The news today is reporting that Rep. Charles Rangel D-NY will introduce a bill to reinstate the draft when Congress reconvenes next year. Not everyone would have to serve in the military--there would be options for community service as well. But Rangel believes that having a draft would deter politicians going to war. He argues that Bush would never have invaded Iraq had a draft been in place.
I am adamantly opposed to the draft, and I think this notion that it would be a deterrent to war is based on specious reasoning. Rangel says that no one in Congress would vote to support a war if there wasa chance that constituents or children of constituents might be killed. That certainly hasn't been the case in previous wars.
I wrote my high-school senior term paper on why we shouldn't have a draft (at the time we did). For a while I thought that a universal draft in which the military was just one option among many might be okay. When I was teaching I met many first year students who might have benefited from a year or two off before starting college. A year of community service of some sort might provide an opportunity for growth, a time off from studying for a while, a time to gain some perspective and to think more about the future.
But I'm not sure the draft is the answer. I don't think ANYONE should be forced to serve in the military against their will. And I'm not sure I trust our government at this time to set up a system that would make military service truly optional, truly one choice among many.
What think you, readers? Should we have a draft of any sort? Why?
1 comment:
As the mother of a son, I am wholeheartedly against a draft.
But I do think that the short answer as to why the Iraq war has not attracted more dissent is that there is no draft, and the risk of war is largely borne by families without the resources to provide their children with other opportunities.
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