What? Draft MY baby? War SUCKS! (This one's for you, ladies!)

The BBQ Pit
1

My coworkers are all in a lather about rumors their kids are bringing home from school about a military draft which is supposedly in the works for 2005.

Suddenly, they’re all terrified. Quite a few of them have suddenly decided that GW Bush is a jerk.

I am sympathetic with their fears. (I have no children, but I have a 14 year old nephew and a 16 year old niece who would be prime cannon fodder.) However, I notice that a significant percentage of these same women had no problems whatsoever with sending other people’s kids to Iraq on a mission based on a dubious rationale. If a draft were to be reinstated, I suspect that a certain percentage of my more hawkish colleagues might find their enthusiasm for carnage greatly diminished.

“Wait a minute. You mean they’re going to be sending OUR kids? But they have plans! They’re college bound! They have college FUNDS, and don’t need the money in order to go to school! They aren’t immigrant kids, who can get honorary citizenship by dying in battle! They aren’t poor kids, with few honorable alternatives, or military brats, who believe that serving their country by putting their lives in the hands of politicians and their agendas is a noble calling! They’re OUR kids!”

By the way, I am not a pacifist. I was not against our invasion of Afghanistan, though I will readily admit that I thought going to Iraq was a lousy idea at best despite the fact that Saddam and his ilk richly deserved to be killed in some particularly nasty way. And the above is most emphatically NOT a dig at the young people who choose to join the military. Even though the idea of putting my beloved niece and nephew in the line of fire horrifies me beyond the power of speech, I wouldn’t even be categorically against the draft if I had any confidence whatsoever in the people who make the decisions about going to war. It’s just that I get really annoyed at people who don’t give any serious thought to the repercussions of ANYTHING until it affects them directly in a negative way.

I have a feeling that it will be a whole lot harder to drum up popular enthusiasm for invasions if the draft is reinstated.

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Nitpicker alert: that’s “deserve to be killed.” Yes, I am quite aware that Saddam is not dead.

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The chances of the draft being reinstated anytime in the near future, or for that matter, within the next decade or so, are just about zero. Anyone who voted for it would be in a world of hurt come reelection time, and the military doesn’t really want to deal with a bunch of surly, unwilling draftees.

However, in light of your second statement, the correct response to anyone who mentions it is, “Yes, I’ve heard that the Bush Administration is preparing the legislation right now! They’re planning on introducing it right after the inauguration next January.” :wink:

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Yeah, you know, i was completely against the whole invasion of Iraq, and i actually also consider myself, if not a pacifist, at least a believer in the notion that violence is justified only in self-defence.

And i think that perhaps the best way to get people to think more deeply about the issues involved in sending our troops to war might be to reinstitute the draft. At the very least, the whole issue of whether or not to go to war would become somewhat less “academic” for a lot of people.

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My point exactly. It would almost make the draft worthwhile.

6

You are aware this “draft” legislation is sponsored by two Democrats, Rangel and Hollings, and it is a “protest” bill, it’ll never pass? Bush and the Pentagon DO NOT want a draft.

Snopes

S.89

H.R. 163

Fight the Ignorance.

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My coworkers are all in a lather about rumors their kids are bringing home from school about a military draft which is supposedly in the works for 2005.

Heh. Rumors.

I’m betting these people also ran like lemmings to the Million Mom March, too.

What Early Out said.

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You haven’t been watching your South Park, have you? Saddam currently resides in Heaven with all the dead Mormons. He is building weapons of mass destruction in what appears from the outside to be a chocolate chip factory.

Pay attention! :wink:

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Exactly, pay attention. Saddam has been captured after posing as the Canadian Prime minister.
:wink:

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Yes, fully aware of that. Not a single word in my post implied otherwise.

Doesn’t change the principle that informed my argument.

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Drafts are not fun. This is true.

What gets me really confused is statements like the one in your OP (not your own I realize). People will put a flag on their SUV and say “support the troops” as loud as they can at a country music concert, but balk at the idea of having anyone they know going off to war.

It used to be an honor to serve your country, now it’s a highly pulicized burden. I understand the thinking on both sides, but I’m still left wondering “what changed?”

Can someone please explain to me why there is such a change in sentimentality? The reasons for going to war are clearly different between WWII and todays situation. Are we realizing that war is bad and trying to stop it in general? Do we think we could do without any military? Are people just getting more selfish with their personal loss issues?

