traditionally associate more with law enforcement and justice.

A Trusted but Isolated Military

Americans express a high degree of confidence in the military. It is the only government institution with a consistently positive approval rating; a full 78 percent of Americans expressed confidence in the military in a June 2011 Gallup poll, for example.[12] Americans also believe (64 percent) that members of the military have a “great deal of respect for civilian society” (CM2T 50).[13]

But this high regard translates only oddly into trust as most people would understand the term. A majority (54 percent) of poll respondents, for example, also believe that the picture this very trusted organization is giving the American public about the war in Afghanistan is inaccurate (CM1T 37). Americans also believe (61 percent), somewhat paradoxically, that our “lack of trust in uniformed leaders of the military hurts effectiveness” (CM2T 56). In other words, more Americans than not seem to think that their own attitudes hurt military effectiveness. Perhaps most dramatically, only 8 percent of Americans believe that modern wars are winnable and that the military is winning them (CM1T 45). So while people trust the military and 85 percent “have confidence in the ability of our military to perform well in wartime” (CM2T 50), people also think the military is inflating its successes and that its fundamental project is not accomplishable. It’s a strange kind of trust.

And perhaps oddly, even as they express it, American civilians are also more isolated from the military than ever before. No longer do America’s wars consume society in general. The majority of Americans will never spend a great deal of time with a US active duty soldier or a combat veteran of a foreign war. Rather, relatively small segments of society, which increasingly stand apart from the general population, do the lion’s share of fighting America’s wars.

How separate is the military culture? Consider that during the past decade of warfare only about one half of one percent of the US population has been on active military duty at any given time. According to a 2011 Pew poll, some 84 percent of post-9/11 veterans say the public does not understand the problems faced by those in the military or their families. The public agrees, though by a less lopsided majority: 71 percent. In that same poll, only a quarter of Americans said they were following the news of the wars closely; half of the public says the wars made little difference in their lives. However, even among those who acknowledge the gap in who has carried the burden of war, only 26 percent describe it as unfair. Seven in ten consider it “just part of being in the military.”[14]

Meanwhile, only 19 percent of Americans say that they themselves or a member of their immediate families have served in the military since 1991 (CM2T 1). When the same question was asked about military service after September 11, 2001, only 16 percent of Americans said that either they or a close member of their family had served. Of those with college degrees, the number was even smaller, a mere 12 percent (CM2T 2).

A 2011 Pew poll found that “veterans are more than twice as likely as members of the general public to say they have a son or daughter who has served (21 percent versus 9 percent),[15] leading Amy Schafer of the Council on Foreign Relations to wonder whether America is currently creating its own “warrior caste.”[16] As a nation, America is at war. As a people, Americans are not.

Elsewhere, we find even more evidence of the marginalization of America’s military forces from its civilian life. When asked if they currently worked with anyone who was in the active-duty military, only 8 percent of Americans say yes (CM2T 3). A mere 36 percent work with a veteran (CM2T 4). In fact, American society is so estranged from its warfighters that in the last year, only half of Americans have even socialized with a service member or their spouse on a single occasion (CM2T 8).

Author Rebecca Frankel told James Fallows of the Atlantic that part of the reason she based her book War Dogs on the dog-and-handler teams in the US armed forces is that dogs are one of the few commonalities left between America’s troops and the public.[17] In the introduction of her book, she writes, “When we cannot make that human connection over war, when we cannot empathize or imagine the far-off world of a combat zone . . . these military working dogs are a bridge over the divide.”[18] “You don’t have to walk a mile down a bomb-laden road in Kandahar to know the pull of devotion of a dog, or the sadness you feel when it becomes clear that the four-legged member of your family is fading and it is time to say goodbye,” she concludes.[19]

That may be true, but it is a remarkable statement that our closest affiliation with modern combat—with its arcane missions in mysterious places—is found in our relationship with our pets. It should be troubling that someone who spent years covering America’s modern wars on the front lines believes that soldier and civilian are most closely aligned in their devotion, not necessarily to one another, but to their four-legged friends.

