The game clock ticked to zero in Corvallis, and I cheered along with the rest of the Duck fans around the world. I excitedly jumped around my office humming the Mighty Oregon theme, reveling in our collective victory over the Beavers and the berth we were guaranteed in the National Championship game.
Sound familiar? I shared that moment with you on Dec. 4. The only difference is that I was 11.5 time zones away from Oregon, hunched over a laptop screen in my office in Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan, refreshing an ESPN GameCast window to get game updates.
As we look forward to our exciting appearance against Auburn, I urge you to remember those who are away from home and serving around the world. But more importantly, I urge you to consider service yourself. The stigma is that joining the military has become the vestige of the conservative, ignorant, poor or unfortunate. There is a little truth to that. The fact is that the United States military is becoming increasingly unrepresentative of the democratic society that has it sworn to defend, and it is because of that the military needs you more than ever. The less representative a military is of its civilian populace, the easier it is for politicians to use the military on a whim; fewer families affected by deployments means less political capital necessary to mobilize our forces. Combined with an increasing sense of elitism in the military over civilians, this only widens the disconnect between the two.
Furthermore, the Department of Defense system has completely run awry, and you, as a taxpayer, are completely in the dark. It ranges from the untold waste and misuse of government assets and supplies to the exorbitant amounts of money that private contractors are paid to provide food, laundry, garbage and bathroom services on forward operating bases.
None of this can be conveyed effectively in news stories or photos. It only becomes real when witnessed firsthand. And in order to keep our government honest, you need to know where your tax dollars are going and what your military is being used for.
The only way to make our service meaningful is for you to join yourself. Only you can restore the military to its ideal: a force that represents the society it defends, and a force that is an employee of the public, not the politicians. Only by you joining, experiencing and then speaking out, can these changes happen.
A military and its society should not be separated as they are with ours. It is not just a profession. It is a core component of any society, and the health of a military’s relationship with its society is a direct indication of the health of the society itself.
You and I share a commonality: We will both be cheering on our Ducks in the historic game on Jan. 10. I urge you to make another one: Join. Stand by me with my brothers and sisters in arms in the interests of justice and the preservation of our societal fabric. See it for yourself and become an informed voter and citizen. Most importantly, join to restore the meaning of public service.
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