A couple weeks ago I came across this piece by Tom Brazaitis, the Washington senior editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer: A chilling time, yet no one feels a draft. I thought of it again today when discussing the movie Gods and Generals with some buddies over dinner. All of us have sons and daughters in their late teens and twenties… potential draft age. If there was a draft in effect now, would those of us who are hawkish about war with Iraq be still as hawkish? Would those of us who are dovish about war with Iraq still be as complacent about our opposition?
Brazaitis quotes Joseph Califano, the former aide to Lyndon Johnson, who in 1999 during the war in Yugoslavia wrote: “An all-volunteer Army relieves affluent, vocal, voting Americans of the concern that their children will be at risk of going into combat. That makes it too easy for politicians to embark on dangerous foreign missions without thinking through every downside and facing, up front, articulate, skeptical citizens.” Or, for that matter, having to wory about the lives of their own draft-age children.
Brazaitis observed during a recent speech to a college campus: “The students were concerned about going to war in the same way they are concerned about AIDS in Africa or poverty in America. It is a problem, but not one that affects them directly… Whether the draft is a good thing or not, because of Nixon’s action, young men who might otherwise be in uniform or leading anti-war protests now look at war as a spectator sport.”
I had lottery number 195 during the Vietnam War and so I didn’t have to make a tough decision. It pretty much was a spectator sport for me after that. Currently, none of my sons has enlisted (yet) so if we go to war with Iraq, it will be a spectator sport for me as well. I’m suddenly aware of this. And uncomfortable.
Footnote: while searching for the URL on the Brazaitis column, I stumbled on a column he wrote last week titled Hawks should let God stand down that does a much better job than I did of poking at those who proclaim God to be on their side in this impending war.