Americans express concern about the effects of an isolated military, even if they do not clearly recognize that we have one. When asked whether the military is isolated from American society, respondents are split, with 33 percent answering yes, and a plurality of 46 percent saying no (21 percent were unsure) (CM2T 23). When asked whether a “military that is isolated from American society [is] a good thing or a bad thing,” 60 percent say that it is bad (CM2T 24).

Note that civilian-military isolation is largely a one-way street. Members of the military interact all the time with civilian society, after all. Most grew up in it and will return to civilian life after a spell in the military. Members of the armed services are not unfamiliar with the larger society’s institutions of justice, education, and law. Rather, the estrangement is an alienation of civilians from military life—one that creates an asymmetric mutual understanding between the military and civilian spheres.

But what does this estrangement mean for the ability of the citizenry to form opinions about military policy? And what does it mean, in particular, for those situations in which the public has to assess military institutions against the norms of civilian justice systems?

What Americans Think They Know
and What They Do Know

One important factor here is that Americans do not appreciate the degree of their isolation from the military. When asked how familiar they are with the country’s armed forces, 70 percent say they are either very familiar or somewhat familiar (CM1T 39). This perceived familiarity makes a certain amount of sense, even if it is—as the data below ­suggest—something of a delusion. The military is a pervasive presence in our culture. We see it represented daily on the news and in movies, even on racecar decals. We see “support the troops” banners on minivans. Every politician pays homage. The military is also a giant instrument of American foreign policy, always present in our political consciousness.

In fact, however, American civilian ignorance about the armed forces is far more striking than is the public’s knowledge. Americans do not know how big the services are or how much they cost; they do not know whether troops are well paid; they are unsure about who can serve and why. And the problem goes beyond mere facts. Americans demand divergent, at times mutually inconsistent, things of the armed forces, asking it to be all things, at all times, to all people. Here are a few examples. When asked how many people are currently serving in all five branches of the US military, the public overestimates the size by a factor of five: the average answer was 6.5 million (CM1T 58), whereas the United States has only 1.4 million active duty soldiers.[20] When asked how many people were currently serving in the U.S. Army, in particular, the mean answer was 1.9 million (CM1T 56), whereas the actual number of soldiers in the army, according to the Pentagon, is just under 550,000.[21] When the same question was asked about the number of people currently serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, Americans misjudged again by a factor of six, estimating the force of under 200,000 active duty Marines to be 1.2 million (CM1T 57).[22] Things only get worse when it comes to the defense budget, where one can see the public’s wildly mixed messages concerning the military. Roughly 75 percent of respondents want to keep funding at current levels or see cuts (CM1T 4). At the same time, however, 91 percent of respondents want to either keep military pay the same or see it raised (CM1T 10).

The public also believes service members are underpaid: only 26 percent believe that an officer’s military pay is higher than what he or she would make as a civilian (CM1T 49). And 45 percent believe that civilian pay is higher than military pay for enlisted members. Perhaps, as a result of this perceived imbalance, 51 percent of Americans think that enlisted service members are paid too little (CM1T 26). Only 11 percent think that military pay is higher than comparable civilian pay (CM1T 50). Overall, 42 percent believe that civilian pay is higher than military pay for similar jobs, while only 13 percent said the opposite (CM1T 51).

Yet the public, as things turn out, has all this backwards. The Pentagon’s last quadrennial review of military compensation, released in 2012, found that the average regular military compensation for enlisted personnel in 2009 was $50,747 and for officers it was $94,735. According to the review’s findings, those amounts correspond to about the 90th percentile of wages for enlisted equivalent civilians and to about the 83rd percentile of wages for officer equivalent civilians’ wages,[23] suggesting that enlisting in the military means you will make more than four-fifths of your peers. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found that from 2001 to 2011, the cost of military pay and benefits per person increased by 46 percent, excluding war funding and adjusting for inflation.[24] In the last decade, regular pay and compensation has been the fastest growing part of the military budget.

And while Americans say they want to see a smaller defense budget while wanting to increase service member compensation, they do not seem to actually want to cut anywhere else either. Only 18 percent want cuts in the operations and training budget (CM1T 11); only 34 percent would like the military construction budget to shrink (CM1T 12); a mere 32 percent want less spent on weapons procurement (CM1T 13); and fewer than 40 percent want to see a reduction in the war operations budget (CM1T 14).

The problem is even more acute with respect to the intelligence community, which is even more isolated—intentionally so—than is the military from the country’s normal life. One recent poll found that 71 percent of respondents either think the National Security Agency, which does signals intelligence, conducts operations to capture or kill foreign terrorists or are not sure whether it does. A whopping 77 percent of people believe or are not sure whether the NSA interrogates detainees.[25]

It is surely unfair to expect the public to have any kind of detailed understanding of the defense budget or the size of the military, much less of signals intelligence programs. The public, after all, famously believes that foreign aid is a big part of US budget expenditures. But it is not too much, we believe, to expect that a public that relies on the military as a major instrument of foreign policy might be able to guess its size within the right order of magnitude. And it is not too much to expect that people might sense a tension between cutting military spending and raising military salaries or might have some even vague sense of what the NSA does and does not do.

Contradictory Attitudes and Expectations

The problem is not limited to basic ignorance. Americans seem to hold at times contradictory views on the most basic questions of military policy. For example, 56 percent of those polled agree that “military force should be used only in pursuit of the goal of total victory” (only 24 percent disagreed) (CM2T 79). Similarly, 59 percent say they think the use of force “should be applied quickly and massively” rather than through a gradual escalation (only 15 percent disagreed) (CM2T 79). At the same, however, nearly 70 percent of Americans view increasing the use of drones as a good thing, though drone strikes are the ultimate pin-prick use of force.[26] More generally, Americans have not favored the use of overwhelming force in our re-engagement in Iraq, nor have Americans opposed the gradual drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan.

The inconsistent attitudes are particularly stark when the public is asked about matters related to the military’s unique institutional arrangements that have no analogues in civilian life. For example, 86 percent agree that “an effective military depends on a very structured organization and a clear chain of command” (CM2T 67). But, when we dig deeper, a majority (52 percent) says that it would be appropriate for an officer to appeal an order he or she disagrees with to a higher authority, “even if it means leaping the chain of command and/or going over the head of the leader making the request” (CM2T 86). And while people want gay soldiers to be able to serve openly in the military (66 percent) (CM1T 30), a majority also wants servicemen to be able to object to their service even if it means bringing discredit on the military (57 percent) (CM2T 43). That is a hard circle to square.

It is particularly hard to square in the justice arena, where civilian norms are extremely strong and normally do not have to be reconciled with a legal culture that mandates taking orders from other people. By contrast, in the military, not showing up to work can be a crime,[27] as can just about anything that constitutes conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman or erodes military discipline.[28] To a certain degree, Americans are comfortable with the military’s difference in this respect, with 52 percent of respondents saying that for the military to do its job, it must have different standards from the rest of society (CM1T 43). The trouble is that if you ask about any specific differential standard, Americans turn out to be pretty libertarian in their views of how service members ought to be treated when they defy their superiors.

For example, as we noted above, only 23 percent believe service members should go to jail for opposing women or homosexuals serving with them (CM2T 43). Only 12 percent believe they should go to jail for expressing upsetting ideas in public, even if those ideas bring discredit upon the country (CM2T 42). Fewer than half of respondents (40 percent) think it inappropriate for an officer to refuse a lawful order, even if that refusal would mean facing a court-martial (CM2T 85). A similar number believe that a military person should be imprisoned for “anything that causes an international incident” (CM2T 41). And around half of Americans say that a service member should not go to jail for acts “offending the sensibilities of other cultures” such as burning the Koran (CM2T 40). Our point is not that a soldier should, in fact, go to jail for any of these things—the merits of which may differ a lot depending on what precisely the service member did and on the context in which he did it. Our point, rather, is that poll respondents are reflexively privileging First Amendment values over military discipline and assuming that service members should receive the same rights as civilians.

And, in fact, that is more or less what people believe: 75 percent of respondents say they believe that an American service member should go to jail for “anything that they would be punished for as civilians.” (CM2T 44). In other words, while acknowledging in response to direct questions that the military needs rules of its own that might not fly in civilian life—rules that limit free speech and individual ­autonomy—Americans are not that comfortable with such rules in practice and want soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines to be accountable to rules similar to those that govern the larger society.

