Some 70% to 80% of all who join the military will return to the civilian workforce. They'll return to communities, and one of the things I've worried about is the increasing disconnect between the American people and our men and women in uniform. We come from fewer and fewer places. We're less than 1% of the population.
Interpretation
This quote expresses concern about the growing disconnect between military personnel and civilians in society.
Michael Mullen emphasizes the importance of understanding and bridging the gap between military service members and civilian communities. As a significant portion of military members will return to civilian life, it is crucial to foster connections and empathy to ensure that they are supported and understood by the larger population they serve and protect.
In practice
In a speech to veterans, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of community support.
It is my position that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.
When two people are really happy about one another one can generally assume they are mistaken.
I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly.
I think a lot of the time in films, men get roles where they create their own destiny and women are just tools, supporters for that.
What I do on court is great, but what really matters is what happens off court, the people who you affect.
There were a lot of things I loved about working in a library, but mostly I miss the library patrons. I love books, but books are everywhere. Library patrons are as various and oddball and democratic as library books.
We're alone, but we are capable of communicating to one another both our loneliness and our desire to break through it. You say, 'I'm alone.' Someone answers, 'I'm alone too.' There's a shift in the scale of power. A bridge is thrown between the two abysses.
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