AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country

by Kathy Roth-Douquet, Frank Schaeffer

Overview

In America, it is increasingly the case that the people who make, support, or protest military policy have no military experience. As Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer assert in this groundbreaking work, the gap between the "all-volunteer military" and the rest of us is widening, and our country faces a dangerous lack of understanding between those in power and those who defend our way of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060888602
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/01/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kathy Roth-Douquet is a veteran of the Clinton White House and every presidential campaign of the past twenty-four years and is the author with Frank Schaeffer of AWOL. She lives with her marine officer husband on Parris Island, South Carolina.

Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times bestselling author whose books include Keeping Faith (as seen on Oprah) and Crazy for God. He lives in Salisbury, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Foreword   General Tommy Franks     XV
Introduction     1
It's Personal     9
"Not for People Like Us": Or How the Privileged See the Military     29
The Military's View of What It Does     67
The Emergence of the Gap     97
The Rights of the Individual Trump the Virtues of the Citizen     127
How the Gap Affects the Military and the Mission     141
Why Do We Even Need the Military?     175
What If We Don't Fix the Problem?     193
Solutions     219
Afterword     239
Acknowledgments     247

What People are Saying About This

"As America looks for balance in a dangerous and complex world, AWOL is a great place to start."
---General Tommy Franks (retired)

"AWOL drives home...the need to address the evaporating sense of duty and service to our nation."
---General Les Palm (retired), President and CEO Marine Corps Association

Tommy Franks

“As America looks for balance in a dangerous and complex world, AWOL is a great place to start.”

Les Palm

“AWOL drives home...the need to address the evaporating sense of duty and service to our nation.”

Editorial Reviews

As America looks for balance in a dangerous and complex world, AWOL is a great place to start.” — General Tommy Franks (retired)

“AWOL drives home...the need to address the evaporating sense of duty and service to our nation.” — General Les Palm (retired), President and CEO Marine Corps Association

“AWOL is unique in its scope, intent and implications. [It] is clearly written and meticulously researched.” — Leatherneck Magazine

From the Publisher

As America looks for balance in a dangerous and complex world, AWOL is a great place to start.

General Tommy Franks (retired)

AWOL is unique in its scope, intent and implications. [It] is clearly written and meticulously researched.

Leatherneck Magazine

AWOL drives home...the need to address the evaporating sense of duty and service to our nation.

General Les Palm (retired)

As America looks for balance in a dangerous and complex world, AWOL is a great place to start.

General (retired) - Tommy Franks

"AWOL drives home...the need to address the evaporating sense of duty and service to our nation."

General (retired) - Les Palm

"AWOL drives home...the need to address the evaporating sense of duty and service to our nation."

General - Les Palm (retired)

In their compelling and inspiring cri de coeur , Kathy Roth-Douquet and Frank Schaeffer trace this societal shift, arguing that the schism between America's military and its opinion-making class threatens the nation's welfare. Both authors qualify as opinion-makers, and both have personal connections to the military. Roth-Douquet, a self-described "former agitator, feminist, Ivy Leaguer, Clintonite," is married to a Marine pilot. Schaeffer, a novelist, painter and film-maker, saw his plans for his children -- "top college, good grades, smart jobs, wife/husband, Subaru/Volvo, membership at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, IRA started early, kids, college fund" -- derail when his youngest son enlisted in the Marines after high school.
— The Washington Post

Nathaniel Fick

In this impassioned, convincing manifesto, Schaffer (Keeping Faith) and Roth-Douquet, a former Clinton White House and Department of Defense staffer, call for class integration of the military. Their arguments are personal: Roth-Douquet is a military wife and Schaffer's son is a marine, and the authors fall within the demographic they critique. Alternately narrating, they relate their experiences with the military and detail the liabilities of the present all-volunteer "corporate" force: the hindered policy-making ability of a civilian leadership without significant ties to the military, the weakening of the armed forces themselves, and "the sense of lost community and the threat to democracy that results when a society accepts a situation that is inherently unfair." While Schaffer proposes a lottery draft and Roth-Douquet suggests the military "convince" people to sign up, they both call for all young people to submit to some form of national civilian service. Though the authors occasionally exaggerate ("we are fast approaching the day when no one in Congress and no president will have served or have any children serving"), they make a clarion call in the face of increasingly controversial foreign policy and a military stretched thin. (May 9) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly