Moral health tip to America: Stay out of draft [View All]

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http://www.suntimes.com/news/greeley/156042,CST-EDT-greel01.article

December 1, 2006
BY ANDREW GREELEY

<snip>Rangel's argument is patently sick. It assumes that Bush would be cowed by riots in the street. Moreover, there is no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet in this country, from elections to street demonstrations (except maybe in Florida, where ballots don't count anymore). To create social unrest through a draft is to shortcut the electoral process.

Moreover, if there had not been a draft to provide unlimited young bodies for the jungles of Vietnam, that war would never have started -- nor, for that matter, would the Korean War. As the world should have learned in 1914 and 1939, the availability of conscript armies is an open invitation to leaders to make war. If Bush could have mustered conscript armies of men and women, he might have taken on Iran and Korea, too -- whatever was required for victory.

The suggestion of "National Service" brought a lot of authoritarian liberals out of the woodwork. All young Americans, they argued, should be obliged to do two years of service either in the military or in some other form of indentured servitude to the government. They owe the duty of such service to their country.

To which the only valid reply is, "Who says?" Isn't this the United States of America, not ancient Sparta? The government has no claim on the time and life of anyone, except the people who volunteer for military service (often, alas, because they have not many other choices in life) and convicted criminals. Conscription is just barely tolerable in times of great national emergency, if then. The government doesn't own Americans simply because they are young. The late economist Milton Friedman argued that the draft was an inequitable tax levied against the young and in favor of the middle-aged and the old. snip

Veterans of military service usually weigh in on this issue by announcing that the military "made a man out of me." What kind of man, I wonder, has to brag that military brutality was essential to his manhood? Will it make a woman out of his daughter?