Most Americans have no personal connection to our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Americans say they “support the troops” but the troops, and especially their families, are increasingly dubious about supporting America.

Ask a soldier why he fights and he'll say to protect his buddies. Don't confuse his willingness to serve as trust of our leaders. Ask that soldier's mother or dad how they feel these days about the rest of America -- say on the day their son is told he's being called back to active duty when he thought his service was done -- and you'll get tears, an expletive, or both.

I never served, and before my son unexpectedly volunteered I was too self-absorbed to give much thought to the men and women who guard us. After my son joined the Marines and went to war, however, news from Afghanistan and Iraq was no longer mere news but a gut-churning family bulletin.

I wrote a series of books and articles about the experience of being a military parent. In response I received around 8000 emails during the last six years. I'm no expert but I've been conducting an unofficial survey of the military family.

Members of the military family speak of honor and camaraderie, and of being connected to our country in a deeply meaningful way. And they are unfailingly proud of their children. But recently there has been a change. Many letters reflect a growing alienation.

Here is a typical expression of frustration: “My son-in-law is a recruiter in Ohio, a sergeant at the ripe old age of 21. Parents have been rude and hateful. The prevailing attitude has been ‘let someone else do it.' I find it frustrating that most people in this country are completely unaffected by this war. There is no sense of duty or sacrifice.”

The anger can best be summed up by a question I'm hearing a lot: "Why aren't the President's daughters serving?" The same question is asked about Democrat leaders' children too. Such questions reflect a sense of outrage on the part of parents and loved ones of our soldiers. The recurring theme is that civilians -- including those in the media, elite colleges, Congress and the President -- don't care. If they did they'd serve or encourage their children to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with ours.

The framers of our constitution had good reasons for believing that a military that integrates all classes is necessary for democratic life and social peace. They no more wanted a military of distinct "professionals" disconnected from our larger culture than they wanted one successful class of Americans exempted from taxes. From the days of General Washington on it was understood that privilege and service went hand-in-hand. And our military was a citizen army.

With some notable exception -- like the ability to buy one's way out of service during the Civil War or the draft deferments during the Vietnam War -- the tradition of all classes participating has been the norm. Franklin Roosevelt's children served. Eleanor said in her diary that Roosevelt would have been ashamed to lead the country to war otherwise. And as recently as the mid 1950s over half the graduates from the Ivy League served. Now less than one percent does and ROTC remains banned from many top campuses. Recently Princeton wouldn't allow the two students being commissioned as officers to receive their commissions at graduation. Such insults are not unnoticed by the military family.

The military family is losing confidence in the rest of America. Retired Admiral Stanley Arthur summed up the feeling when he said: "The armed forces are no longer representative of the people they serve. More and more, enlisted as well as officers are beginning to feel that they are special, better than the society they serve."

This is bad news for our democracy. Sooner or later our soldiers will have to feel connected to more than their buddies as a reason to keep fighting and re-enlisting. And sooner than later the majority of Americans will have to do more than send others to defend them.

No matter what one's view of Bush or the Iraq war, the fact is we have real enemies who want us dead. So an alienated military family feeling increasingly divided from the rest of the country is a recipe for disaster.

America is asking too few people to do too much, and it is asking nothing of anyone else. Life may indeed be unfair, but the gap between those asked to give everything and those asked to give nothing is growing. No, the sky is not falling -- yet. But a day of reckoning is approaching.

We are gearing up for the next election. For most Americans the stakes are no higher than wanting one party or the other to "win." In contrast for those who have children, siblings or spouses serving the stakes are monumental.

If the thousands of emails I've gotten are any indication, the military family wants leaders that ask other Americans to sacrifice in a way that will lighten the load our men and women carry. But our leadership class is cut off from our military. Few members of Congress have a child in uniform and fewer than ever before have military experience.

With a rare exceptions -- for instance, Vietnam vet Senator John McCain, who has two sons in uniform, and former secretary of the Navy, Vietnam vet and Senate candidate James Webb, who has a son fighting in Iraq -- these days our leaders are mostly drawn from our non-serving elites. As Andrew Bacevich (professor at Boston University, vet and father of a soldier) writes, “The sons and daughters of those who occupy positions of influence in the corporate, intellectual, academic, journalistic, and political worlds have better things to do [than serve].”

While recently doing research for my new book, Baby Jack, I conducted interviews with the very few current Harvard Law School students who served, or who will be going into the military upon graduation. They all agreed that widespread ignorance among our elites about the military threatens to harm our country.

Summing up their views one wrote: “The ‘disconnect' is a problem because it breeds ignorance and creates an aristocracy. A misunderstood military may be ostracized from mainstream society or, worse yet, improperly used for political purposes. Already, this may be happening. When it is not ‘my child' serving, we make decisions from a detached, often uninformed, point of view. Before joining the military, I never experienced an attachment to the war effort or had an understanding of the hardships involved with uprooting thousands of families to deploy overseas.”

Sociologist, and military affairs expert, Charles Moskos has identified the issue of class and the military, as the root of whether America has the resolve to follow through with lengthy and dangerous missions. He tracks various engagements and shows that “citizens accept hardship only when their elites are viewed as self-sacrificing.” He concludes that when elites do not serve, the basic legitimacy of the mission is undermined, and the population as a whole will not continue to support it.

We no longer have a citizen-military sending back gut-check information to the all-social and economic classes as we once did. And we don't have an all-volunteer military either. What we have is a selectively recruited military, drawn disproportionately from within the military family.

Studies by the defense department show that the sons, daughters, nieces and nephews of soldiers are far more likely to serve than people who know no one in the military. And since many military families rarely stray...