Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (25 page)

2
. William L. O’Neill,
A Democracy at War: America’s Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II
(New York, 1993), pp. vii, 434.

3
. Quoted in Keith Eiler,
Mobilizing America: Robert P. Patterson and the War Effort, 1940–1945
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1997), p. 282. Patterson was testifying before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs.

4
. Roosevelt, “Four Freedoms Speech.”

5
. NFL players Jack Lummus and Maurice Britt won the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor. Lummus received the award posthumously.
http://www.profootballhof.com/history/general/war/worldwar2/page2.jsp
, accessed July 3, 2007.

6
. U.S. Military Academy Library, “Graduates—World War II Casualties,” spreadsheet in the author’s possession, received July 28, 2011.

7
. John Hersey,
Into the Valley: Marines at Guadalcanal
(New York, 1943), p. 43.

8
. James Gould Cozzens,
Guard of Honor
(New York, 1948), p. 275.

9
. Richard R. Lingeman,
Don’t You Know There’s a War On?
(New York, 1970), p. 208.

10
. James A. Wechsler, “The Liberal’s Vote and ’48,”
Commentary
, September 1947, pp. 217–18.

11
. The German U-boat campaign threatened to sever the link between the arsenal of democracy and the actual fighting front. Hence the imperative of winning the so-called Battle of the Atlantic, which the Allies succeeded in doing by 1944.

12
. George C. Marshall, “West Point and the Citizen Army” (May 29, 1942), in
Selected Speeches and Statements of General of the Army George C. Marshall
, ed. H. A. DeWeerd (Washington, D.C., 1945), p. 204.

13
. Interview with Marshall, July 25, 1949, quoted in Maurice Matloff,
Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944
(Washington, D.C., 1959), p. 5.

14
. Quoted in Mark A. Stoler,
Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and U.S. Strategy in World War II
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006), pp. 85, 99.

15
. Ibid., p. 115.

16
. Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett,
A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War
(Cambridge, Mass., 2000), p. 558.

17
. H. P. Willmott,
The Second World War in the Far East
(Washington, D.C., 1999), p. 34.

18
. Ibid., p. 128.

19
. Marshall,
Selected Speeches,
p. 36.

20
. Paul A. C. Koistinen,
Arsenal of World War II: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1940–1945
(Lawrence, Kans., 2004), p. 498.

21
. Harold Vatter,
The U.S. Economy in World War II
(New York, 1985), p. 143.

22
. Richard Polenberg,
War and Society: The United States, 1941–1945
(Philadelphia, 1972), p. 94.

23
. Koistinen,
Arsenal,
p. 430.

2. THE GREAT DECOUPLING

1
. Wendell Berry first posed this crucially important question in March 2003. See his “A Citizen’s Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America,”
http://www.quietspaces.com/wendellberry.html
, accessed December 26, 2011.

2
. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, December 9, 1941,
http://www.mhric.org/fdr/chat19.html
.

3
.
The 9/11 Commission Report
(Washington, D.C., 2004), p. 39.

4
.
http://www.budweiser.com/en/world-of-budweiser/mlb/default.aspx#/en/world-of-budweiser/mlb/index
, accessed July 11, 2011.

5
.
http://www.millerhighlife.com/high-life-experiences/
, accessed July 11, 2011.

6
. Not all of these public relations stunts panned out as planned. In 2012, a major insurance company joined with the National Football League to organize a “Million Fan Salute.” The idea was to “Unite with the NFL to salute the military.” The “NFL cities that collect[ed] the most salutes” would “earn rewards for their local military community,” courtesy of the insurance company. The nature of the rewards was not specified. Unfortunately, when the voting closed, only 142,916 fans had weighed in, so the results fell well short of a million.
http://millionfansalute.com/
, accessed December 5, 2012.

7
. Ron Suskind,
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill
(New York, 2004), p. 291.

3. TALLYING UP

1
. Bill Clinton, “Remarks by the President at America’s Millennium Gala,” December 31, 1999,
http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/New/html/20000104.html
.

2
. Thomas E. Woods Jr.,
Meltdown: A Free Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse
(Washington, D.C., 2009); Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner,
Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon
(New York, 2011); Joseph E. Stiglitz,
Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
(New York, 2010); Barry James Dyke,
The Pirates of Manhattan: Systematically Plundering the American Consumer and How to Protect Against It
(2007); John Perkins,
Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded—and What We Need to Do to Remake Them
(New York, 2009); David Faber,
And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street’s Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees
(Hoboken, N.J. 2010); Chris Harman,
Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx
(Chicago, 2010); Les Leopold,
The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity—and What We Can Do About It
(White River Junction, Vt., 2009); William D. Cohan,
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
(New York, 2010); Barry Ritholtz,
Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy
(Hoboken, N.J., 2009); Menzie D. Chinn and Jeffry A. Frieden,
Lost Decades: The Making of America’s Debt Crisis and the Long Recovery
(New York, 2011); Richard Heinberg,
The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality
(Gabriola Island, British Columbia, 2011); Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum,
That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented—and How We Can Come Back
(New York, 2011).

3
. “7.9 Million Jobs Lost—Many Forever,” July 2, 2010,
http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/02/news/economy/jobs_gone_forever/index.htm
, accessed December 30, 2011.

4
. Pallavi Gogoi, “The Jobless Effect,” July 16, 2010,
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/16/what-is-the-real-unemployment-rate/
, accessed December 31, 2011.

