Gone With The Draft

Rep. John Murtha has an interesting piece on Huffington Post.

Here's the part I found the most interesting:

"While the Administration stresses that we are a country at war, they refuse to spread the burden proportionately. Instead, they pursue tax incentives for the rich, run up our federal deficit, and spend astronomical sums in Iraq with little or no control over wasteful and fraudulent spending. This is not the picture of a country at war. Consider the following:

The current war in Iraq has lasted longer than the Korean War, World War I and World War II in Europe. This war is the first protracted conflict in modern times in which our nation has not utilized a draft for additional support. If the President is genuinely serious in his comparison with communism and fascism, perhaps he should reconsider a call to reinstate the draft."

Now, while I find the logic of Rep. Murtha's argument pretty much unassailable, I nonetheless have problems agreeing with him. Those reasons are very personal.

I don't feel that I can in all good conscience call for a draft. When I was of military age there was no draft, and I never had to serve in the military. And since I am no longer draftable, for me to call for a draft for people younger than I am when I wouldn't be put at risk myself would be, in my opinion, somewhat hypocritical. Or at least that's how it seems to me. I don't want to be one of those commentators (like General Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard) who's all gung-ho for other people to go off to a war he doesn't have to fight himself.

But the fact that Bush and his co-conspirators think they can fight a war on the cheap is somehow very American -- or at least it's the way we seem to have evolved. We want it all at the same time and we don't want to have to give up anything. We're a people who want to have our cake, eat it too and lose weight -- all at the same time. And what this administration wants is to see to it that only a tiny fraction of the population takes on a disproportionate percentage of the risk and the sacrifice involved in this war -- that way popular discontent won't boil over, as it did, for instance, with Vietnam. That's why you see the same troops being redeployed to Iraq over and over and over again -- they have no other way of doing it, short of a draft. there just aren't enough troops to go around. Not without a draft, anyway.

Now imagine if this government did what other governments have done in this country during wartime. Imagine if they raised taxes. Imagine if they rationed meat and rubber and gasoline. Imagine if they reinstituted the draft and started conscripting 18-year-olds to go off to Iraq and fight -- and they didn't allow for college deferments.

How long do you think it would take before this country exploded? Ten minutes? Maybe twenty?

Tom Moran