Commentary—

A Draft Would Make The War More Real

By Mark Drought

President George W. Bush continues to insist that he heeds his generals’ counsel on military matters. Nonetheless, no one is surprised by his lack of enthusiasm for a recent suggestion from General Douglas Lute, his War Czar, that “it makes sense to certainly consider” reinstating the draft.

Like many of the ideas rejected by this administration, the draft may be one whose time has come. This isn’t solely because neocon mismanagement has broken the US military, which desperately needs more soldiers. Nor is it because more-diverse armed forces would result in a lower percentage of poor and minorities dying in Iraq, as asserted by New York Congressman Charles Rangel.

Nor is it because we’ll need to “either pull back on our global commitments or increase our military force,” as Dan Rather has warned.

The most important argument for a draft is that it might engage the American people, whom this administration has deliberately insulated from the effects of its foreign policy.

Mr Bush has largely had a free hand in the war on terror, because the public has been shielded from most of its consequences, including the body bags returning from Iraq. The Republicans have even taken the unprecedented step of cutting taxes while spending $500 billion to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq.

Although most Americans have turned against the Iraq War, we’ve shown little interest in actively opposing it, and our apathy has infected the politicians we elected in 2006 to end it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s brain may be telling her to resist GOP excesses, but her heart’s not in the right place –– it’s set on increasing her slim Democratic majority. Our spineless Congress has shown no inclination to cut off funding for the occupation and Pelosi didn’t even put up a fight over warantless wiretaps.

Forty years ago, Americans were polarized by the Vietnam War. Our country was awash in political dissent, especially on college campuses, which were hotbeds of the peace movement. Then why such pervasive apathy on 2007? One major factor is that our all-volunteer army enables us most of us to feel totally disconnected from the actions of the military.

During the Vietnam era, the draft directly affected young people, as well as their parents, involving a sizable percentage of ordinary American families. In 1970, my father hoped I’d be drafted, because military service might make a man out of me. But once my draft lottery number (#22) was selected, my mother wanted him to keep me out of Vietnam by slicing off one of my toes with his table saw.

The apathy of today’s young people compares unfavorably with the activism of college students during the 60s, but the moral implications of this are dubious.

Without the draft hanging over our heads, most of us would have spent the 60s ignoring Vietnam. Support for the antiwar movement was a mile wide and a half-inch deep, and it evaporated quickly enough once the draft ended in ’73. Teenagers of any generation are self-absorbed, self-interested conformists who are afraid of being different. Even those who disapprove of the Iraq War have little incentive to get excited about something that isn’t likely to affect them directly.

Been to any Moveon.org meetings lately? They’re as geriatric as the protesters shouting “Bring Home the Troops” on street corners. And a good percentage of the left-wing blogosphere that’s so apoplectic about the war is made up of graying boomers.

But college students — and their parents — might be roused from their lethargy by a draft. Let this generation of teenagers spend their 18th birthdays worrying about their draft numbers, like we did, and they might start singing a different tune.

The best way to arouse the apathetic about government policies is to make them realize that those policies could result in Muslim holy warriors shooting at them. We need a draft, because — as the 1776 Revolution should have taught us — angry Americans are better Americans.

(Greenwich native Mark Drought is an editor at a Stamford information technology company and an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut in Stamford. )