5
. Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, “The Great Recession’s Toll on Long-Term Unemployment,” November 5, 2010,
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/1105_jobs_greenstone_looney.aspx
, accessed December 31, 2011.

6
. Catherine Rampell, “Career Shift Often Means Drop in Living Standards,”
New York Times
, December 31, 2010.

7
. By 2010, 15 percent of Americans were officially classified as poor, and 14 percent of adults relied on food stamps. Cynthia Enloe and Joni Seager,
The Real State of America Atlas
(New York, 2011), pp. 54–55.

8
. Sabrina Tavernise, “Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade,’”
New York Times
, September 13, 2011.

9
. Joseph E. Stieglitz, “Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%,”
Vanity Fair
, May 2011,
http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105
, accessed January 7, 2012.

10
. Geoffrey Perret,
A Country Made by War: From the Revolution to Vietnam—The Story of America’s Rise to Power
(New York, 1989).

11
. Max Boot, “Afghanistan—The ‘Who Cares?’ War,”
Wall Street Journal
, August 29, 2012.

12
. Among developed countries, the United States ranks second in the percentage of children living in relative poverty, trailing only Romania. UNICEF,
Measuring Child Poverty
, May 2012, p. 3.

13
. At present approximately 842,000 Americans are homeless on any given day, with some 3.5 million Americans experiencing homelessness over the course of a year. National Resource and Training Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness, “Who Is Homeless?”
http://web.archive.org/web/20070510103756/http://www.nrchmi.samhsa.gov/facts/facts_question_2.asp
, accessed August 29, 2012.

14
. Jason DeParle and Sabrina Tavernise, “For Women Under Thirty, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage,”
New York Times
, February 17, 2012.

15
. Eating disorders affect up to 24 million Americans. “Eating Disorder Statistics,” National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders,
http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/
, accessed August 29, 2012.

16
. “Over one-third of all Americans today are obese, up from 15% in 1980. During that same period, the obesity rate of American children ages 2–19 tripled, reaching 16.9% in 2011. In only a single state (Colorado) does the obesity rate today fall below 20%. In ten states, the obesity rate exceeds 30%.” Trust for America’s Health,
F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future
(2011),
http://healthyamericans.org/assets/files/TFAH2011FasInFat10.pdf
, accessed January 2, 2012.

17
. Drug overdoses “now represent the leading cause of accidental death in the United States, having overtaken motor vehicle accidents for the first time on record.” Kevin A. Sabet, “Overdosing on Extremism,”
New York Times
, January 1, 2012.

18
. Enloe and Seager,
Real State of America Atlas
, p. 89. In 2010, the collective personal debt of the American people exceeded the total GDP. Credit card debt alone averaged $16,000 per household.

19
. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that “food insecurity” affected some 50 million Americans in 2010, meaning that they were members of a household that during the course of the year “lacked money and other resources for food.” USDA Economic Research Service,
Household Food Security in the United States in 2010
, September 2011.

20
. The United States today has the highest incarceration rate in the world, the total U.S. prison population having quadrupled in just the past three decades. In 2009, the U.S. prison population was nearly 2.3 million, with over 7.2 million U.S. residents either behind bars, on probation, or on parole. The current incarceration rate is 5.5 times larger than the previous spike coinciding with the Great Depression. Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Total Correctional Population,” 2009,
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=11
.

21
. Arguably, the military itself has benefited from the Great Recession in this one sense: civilian economic distress boosts military recruiting. For the young and able-bodied, the armed services have jobs available.

22
. Jonathan Turley, “10 Reasons the United States Is No Longer the Land of the Free,”
Washington Post
, January 13, 2012.

23
. Ezra Klein, “Why Do Harvard Kids Head to Wall Street,”
Washington Post
, April 23, 2010,
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/04/why_do_harvard_kids_head_to_wa.html
, accessed January 11, 2012.

24
. The Pat Tillman experience stands out because it is that: a striking exception. Tillman’s death has not inspired other professional athletes to enlist. For those hungering for a bit of vicarious experience, of course, there is always “reality TV.” In 2012, a short-lived series called
Stars Earn Stripes
offered marginal celebrities and former jocks keen to play at soldiering a chance to satisfy that urge without them actually having to enlist. Hosted by the retired army General Wesley Clark,
Stars Earn Stripes
put the likes of Nick Lachey (ex-husband of faded pop phenom) and Todd Palin (current husband of a faded political phenom) into battle dress and simulated combat, thereby ostensibly paying tribute to those who actually do serve and fight. “Gun porn,” the
New Republic
called it. “Pretty interesting, pretty tough, pretty awesome” was how General Clark saw it. Laura Bennett, “General Failure: The Bizarre World of Wesley Clark’s New Reality Show,”
New Republic
, August 15, 2012.

25
. As one former officer wrote, “The public apathy that has long characterized our involvement in this war is obviously, in large part, the result of an all-volunteer military force that has left the 99 percent blissfully unaware of the daily triumphs and tragedies that mark the lives of many of their fellow citizens a world away.” Will Bardenwerper, “U.S. Soldiers at War: The Forgotten One Percent,”
Washington Post
, November 10, 2011.

4. AMERICA’S ARMY

1
. The phrase is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s, from his 1837 poem “Concord Hymn.” In 1999, President Bill Clinton selected “Concord Hymn” as his choice for the national “Favorite Poem” project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-XViGsKwNY&feature=related
.

2
. Colonel Robert D. Heinl Jr., “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,”
Armed Forces Journal
, June 7, 1971, pp. 30–38.