For generations, Americans have clung to the idea that our troops fight to protect (and sometimes export) our freedom. But as Americans increasingly fight over what democracy really means domestically, the idea that we can promote this contested ideal overseas rings increasingly hollow.

If our leaders fail to grapple with this disconnect — the gulf between “why we fight” abroad and the realities of our bitter politics at home — they will find themselves unable to justify our military missions to either the American people at-large, or to the increasingly disconnected group of Americans who volunteer to fight for this nation.

A 2025 Pew poll found that 72% of Americans no longer see the U.S. as a good example of democracy. And the world seems to agree —even our allies think the U.S. no longer represents a “shining city on a hill.” This is in part about a growing dissatisfaction with our broken political system and those who sit at the top of it. President Donald Trump, like Joe Biden before him, is facing poor approval ratings, and the majority of Americans haven’t approved of the job Congress is doing since 2003. Discontent cuts across age, race, gender and class.

Yet beneath Americans’ shared frustration with government lies a deeper confusion about what exactly democracy and our national identity means and is supposed to do. Just before the 2024 election, Gallup ranked democracy as voters’ second most important priority, but the issues that underpin it — such as education, health care, taxes, crime and foreign policy — resonated far less. For many Americans, democracy has become an abstract ideal whose relevance is overshadowed by culture wars and more immediate, tangible concerns.

So how do you defend a government that claims to be “of the people,” when the people themselves can’t agree on what they’re defending? And if we can’t articulate our shared values, what message does that send to those who risk their lives in their name: our soldiers, diplomats and public servants, and their families who bear the cost? Our leaders’ inability to reckon with these fundamental issues at the heart of why and when we put our service members in the line of fire is at odds with their soaring rhetoric about supporting the troops.

For over two decades of the Global War on Terror, our country has lionized its military and veterans, in part to redress the wrongs of our treatment of service members and veterans during and after conflicts such as the Vietnam War. But the War on Terror revealed the limits of U.S. ambition, from the failed effort to transform Afghanistan to Islamic State’s capture of Mosul after a decade of counterinsurgency in Iraq and ongoing efforts to contain Houthi pirates in the Red Sea. It also marked a sprawling and often ad hoc expansion of U.S. military deployments from Syria to West Africa without any congressional oversight or real debate.

The paradigm of conflict for Americans has shifted from appearing occasionally on magazine covers to become a chaotic backdrop for modern life. And we have become numb to it, indifferent unless it affects our own families. The way our troops are used only breaks through in the national conversation sporadically, like when three U.S. soldiers were killed by an Iraqi militia drone in Jordan last year or when Trump’s unilateral decision to bomb Iran triggered retaliatory strikes on U.S. bases, or when the National Guard is deployed to cities across the U.S.

And few Americans today have skin in the game. Many Americans cannot explain the difference between an officer and an enlisted soldier, or distinguish between the branches of the armed forces. With less than 1% of the population in uniform, recruitment draws unevenly from rural towns and, in cities, disproportionately from communities of color, especially Black and Latino Americans.

The disconnect between regular Americans and the costs borne by those who serve did not emerge out of nowhere. Congress has continuously allowed the president ever broader authority to enter into conflict, undercutting its own war powers (and obligations) in the process. The effect has been to shield Congress from the political fallout of disastrous military interventions that are fought by an all-volunteer military.

Bringing congressional oversight back into the foreign policymaking process is the best way to give Americans a stake in our national security. Efforts to repeal outdated authorizations for the use of force from 9/11 are treated as symbolic gestures and, still, they fail. There was little congressional debate when Trump bombed Iran or when U.S. troops were sent into combat zones in Syria and West Africa over the last decade by both parties.

Americans can’t be blamed for being most focused on groceries, jobs and their children’s education. We elect Congress to weigh issues of war and peace on our behalf. But if Congress won’t act, the erosion of civilian oversight will continue. It may feel abstract now, but the precedent it sets for bigger wars in the future will not.

Granted, Americans are divided on the U.S. military’s role in the world. Some still support interventions abroad, despite two decades spent learning costly lessons. Others want no part of peacekeeping or nation-building, preferring a focus on homeland defense and border security. Others believe U.S. leadership should come through economic strength, not military reach. Congress need not resolve these differences — but it must assert itself as a decisive force in shaping America’s approach to the world, or else Americans will continue to feel powerless over what’s done in the name of their security.

This kind of division raises a harder question: what exactly have we been fighting to protect and who gets to decide? It’s not a call for the president alone, nor should it fall to lobbyists, activists, or retired or serving generals who aren’t held accountable in the same manner as elected officials. These decisions belong to the American people, exercised through our elected representatives in Congress. This is a bedrock principle of a democratic republic.

It’s long past time our representatives in Washington reclaimed their constitutional role and duty to their constituents and to those who serve.

Bishop Garrison served as a senior adviser to former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and is a Senior Fellow and adjunct professor at George Mason Law School’s National Security Institute. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and deployed to Iraq. Adam Weinstein is the director of the Veterans in Foreign Policy Initiative and the deputy director of the Middle East Program at the Quincy Institute. He served as a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan.