A couple of years ago, I was able to spend eight days with young American warriors. On an Army transport plane, I chatted late at night with a young paratrooper in full battle gear, right up to the moment she calmly walked out the open door and jumped into the North Carolina darkness. After a day and a night with 6,000 sailors on a Navy carrier, we were catapulted off the deck in a plane, which in four seconds went from zero to 200 miles per hour. The U.S. military is the most racially integrated sector of our national life. It made me remember that the first time I ever slept next to or took orders from an African American was at Parris Island, S.C., thanks to the United States Marine Corps.
Values do make a difference.
You will meet young American men and women who believe in what they are doing, who believe in and rely upon one another. That's not all bad. Very few of them would probably qualify for admission to Harvard or Stanford Business School. But make no mistake, the U.S. military urgently needs exposure to American civilian values. Politically, the officer corps has become almost monolithically conservative and Republican.