James Carey was a junior officer on a ship in the South Pacific during the Vietnam War when he was appointed one of the least envious military roles at sea: voting assistance officer. The job — a part-time one, of course — came with a massive three-ring binder of the byzantine rules and regulations for voting absentee in the 50 states, six territories, and thousands of counties back home. “This was before e-mail,” Carey said, lest we forget that such a time ever existed. “That would mean if you’re on a ship, and you’re trying to register to vote, or to get more information on ... Read More
Giving Forgotten Veterans a Dignified Departure
November 10, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The first time Bob Day came across Arthur Uffman, the World War II veteran had long been cremated, his ashes forgotten on a shelf at an Arizona mortuary. For Day, who served in Vietnam, allowing the veteran’s remains to languish any longer would have been akin to abandoning a fellow soldier stricken in combat. So the point man in Arizona for the Missing in America Project set out to give Uffman a proper sendoff. In April, a hearse carried Uffman’s ashes in a golden metal urn to his final destination: a veterans’ cemetery where he and 17 other long-neglected service members, most ... Read More
PBS to Show ‘Where Soldiers Come From’
November 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The upper peninsula of Michigan is a sparsely populated place with its own sense of identity — something it has in common with Afghanistan. The young men at the center of the moving documentary Where Soldiers Come From — all proud UP natives — never discuss this duality, but it helps explain the perceptiveness and compassion they display when their National Guard unit is deployed to fight in America’s longest-running war. When Dominic Fredianelli’s team finds weapons on an Afghan landowner’s property, and the man is taken away in handcuffs, Dom, a promising artist from Hancock, ... Read More
Public Feels Military’s Pain But Won’t Share It
October 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Americans for generations have fretted over the relationship between the military and civilian society, over how the one institution fits within the other, how the broader population receives and perceives its soldiers. But as the U.S. approaches the 10th anniversary of the launch of the war in Afghanistan this week, this much is novel: The longest war in U.S. history is being fought by the smallest percentage of its population. The resulting implications — which Jeff Shear touched on for Miller-McCune.com earlier this year — are unsettling. As these wars have moved off of the front ... Read More
No Way Out: Exiting Afghanistan and Iraq
October 3, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
On Oct. 7, 2001, U.S. forces launched an offensive in Afghanistan with the aim of dismantling the al-Qaeda terror network and driving the radical Islamist Taliban government from power. That was a decade ago, and the war goes on. Today, the U.S. finds itself facing a clear but intractable question: How do we end wars? As the “long wars” of Afghanistan and Iraq rumble on, the answer becomes more elusive and more vague. In an August 2010 speech, President Obama described how the world had entered a new era, “an age without surrender ceremonies.” Perhaps Obama remembered that ... Read More
Mr. Y: Best Military Strategy Starts at Home
September 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Weak nation, strong military? Sounds like a description of a third-world country, not the United States of America. But that is what the current overheated debate in Washington amounts to, according to two of the Pentagon's top strategists. "In July 2009, Admiral Mike Mullen asked me to look at grand strategy" in order to make sense of global trends, says Navy Capt. Wayne Porter. He is special assistant for strategy, working for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, the president's top military adviser. Instead of focusing on weapons systems or how the military ... Read More
DADT: Researchers Have Been There All Along
September 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Today, the United States military ended its policy of allowing gay troops to serve as long as they didn't publicly identify themselves as gay. The "don't ask, don't tell" policy, enacted 18 years ago during the Clinton administration, was a bridge from the days when being homosexual was an automatic ticket to a dishonorable discharge, to today, where gay soldiers, sailors and airmen can serve openly. Over the years, Miller-McCune has examined the process that led to the repeal of DADT, starting with a 2009 piece that examined the general acceptance — based on polling of both the public ... Read More
An Army of Change
September 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
As U.S. soldiers pull out of Iraq this December, and with 33,000 more scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the fall of 2012, American land forces may find themselves the victims of their own success. The budget deal signed by the president in August promises big cuts in defense dollars, and the burden of leaner budgets is expected to fall on the troops. A key Pentagon review published last year signaled that the future belongs largely to the Navy and the Air Force; Libya seems a proving ground for the use of U.S. air and naval power (combined with that of their NATO peers) fighting to overthrow ... Read More
