When I was decorated in 1969, there were 450 living recipients of the Medal of Honor. Today, there are only about one hundred, and the average age is… - Jack H. Jacobs

If you have to defend liberty, you've got to defend liberty. It's as simple as that. But I found the actual combat a horrible, horrible thing, to be acutely avoided. Whatever you can do, it's best to avoid it... I was scared all the time I was in Vietnam. I didn't enjoy it for a second.

If you have been getting something for nothing for a long time, it's tough to convince you to pay for it. But pay Americans must. In the years since the end of World War II, we have experimented with a number of schemes for producing the force we have needed, but none has been based on the notion of shared sacrifice. It is arguable whether the current volunteer system or one in which we relied on a draft is worse, but suffice it to say that they are both bad. We don't need selective service. We need universal service. But there is great political danger in merely suggesting that all Americans contribute in a meaningful way to our collective defense, and so no politician who wants to keep his job will do it. Consequently none does, and we are the poorer for it.
A society coheres only when it shares beliefs and experiences, and humans rarely value things that are acquired at no cost. With a miniscule percentage of people making a contribution to our defense, we will not be successful in protecting a country of more than three hundred million people, worldwide obligations, and threats from a variety of malefactors who want to see us destroyed.

Today, a small number of brave and dedicated young Americans have answered the call, and whatever else one can argue about the merits of recent uses of military power, it is impossible not to revere the patriotism of these volunteers. More Americans were killed in New York on September 11, 2001, than were lost on December 7, 1941, and yet the response was a small fraction of that after Pearl Harbor. What is interesting, and more than a little distressing, is that the number of people wearing the uniform is only a bit more than 1.5 million on active duty, and that this represents only one-half of one percent of Americans.
One may reasonably inquire why, if the war in Iraq is so unpopular, there aren't riots in the streets as there were during the war in Vietnam. One answer is that our service members are all volunteers, and no one else has to serve. This country has been going about its business almost as if nothing catastrophic has occurred, while the sacrifice has come from only a few citizens. Those of us who don't serve have thus outsourced our defense to those who do. One could argue persuasively that if all citizens had a stake in the protection of our freedom, the arbitrary use of the military instrument of power, as a first resort, would be very difficult to engineer.