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So the whole of war, when you look at it is probably run by professional soldiers, and the rest of them are just recruits, or people who are just forced to join the army.

One of the things that's difficult for people to understand is when you join the military, you don't sign up as an endorsement of any particular policy of the moment.

I do not care whether you're a Democrat or you're a Republican or an independent. We must pull for the people who are wearing the uniform of the armed forces. These people weren't drafted. They enlisted, because they believe.

The army taught me to sign my name very quickly, and that's stood me in good stead the rest of my life.

There's a tendency to look at anybody who joined the military as if they underwrote everything that happened policy-wise. That's not really the case. I have a friend who both protested the Iraq War and joined the military, and ended up serving two deployments in Afghanistan.

I joined the army after 9/11, after the Iraq war was started. I joined in part because I wanted to go fight on the front lines.

It seems as if everybody in the country was getting impatient to get his or her particular soldier out of the Army and to upset the carefully arranged system of points for retirement which we had arranged with the approval of the Army itself.

It's a professional military. You sign up and agree to allow your countrymen to use your life as they see fit for the next four years. And I think we all should have a greater role in ensuring that we use those lives wisely.

If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army.

Since far fewer people are recruited to serve in a voluntary military, the connection between America and its military is increasingly tenuous and less personal.