Rethinking the Draft

Memorial Day came about as a day to stop and honor those who died in service to their country, following the Civil War.  On Friday, I listened to an interesting radio program (which I already mentioned on Saturday), which discussed the meanings of Memorial Day, and how the bulk of this war is being carried by the military, and the rest of us are pretty much free to go about our business, hopefully spending plenty of money at the mall, maybe even buying a new car or two, so that we can keep the economy strong, and get that Dow Jones up higher and higher.  There is such a huge disconnect in this country, between the lives of soldiers who are going back to Iraq for 3, sometimes 4 tours of duty, and the rest of us.  One person who was being interviewed for the show said that he thought one solution would be to reinstate the draft.

The theory is that this group of Chicken Hawks are happy to send people to fight and kill and be maimed and die, especially since they have no first-hand experience themselves, and their children are safe, no chance of having to serve and fight in the military.  So, if their kids were stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe they would be more thoughtful, less reckless with people’s lives.

I was raised to believe that the draft was immoral.  That it is wrong to force people to go and fight and kill and be maimed and die.  My father resisted the draft, and refused to call himself a conscientious objector, because to him, that meant he thought it was OK for the government to send other people, just not him.  He did not believe that the government had the right to send anyone.   To please his parents, who would have cared a lot more than he would have if he went to jail, he agreed to alternate service, and did serve in a non-military way during the war.  I feel strongly that he knew what he believed, and he stood up for those beliefs, and that is a moral and just thing for a person to do.

So here we are, and I’m wondering…was my father wrong?  Would reinstating the draft, putting some of the privileged class into harm’s way, help turn the tide in this war?  Would knowing that the CEO’s son, that CEO who funnels plenty of cash into politicians’ campaigns, make Senators vote differently, work harder to find an answer to this quagmire?  Perhaps.   Perhaps the lesser of two evils, drafting people, which I believe is immoral, would be less immoral than allowing the lower and lower-middle classes of this country carry this burden, for they are the majority of the armed forces.

But then I think about how these same Chicken Hawks were of draftable age during Viet Nam…how Cheney and Bush and Clinton and their ilk all avoided seeing any heavy combat, because they were of the elite in this country…well educated and/or wealthy, and they knew how to play the system.  And I see that a draft isn’t a solution, because the parents who think their own kids are too good to fight and kill and be maimed and die, but not someone else’s kids, they will find a way out, and really, not much will change at all.