The Iraq war has exposed a growing gap between the small fraction of the American population that fights for the flag and the rest of society that has been virtually untouched by the conflict.

Despite the flying of the Stars and Stripes and yellow ribbons displayed in support of the troops, Americans have less and less contact with those in uniform -- a group totaling one in every 200 people.

Former US defense secretary Robert Gates voiced concern about the growing divide on several occasions.

"For most Americans, the wars remain an abstraction -- a distant and unpleasant series of news items that does not affect them personally," Gates said in a September 2010 speech at Duke University.

Since the end of mandatory military service in 1973, fewer and fewer Americans have joined the US armed forces.

In that 2010 speech, Gates cited a study saying that in 1988, about 40 percent of 18-year-olds had a veteran parent, but that share had dropped to 18 percent by 2000, and he warned it could fall below 10 percent in the future.

US military bases on home soil are now concentrated in the southern and central United States, following a reorganization of facilities at the end of the Cold War.

As a result, US citizens from those areas, particularly those from rural communities and small towns, are proportionally over-represented in the US military, as compared with residents of the US northeast and west coast states.

And joining the army remains a family affair, with the children of veterans very often answering the call of duty.

The eight-year Iraq war did little to raise awareness among the general population about the military, as the knowledge of most Americans is limited to what they see in the mass media.

Most Americans know nothing about the struggles of thousands of amputees, or those battling post-traumatic stress disorder and other difficulties as they attempt to return to civilian life after their time in combat.

"I fear they do not know us," the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said in May in a graduation address at the West Point military academy.

"I fear they do not comprehend the full weight of the burden we carry or the price we pay when we return from battle."

Daniel Lagana, a veteran who was twice deployed to Iraq, lives with the gap between military and civilian life every day. At age 27, he has resumed his studies -- paid for by the army -- at Columbia University in New York.

When he came home from Iraq after his first deployment in 2006, he felt uncomfortable working at a restaurant in a Washington suburb, where a colleague told him he had "spent too much time in Iraq" and needed to "calm down."

Today, he says he is "very concerned with the distance between American society and the military."

"A lot of people view veterans as Rambo types -- on the edge mentally or broken down," Lagana said.

Barbara Mujica, a novelist and professor of Spanish at Georgetown University in the nation's capital and an adviser to student veterans on campus, says the gap is ever-present.

"These wars go on and people aren't even aware of it. I talk to people who say things like, 'Are we still in Iraq?' They're so divorced (from the military)," said Mujica, whose son served in the Marines in Iraq.

"Very few Congress members have children in the military -- a handful. They are sending our children to fight, and they're not thinking it through," she said.

"They don't know what war does. They're hiding behind some fancy rhetoric."

Another clear and present danger is the politicization of the armed forces. Those states that are home to the most military men and women tend to be more conservative than those on the two coasts.

Nearly three out of four Republicans say they have family ties to the military, while only 59 percent of Democrats can say the same.

Mullen warned of the phenomenon in his West Point address, saying: "The people will determine the course the military steers, the skills we perfect, the wars we fight. The people reign supreme. We answer to them.

"We are therefore -- and must remain -- a neutral instrument of the state, accountable to our civilian leaders no matter which political party holds sway."