These are all questions that I pose without malice, prejudice, or intent to enrage. I’d really love some good feedback on this, it seems to be almost a tabboo subject in certain circles.

Thanks.

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Well, to play Devil’s Advocate, there’s a difference between wanting something, and absolutely needing something to accomplish one’s goals. If, for example, we wanted to invade North Korea or Syria, while still keeping a significant presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, we might almost HAVE to draft…

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Nothing changed. It’s still an honor and it was always a burden.

The issue is not war in general but this war. It is not worth sacrificing anybody in this war. As to why some people are hypocrites when it come to their own kids getting drafted, well I wouldn’t know since I oppose the war either way but I suspect that for a lot of people war is rather distant and impersonal. People these days rooted for the Gulf wars like they were football games. The lives of those involved meant nothing to the rooters. Sure they pretend that they care, they wallow in sentiment like there’s no tomorrow…but it’s the sime kind of sentiment they feel from watching a movie. It’s sentiment for entertainment’s sake. They don’t really feel any pain for the dead. The draft would change that.

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Thanks DtC and Leaper, these points are certainly well taken. I’d like to know though, if the burden has the same social value today as it did before.

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Forget the draft, what we really need is a bill that says, for any military action, the folks given priority seating on the front lines are the sons and daughters of our elected officials. :slight_smile:

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Do you ever get tired of saying stupid things? :rolleyes:

The sons and daughters of elected officials generally don’t volunteer, and as a volunteer army they therefore would never join unless compelled to, which would require a draft which you just said to forget about.

Reading your posts far too often brings my head to the brink of explosion.

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Of course it does. What’s at issue is whether this particular cause is worth it.

Some of us don’t want soldiers to die for their country unless they absolutely have to. The casualties in Iraq are all the more tragic because they are completely unnecessary. They aren’t protecting us from anything, they’re just serving the political whims of a reckless and indifferent White House- a White House which lied to those soldiers about why they had to die.

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Nobody wants soldiers to die unless they have to.

I’m a pretty recent veteran myself, and I work with military people every day. I’m absolutely clearheaded about the many things an all-volunteer force can accomplish. I’m also aware, painfully so, of the limitations of an all-volunteer force.

Tom Wolfe noted, in one of his short stories, the relative lack of interaction between the military and the rest of society today. When the lower ranks of the military were overwhelmingly draftees, the military truly looked like America, especially after some of these draftees stuck around to form the ranks of noncommissioned officers. Today, however, the military is walled off. The people going in want discipline, structure and comradeship with people who feel the same way. They’re rejecting certain “soft”, liberal aspects of modern society.

The rest of society, for the most part, is seeing the effects too of thirty years of an all-volunteer force. At one time, in most workplaces, schools, churches and the like, there were veterans somewhere on the staff. These people had served in WWII through Vietnam, sometimes in combat, though often not. But they understood the military, its structure, its law, and its culture. When news of the military came on TV, they could easily follow it. When veterans came by the office, they could speak their language, and might be inclined to cut them a break in employment.

These veterans, though, have largely disappeared. They’ve retired. The veterans in the workplace now don’t exist in anything like the numbers of the previous generations, and they aren’t spread across all jobs like they used to be. Journalism, for example, seems to have very few veterans working in its field. If it had more, it might not need to get retired military men as “talking heads” on news shows.

What this leads to is a Spartan warrior culture that thinks the rest of America’s gone soft, and an America that doesn’t understand its warriors and doesn’t entirely trust them. The implications of this, especially in the wake of things like Abu Ghraib, should make us all think a little bit.

All of this isn’t an argument, mind, for the reintroduction of the draft. What I’d really like to see is an increase in military pay and benefits to make them truly competitive with the private sector. This would draw recruits from a broader cross-section of American society, and go a long way toward having the military look like America again.

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RE: people feeling like serving one’s country is a burden these days instead of an honor.

Drafts have always inspired discontent of one kind or another. Practically the only instance in American history where its institution hasn’t sparked large-scale protests or riots was in WWII, but even then there was still some resistance (many of the budding civil rights activists were involved). Read up on the New York Draft Riots in the Civil War for a good instance of discontent.

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Sorry, mhendo, my post was directed at the OP, not yours. THERE is the opportunity for the OP to Fight the Good Fight.