And yeah, I think because the Iraq/Afghanistan wars are being fought by an all-volunteer military, they don't have that kind of direct impact. You can choose to sign up (my brother did), but there's not the same all-encompassing impact, where every male of a certain age is affected by it. Certain kinds of people choose to go to war, for many reasons, but it would have created a very different cultural gestalt if it had been applied to everyone from all walks of life. In pop culture, it's applied for convenient backstory if a writer wants a military character or a mercenary, but it's not applied to literally everyone.

This also affects the culture of the military, and our perception of it in the rest of society.

When everybody is drafted, any one soldier (sailor/marine/whatever) is just as likely to be democrat as republican, from a military family or not, educated or not, former delinquent or not, religious or not, and so on. The super rich might wiggle out, but even then, you're more likely to have a variety of income levels as well.

But when it's all volunteer, more and more it's going to shift to be some people, and as we all think "it's for those people" other people are less likely to be interested. And we do see that the military increasingly leans conservative after Vietnam.