I don’t know about where you grew up, but me, I grew up in a very non-military community.

I say non-military because I don’t mean anti-military. The folks in my town certainly weren’t the type to burn flags against the military, but our lives definitely had very little to do with military matters. Before this year, I could count the number of servicemen and women I ever knew on two hands.

My own lack of interaction with the armed forces is partly due to my family background. My parents are both Indian immigrants whose lives have been devoted to successfully establishing themselves here. They upheld peace, equanimity, and Good Samaritanism as key virtues to guide a moral life. With a strong emphasis on nonviolence, I know of no relative or family friend, close or distant, who has been in the military.

Beyond my own family, the community in which I was raised reinforced that separation from the military. It was a relatively affluent, predominantly white suburban region north of Chicago where the military was basically unheard of. When rare individuals joined the military, people were shocked. There existed the notion that joining the military was tantamount to getting your tombstone engraved: you were in for an early death. A sympathetic swell of communal pity would flow for the mother of an enlisted individual. Parents shuddered to think that their child might sign up as well.

You can imagine, then, my complete ignorance of the military. It was not until my internship here in D.C. that I finally began to fill a much-neglected gap in my academic and cultural knowledge.

I work at the Center for a New American Security (www.cnas.org). We’re a national security and defense think tank, and we have many projects relating to the Defense Department. Even within our small group of about 30, there are three currently serving Military Fellows, four former military employees, and three former Deputy Assistant Secretaries of Defense.

Now, I by no means have a comprehensive understanding of the military, but being in this environment daily has filled in some deep gaps. Prior to joining CNAS, I couldn’t have listed off the different military services. Now, I can at least speak briefly on topics ranging from the defense budget to special operations forces to Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. Now, I’ve even personally heard both the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Commandant of the Marine Corps speak.

More importantly, I finally have experienced some interaction with servicemen and women. I understand a little more about spending your life, or even just a few years, immersed in a Service. I understand a little more about having to move every couple years and about the demand that poses on the wives and husbands and children. I understand a little more about the wide world of the military, with institutions ranging from training facilities to universities. I understand a little more about how our military can be immensely strong, deeply fragile, and constantly needed all at the same time.

And it’s suddenly dawning on me that we must live in a dangerous place if someone like me, who supposedly studies national security and American foreign policy, has gone through life thinking that the military is A) A vaguely immoral, albeit necessary, institution of our nation, and B) Only of marginal importance to fully comprehending our nation’s diplomatic history.

We should be wary of this attitude. The knee-jerk instinct among many college students and much of the academic elite is to assume that anything military is inherently a bad idea. That’s an ignorant and self-crippling attitude that can grievously injure our country’s civil-military relations. We should try to reach the day when normal, everyday parents can look at individuals in military service as paragons for their own children and exemplars for the community. If future civilian leaders of the world do not interact with the military and do not form an accurate conceptualization of the military, we will simply be setting ourselves up for pitfalls.

There is and there always will be a need for an American military. As long as that’s true, the size and public favorability of our military will shift. I hope, however, that coming generations of Americans have a better understanding of the military than I did. A more informed public is one that is better aware of the abilities and limitations of our military and one that can exercise better oversight over our leaders.

Sagar and Michael Wilkerson alternate writing “The Lowly Interns” every Wednesday. They have a special email address (sagarandmichael@gmail.com), and they were really hoping for some hate mail. Please oblige.