Winter 2008

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If you are reading this article, you have likely never served in the military. You may well not have any immediate family members who have served, either (at least during the past forty years or so). And you probably do not know anyone who has been killed in Iraq.

The reasons for this state of affairs have been well chronicled. Journals like this are read, in large part, by blue-state urban professionals. The American military, however, draws disproportionately from red-state, small-town backgrounds. The states with the highest percentage of 18–24-year-olds in the military are Montana and Alaska. The ones with the least are Massachusetts and Rhode Island. According to a 2005 study, fully half of all Iraq War casualties have come from towns of 25,000 inhabitants or less.
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