You can see this tension clearly in the recent controversies over sexual assault in the military. The public takes this problem seriously. Eighty-one percent of Americans view sexual assault in the military as an extremely or very important issue, according to a June 2013 Pew poll.[29] About four in ten (38 percent) respondents say the issue is so serious that it is a sufficient reason by itself to dissuade a friend or daughter from joining the military at all. Despite widespread admiration for the American military, in other words, 40 percent of Americans would tell their daughters to stay away from it.

At the same time, the poll finds that the public is evenly divided over whether the better way to handle the problem is for Congress to make changes in military laws (45 percent) or for military leaders to address the problem internally (44 percent).

This tension is not new. The military justice system has migrated towards the civilian justice system in a lot of ways since World War II in response to exactly this instinct on the part of the public. But there is a limit to how far this trend can go without impairing military performance. Military life is profoundly different from civilian life, after all, and the apparent public expectation that members of the military should be punished only for activities forbidden to civilians ignores the fact that members of the military have lawful powers that civilians do not have (up to and including the use of offensive lethal force) and, on account of those powers, live under restraints it would be grossly improper to impose on members of the public.

What Does It All Mean and What Is to Be Done?

How much do public ignorance and mixed messages about the military really matter? The public, after all, has all kinds of crazy ideas about how its government works, and it weighs a great many factors in public policy differently from the way elites or experts in those areas do. Just as it demands greater salaries for military members while also wanting to see defense cuts, for example, it also wants to cut the larger federal budget without touching entitlement programs. Public ignorance and mutually inconsistent policy demands are more rule than exception.

That said, they have consequences in this area, as they certainly do in others, too. For one thing, the deep trust in the military and attraction to tough-minded, military-oriented solutions, when combined with a pessimism about outcomes, may make the public quick to support wars that it is then almost as quick to sour upon.

A public-opinion environment in which Americans know little about the military generally while thinking of themselves as knowing a lot, in which they offer conflicting attitudes concerning what they expect of it, and in which they offer confused attitudes regarding how distinct its justice system and norms should be does not offer a fertile ground on which to grow a solid, stable understanding of the military’s role in bringing terrorists to justice. It is not much of a surprise that public attitudes are fickle in the face of policy disappointments given this background. A public that knows so little about the military while putting great faith in it will tend to be overambitious about what it can accomplish and then overly disappointed at outcomes that fall short of the ideal. A public that wants to see geopolitical problems obliterated with lightning uses of overwhelming force will tend to have little patience for the sort of long slog of nation building and counterinsurgency that characterizes a great deal of modern, asymmetric warfare.

This has obvious national security implications. The combination of ignorance and admiration sustains a public willingness to rush into conflicts and then pressure politicians to end them quickly. This involves many risks, chief among them is the threat that our great confidence will lead the United States unquestioningly into unwinnable wars. In recent years, we have also seen the flip side of this coin—drawdowns and withdrawals before local forces[30] are able to consolidate gains in the theater of battle.[31] This can ultimately mean that much of what we accomplish in counterterrorism or counterinsurgency is wasted effort.

More subtly, a public attracted to military solutions to problems of a hybrid nature—problems with military, intelligence, and criminal justice elements—yet profoundly ignorant of the military’s justice system and capabilities as an instrument of justice will tend to be unusually susceptible to symbolism.

Despite their underperformance relative to institutions of civilian justice for trying terrorists, for example, the public prefers military commissions to terrorism trials in civilian courts.[32] The public favors maintaining Guantanamo Bay. The public loves drone strikes. Multiple polls show that the public favors the use of torture.[33] What these seemingly disparate findings have in common is that they all reveal an attraction to perceived wartime toughness, to the symbolic language of warfare, in abstraction from the question of how effective the measures really are. These tactics are, in fact, of very different actual value. The public attraction to measures framed as instrumentalities of warfare will sometimes—as in the case of drone strikes—coincide with measures of enormous strategic and tactical value. In some instances, however, they will not. And the political pressures public ignorance will generate will take discipline on the part of policymakers to resist.

