THE American public needs to be prepared for what is shaping up to be a clash of colossal proportions between the West and Iran.Huh?
President Franklin D. Roosevelt masterfully prepared Americans before the United States entered World War II by initiating a peacetime draft under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.
Now, President Bush and Congress should reinstitute selective service under a lottery without any deferments.
What makes me wonder whether this is a joke is this:
President Bush has the perfect credentials overseas to execute this move, and little political capital at home to lose at this stage. Polls confirm that a wide majority of people in many countries view him and the United States as the major threat to global peace. Why let them down on this count? Go with the flow.But the rest of it is so damn earnest that one has to think that the guy just might be serious.
To say that I think this is nuts would be an understatement.
1 comment:
Perhaps. But instituting a draft in order to assuage our guilt at not more violently protesting the war (or to encourage us to do so)seems to me to be a cure that is worse than the disease.
Certainly, the difference between the levels of public anger -- particularly by students -- seen in the late 60's and today is due in part, perhaps in large part, to the absence of any direct impact of the war on Americans (other than the volunteer military, of course). But, I think there is more to it to that. I think it is also partly due to the fact that the country generally and students in particular have just gotten a lot more fundeamentalist. The same unquestioning impulse that makes one willing to fight for one's faith also tends to make one willing to fight -- right or wrong -- for one's country. Also, I think, it is partly due to the fact that, unlike Vietnam, we have in this case actually been attacked. Not by Iraq, mind you, which makes Iraq the worng place to be fighting, but the public has a hard time distinguishing between Muslims. For most people, this is a war gainst militant Islam, and there is a sense that Iraq is as good a place to fight that war as any. Finally, (and more nobly) people tend to recognize that however misbegotten the war was at the outset, it would be a crime to cut and run so long as there is some chance that we could salvage something from the effort.
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