When we graduated from the War College in 1992, the armed forces were the smartest, best educated, and best disciplined force in history.[15] While polls showed that the public invariably gave Congress low marks, a February 1991 survey disclosed that "public confidence in the military soar[ed] to 85 percent, far surpassing every other institution in our society." The armed forces had become America's most--and perhaps only--trusted arm of government.[16]

Assumptions about the role of the military in society also began to change. Twenty years before we graduated, the Supreme Court confidently declared in Laird v. Tatum that Americans had a "traditional and strong resistance to any military intrusion into civilian affairs."[17] But Americans were now rethinking the desirability and necessity of that resistance. They compared the military's principled competence with the chicanery and ineptitude of many elected officials, and found the latter wanting.