The problem of public ignorance of the military and its culture is a tough one to address, because it stems directly from positive developments. Unless we are going to reinstitute a draft, we have to accept that the American people as a whole will be more removed from their defenders. Fewer members of the population are going to war; our military is generally successful; automation and technological developments have separated civilians and warfighters from the battlefield; these are good things that most Americans are not willing to give back in order to have deeper civilian-military ties.

Yet the degree of public ignorance has an important process message for policymakers, who often spend very little time explaining military and defense-policy issues to the public: America needs more messy debates about national security policy. How many elections in 2014 were about war and peace or surveillance and privacy? Policymakers cannot expect the public to “get it” intuitively. Issues of complex military policy require sustained conversations with the public, sustained education and messaging and debate, and, critically, this messaging cannot assume a real public grounding in the underlying institutional frameworks for defense and security policy. These have to be taught and retaught and retaught again. To fail to do so is to invite failure elsewhere—when it really counts.

Notes

1. Associated Press-GFK, “AP-GFK Poll: A Survey of the American General Population,” April 2015, http://ap-gfkpoll.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/AP-GfK_Poll_April_2015_Topline_drones.pdf; New York Times/CBS News, “Americans’ Views on the Issues,” Poll, May 31–June 4, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/06/us/new-york-times-cbs-news-poll-june-2013.html?_r=0; NBC News/Wall Street Journal, Survey, May 30–June 2, 2013, http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/poll06052013.pdf; Alyssa Brown and Frank Newport, “In U.S., 65% Support Drone Attacks on Terrorists Abroad,” Poll, March 20–21, 2013, Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/161474/support-drone-attacks-terrorists-abroad.aspx.

2. Alexandra Jaffe, “Poll: Most Disapprove of Obama Handling of ISIS,” February 17, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/16/politics/cnn-poll-isis-obama-approval/; CNN/ORC International, Poll, February 12–15, 2015, http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2015/images/02/16/isis.poll.pdf; Marist Poll, “Obama’s Request for Military Action against ISIS Receives Majority Support . . . Many Americans Say Boots on the Ground Are Needed,” February 12, 2015, http://maristpoll.marist.edu/212-obamas-request-for-military-action-against-isis-receives-majority-supportmany-americans-say-boots-on-the-ground-are-needed.

3. Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies, “NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey,” June 11–15, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/wsjnbc06182014.pdf; Sarah Dutton et al., “Americans’ View of the Economy Most Positive in Eight Years,” CBS News, January 14, 2015, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-view-of-the-economy-most-positive-in-eight-years.

4. Sarah Dutton et al., “Most Americans Consider Waterboarding to Be Torture: Poll,” CBS News, December 15, 2014, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/torture-and-reaction-to-the-senate-intelligence-report/; Pew Research Center, “Terrorism Worries Little Changed; Most Give Government Good Marks for Reducing Threat,” January 12, 2015, http://www.people-press.org/2015/01/12/terrorism-worries-little-changed-most-give-government-good-marks-for-reducing-threat/; Washington Post-ABC News, Poll, December 11–14, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-december-11-14-2014/1516.

5. CNN, “CNN/Time Poll: Cut Back Civil Liberties to Fight Terror?” May 1, 2013, http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/01/cnntime-poll-cutback-civil-liberties-to-fight-terror; CNN/ Time/ ORC, Poll, April 30, 2013, http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2013/images/05/01/top5.pdf.

6. Quinnipiac University, “Hillary Clinton Owns 2016 Dem Nomination, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Support for Immigration Reform Drops,” May 2, 2013, http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=1891.

7. Pew Research Center, “Growing Support for Campaign against ISIS—and Possible Use of U.S. Ground Troops,” February 24, 2015, http://www.people-press.org/2015/02/24/growing-support-for-campaign-against-isis-and-possible-use-of-u-s-ground-troops.

8. Dutton, “Americans’ View of the Economy.”

9. Pew Research Center, “Terrorism Worries Little Changed.”

10. Quinnipiac University, “New Jersey Gov. Christie Is Hottest Politician in U.S., Quinnipiac University National Thermometer Finds; Pope Has Biggest Impact on Our Lives,” January 4–7, 2014, http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=1994.

