You may recall at the tail end of the 2004 election that Rock the Vote floated the scare tactic that the Republicans might reinstate the draft. Never mind that no one on either side advocated such a thing. The Republicans are all about war and coercive government. Right?
Well, students of history will realize that the draft has generally been a liberal proposition. The argument is, in a volunteer army, only those with the fewest opportunities will consider the armed services. Thus, poor people end up on the front lines while the more privileged don’t need to consider it.
(What is stereotypically liberal about this is the inability to imagine the legitimate free will of another person, if that other person makes a choice that one finds inconceivable.)
Well, here we go again:
If we feared our children were next up to be gutted like fish, we might be less likely to shake our heads at crazy antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan. If turning 18 meant your kid's boots on the ground, a resolution to pull troops out of Iraq by a certain date might grab more than six votes in the US Senate. [...]
A news release posted on Rangel's website noted, ``Right now, the only people being asked to sacrifice in any way are those men and women who, with limited options, chose military service and now find themselves in harm's way in Iraq. A draft would ensure that every economic group would have to do their share and not allow some to stay behind while other people's children do the fighting." [...]
During the Vietnam conflict, the draft sent hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets. When war is not an abstraction but a personal, involuntary destination, the blanket rationale of war -- defending liberty -- receives tougher scrutiny. Then, politicians have to answer to every American family, not only to those whose loved ones volunteered for military service.
Either this war is worth every citizen's effort, or it's not worth any soldier's life.
In other words, more people should be put in harm’s way against their will, for the sake of emotional impact. What a horrific argument, and one hopes she offers it as reductio ad absurdum, though I suspect not. It requires a particular violence of mind to describe recently deceased soldiers as “gutted like fish”.
The writer likes the idea of governmental coercion so that we might relive Vietnam. There is nothing pacifist in her tone, or her logic.
It’s been said many times that our current press corps considers Vietnam a highpoint of their profession, even if it was a low point for the country. Yet Vietnam was not a journalistic breakthrough because the reporters of the time were trying to recreate a war from 30 years earlier. In doing precisely this, our current crop of reporters finds itself hamstrung by a perverse nostalgia.
It isn't that surprising really. Faux "liberals" (who aren't really), view people as a resource to be used by the ruling elite for the "betterment of all". That's why these faux-liberals have such an easy time advocating ideas like this, eh?
Posted by: Ali Massoud | 25 June 2006 at 12:48 PM
PS- Here is what an actual *liberal* really is:
http://www.blackcrayon.com/library/dictionary/?term=classicalLiberalism
Posted by: Ali Massoud | 25 June 2006 at 12:49 PM