Charles Rangel (D-NY) has again raised the subject of reinstituting the military draft as a way of ensuring that the prospect of war will be treated by the powerful and well-connected with the kind of seriousness it merits. Of course, the proposal will go nowhere, but the reaction to it is always interesting. NPR’s resident political sports 
commentator Cokie Roberts, for instance, pointed out that people volunteer for today’s military, that they are there because they want to be there, and that, anyway, the military doesn’t want a draft. There’s a civics lesson in this somewhere, I’m sure of it. You won’t get that from me (unqualified, for sure), but this reaction is certainly worth a closer look.
Sure, people volunteer for the military, but very often they do so on the basis of some pretty specious recruiting claims (not to mention glitzy advertising that you and I pay for). Many times they come from depressed communities where there are few options for high school graduates to get an education, start a career, or even just find a decent-paying job. As far as wanting to be there is concerned, my first question is, wanting to be where? Iraq? Doubt it. There hasn’t yet been massive desertion or near insurrection like there was in Vietnam, but then these are, again, volunteers many of whom entered the armed forces not simply because they wanted to serve their country, but because they hoped to either make a career in the military or find a career through the experience. That and the culture of the modern military makes disobedience much, much more difficult than it would be for a draftee who didn’t want to be in the service in the first place.
Finally, the question of whether or not the military wants a draft seems kind of irrelevant to me. Last time I looked, they took their orders from the elected civilian leadership and not the other way around. (They didn’t particularly want to go into Iraq either, and look where we are.) Their reluctance stems, of course, from the Vietnam experience, but what the hell — people were drafted into America’s wars long before Vietnam. Was the problem… Is the problem the draft or the fact that the war was plainly wrong and immoral and no one wanted to fight it? Seems to me it’s the latter. What really bugs people about the draft is that it puts us in a situation where we can’t get into a war unless it obviously needs to be fought — i.e. that there is no alternative.
There’s another basic moral question here; one that Cokie and crew are unlikely to address. Just because people are willing to do our fighting for us, that doesn’t mean we should feel free to sent them on some hopeless, pointless, gratuitous mission like invading and occupying Iraq. I think Rangel’s point is that general conscription would make the decision to go to war a matter of keen interest to every part of society, from penniless kids in Appalachia and south Bronx to ivy league-bound prepsters and their parents. I find it grimly amusing that people are encouraged think of the Vietnam era as a time when people didn’t support U.S. troops and that today we’re behind them all the way. Back in the sixties, if you were an 18-year-old man, you were about two inches away from being a troop yourself. You likely had good friends and/or family members in the service — maybe a cousin, an uncle, or a brother overseas — and you were watching the mails for that draft notice. It’s nothing like that today. Nowadays, people slap a magnetic ribbon on their bumper and you’d think they just came back from a freaking U.S.O. show.
What the fuck — Cheney was no anti-war protester in the sixties; just a selfish slug who was unwilling to push himself away from his Thanksgiving dinner to get shot at in Vietnam. And while people criticize sixties radicals no end, the Cheney model is the one we all follow today.
luv u,
jp
First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. Got all that? Okay, now let’s do the river. First there is a river, then there is no river… etc. Right. Let’s try Shirley! First there is a Shirley, then there is no Shirley…. 
First — why are we using Marvin as an engineer? That’s simple. He’s got one hell of a set of ears. That was one thing Mitch really did right in building our mechanical friend, let me tell you. That robot can hear a pin drop on the other side of the world, or a child sighing for her mother in Madagascar, or bricks being fashioned by contract laborers in a distant galaxy (oh yes, they do exist — don’t tell me they don’t). When properly calibrated, he can spot the precise frequency that is giving Matt a headache at any point in a given song, whether it’s being generated by an acoustic guitar, a sousaphone, or one of those twangy banjo-like things they play in China. Oh, such a sensitive instrument is that Marvin. In fact, I believe that’s why Mitch sent him aloft in the Zamboola-balloon (or “Zamballoon”, as we’ve taken to calling it). Some kind of research into meteorological acoustics. (I think he’s preparing for a conference. What the fuck, just ask him.)
Well, all right, so the experiment is going to last a few days, that’s what Macaphee tells me. And we’re left to twiddle our own dials, as always — no help from nobody. No Marvin, of course. No producer. We can’t even get the man-sized tuber to sit in, mainly because he’s still wrapped up in that numismatic scam that anti-Lincoln has gotten him started on. Oh, fuck… excuse me. Tubey, put that change jar down! Rare coins, my ass! All coins are rare when you’re broke! Just put it down! Jeezus, he’s gullible. And then there’s Trevor James Constable, who’s been obsessing over his orgone generating device — apparently the works have become severely gummed up… to the point where it doesn’t even attract invisible flying predators anymore. I ask you… what the hell use is an orgone generating device if it doesn’t even attract invisible flying predators? (Trevor James is only now trying to find an explanation. I’ll keep you posted.)
assassination of John Lennon, and — on a more personal note — the death of my brother Mark, a very excellent jazz pianist (among numerous other things), whose car was knocked off the road by some drunk up in Maine (a blood-alcohol brother of Dubya, no doubt… but I digress). It was also a full year of the Iranian hostage crisis, during which our nation was taken by a kind of hyper-nationalism hitherto unknown to me. Some may remember (amid the soaring gas prices) the jingoistic songs on the radio, the first bloom of yellow ribbons, and the like. I can remember walking through one of the classroom buildings at New Paltz and seeing some bulletin board graffiti that read, “Who needs the Ayatollah’s oil? We’ve got 15,000 Iranian students to burn.”
Israel, on the other hand, has the capability to destroy any state in the Middle East, with hundreds of undeclared nuclear weapons in their arsenal. And while the rest of the world is transfixed on the horror we’ve created in Iraq, Israel has taken this opportunity to kick the living hell out of the slum that is Gaza, firing missiles into densely populated residential neighborhoods and following their usual tactics. The IDF has iced so many children in the occupied territories that the western press hardly bothers to report on the phenomenon any more — it’s becoming remarkably unremarkable. All the while, our government — the only one that can effectively restrain Israel — is asleep at the switch, standing aside while the blood flows in Gaza, much as we did when Lebanon was savagely attacked last summer and when Jenin and Nablus were being pounded by the IDF. We have demonstrated in a multitude of ways how little we care about the lives and livelihoods of people in that area of the world. Repairing that will take more than a cosmetic changing of the guard at the Pentagon and some high sounding rhetoric.