11. A Quinnipiac University poll in June 2014 that asked “Do you think it is in the national interest of the United States to be involved in the conflict in Iraq?” found that 39 percent said yes while only 29 percent supported sending ground troops to Iraq. Following the beheading of James Foley and other Americans, a February 2015 CBS poll found that 65 percent of Americans thought ISIS was a “major threat” to US security and 57 percent favored sending ground troops to Iraq. Quinnipiac University, “Iraq—Getting In Was Wrong; Getting Out Was Right, U.S. Voters Tell Quinnipiac University National Poll; 92 Percent Back Background Checks for All Gun Buys,” June 24–30, 2014, http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2057; Sarah Dutton et al., “Do Americans Want to Send Ground Troops to Fight ISIS,” CBS News, Feb. 19, 2015, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/do-americans-want-to-send-ground-troops-to-fight-isis.

12. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Americans Most Confident in Military, Least in Congress,” Poll, June 23, 2011, Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/148163/Americans-Confident-Military-Least-Congress.aspx?utm_source=military&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=tiles.

13. References to the YouGov data by question number appear in parentheses throughout this essay with the abbreviations CM1T and CM2T indicating the 2013 and 2014 surveys, respectively. The complete results are available at http://www.hoover.org/warriors-and-citizens-crosstabs-1 (CM1T) and http://www.hoover.org/warriors-and-citizens-crosstabs-2 (CM2T).

14. Pew Research Center, “The Military-Civilian Gap: War and Sacrifice in the Post-9/11 Era,” October 5, 2011, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2011/10/veterans-report.pdf.

15. Ibid.

16. Amy Schafer, “Does America Have a Warrior Caste?” Defense in Depth, Council on Foreign Relations, January 22, 2015, http://blogs.cfr.org/davidson/2015/01/22/does-america-have-a-warrior-caste.

17. James Fallows, “The Tragedy of the American Military,” Atlantic, January/February 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516.

18. Rebecca Frankel, War Dogs: Tales of Canine Heroism, History, and Love, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 5.

19. Ibid.

20. U.S. Dept. of Defense, “2012 Demographics Profile of the Military Community,” p. iii, http://www.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2012_Demographics_Report.pdf.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. James E. Grefer, David Gregory, and Erin M. Rebhan, “Military and Civilian Compensation: How Do They Compare,” The Eleventh Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, 2011, p. 4, http://militarypay.defense.gov/Portals/107/Documents/Reports/SR04_Chapter_1.pdf.

24. Todd Harrison, “Rebalancing Military Compensation: An Evidence-based Approach,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2012, p. 2, http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2012/07/rebalancing-military-compensation-an-evidence-based-approach.

25. Amy Zegart, “Real Spies, Fake Spies, NSA, and More: What My 2012 and 2013 National Polls Reveal,” Lawfare, November 7, 2013, http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/11/real-spies-fake-spies-nsa-and-more-what-my-2012-and-2013-national-polls-reveal.

26. Pew Research Center, “Military-Civilian Gap.”

27. U.S. Code, title 10, sec. 886, art. 86, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/886.

28. U.S. Code, title 10, sec. 933, art. 133, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/933; U.S. Code, title 10, sec. 933, art. 134, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/934.

29. Pew Research Center, “Sexual Assault in the Military Widely Seen as Important Issue, but No Agreement on Solution,” June 12, 2013, http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/12/sexual-assault-in-the-military-widely-seen-as-important-issue-but-no-agreement-on-solution.

30. Janine Davidson and Emerson Brooking, “In Afghanistan, Path to Lasting Success Will Also Be the Hardest,” Defense in Depth, Council on Foreign Relations, April 7, 2014, http://blogs.cfr.org/davidson/2014/04/07/in-afghanistan-path-to-lasting-success-will-also-be-the-hardest.

31. Karen DeYoung Ernesto and Greg Miller, “Afghanistan Gains Will Be Lost Quickly after Drawdown, U.S. Intelligence Estimate Warns,” Washington Post, December 28, 2013.

32. Quinnipiac University, “Hillary Clinton.”

33. Dutton, “Most Americans Consider Waterboarding Torture”; Pew Research Center, “Terrorism Worries Little Changed”; Washington Post-ABC News Poll.