Most people run marathons to challenge themselves. Maj. George Kraehe runs them to challenge others.
As a member of the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors' "run & remember team," the New Mexico Army National Guard officer has participated in 20 races. Most times, as he sweats his way along each 26.2-mile course, flapping against Kraehe's back is the laminated photograph of a service member who has died in what has become our nation's longest war.
The 46-year-old military lawyer from Albuquerque does it to raise money, but also "to be kind of a visible sign that there still are people out there fighting and dying, unfortunately, in these conflicts."
"Because I don't think it's something that is foremost in people's thoughts," he said in a recent telephone interview from Kabul, Afghanistan. "I think you could say that because we have done so well, because we have been a big part of preventing another attack on U.S. soil, it is easier for people to forget we're here."
As the nation approaches its 11th Memorial Day since the United States launched the Global War on Terror, Kraehe and others fear many have done just that.
About 2.2 million U.S. service members have seen duty in the Middle Eastern war zones, many of them veterans of multiple tours. And more than 6,330 have died -- nearly 4,500 in Iraq, and more than 1,840 in Afghanistan.
But as striking as those numbers are, fewer Americans today may have a direct connection to the ongoing fighting than during any previous war.
Unlike World War II, when 16 million men and women put on a uniform, less than 1 percent of the nation's population serves in the U.S. military. And unlike Korea or Vietnam, when the threat of imminent draft hung over the head of every physically fit male over the age of 18, only those who have volunteered need worry about being plucked from their routine lives and placed in harm's way.
When retiring Adm. Mike Mullen addressed the West Point graduating class last May, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the new Army officers that he believed most Americans appreciated the military's sacrifices. But, he added, "I fear they do not know us. I fear they do not comprehend the full weight of the burden we carry or the price we pay when we return from battle."
In a survey released shortly after the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Pew Research Center found that 84 percent of recent veterans felt the general public has "little or no understanding" of the problems they and their families face. Of the civilians polled, 71 percent agreed.
The same study found that only a third of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 had an immediate family member who had served in the military. When she unveiled a special Gold Star Christmas tree at the White House last year to honor the families of fallen service members, first lady Michelle Obama lamented, "Not every American knows what a . Gold Star family is."Continued...
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