From Argghhh, I came across an interesting post from Intel Dump about the civil-military divide and ROTC programs being key to bridging the gap between those who understand the military and those who aren’t a part of that world.
Read his post. It makes good points, but expanding ROTC in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City isn’t going to solve the problem — especially when college cliques would create microcosmic insular communities within the broader university structure.
The great thing about the Web is that it allows for outreach that extends beyond traditional physical barriers. I recently wrote about this concept.
As long as the military is clustered around a few military bases, connecting with the rest of America will continue to be a challenge. The DoD needs to devote more resources to online outreach.
[...] have written before about the gap between the military and civilian society. This is a problem, especially as we face a long and protracted war against a determined enemy in a [...]
[...] people. They are about social networks, sharing videos and images and stories. In an age where the civil-military divide is a growing problem, you don’t want to eliminate online outlets for social [...]