Posted by
Chris Travers on Sunday, January 07, 2007 2:26:53 PM
I am for universal military service. I think that everyone who is not a conscientious objector should be required to serve in the military for a few years. Why? Because I love America, I love American democracy, and universal military service is the best way to protect ourselves from all threats, both foreign and domestic.
In his farewell address, President Eisenhower talked about both the necessity of and dangers from the permanent weapons industry and standing army we had found ourselves forced to maintain due to the Cold War. His name for this new miliatary establishment was "Military-Industrial Complex." His words echoed the farewell address of George Washington who suggested that overgrown military establishments were the enemies of liberty, and in particular, he said, republican liberty. Certainly today, one should probably include the intelligence agencies like the CIA in the Military-Industrial Complex as well.
Since WWII, we have found ourselves compelled by long-term threats to maintain weapons factories and standing armed forces of a sort not seen before. We have instituted the draft in Korea and Vietnam, and in both those cases, we were unable to prevail (Korea was fought to a stalemate which persists today, and the war is not officially over yet), and in Vietnam, we found ourselves in a similar position but without defensible front lines.
I am aware that the draft has never been popular, and what I am proposing is a sort of universal draft. Howver, one also has to see that our currently all-volunteer army is having a corrosive affect on our democracy. The Army has become a way out of poverty for many Americans but our policy-makers are insulated from the human cost, as is the majority of the American public.
Would we even be in Iraq if the Bush girls had to be over there too? How many senators have children or other relatives serving in Iraq?
Going to war is a serious decision and one that has become all to easily made in our nation today. It is easily made because few think that they will actually be called upon for the sacrifice of their very lives. In short, we as Americans should not be given the luxury of looking at war causalties as something that happens to other Americans. As a result of this shortsightedness, the majority of Americans supported the Iraq war until it became clear that Americans were going to get killed in larger numbers than in 9/11. Then they began to turn tail and advocate running. Every American needs to understand the stakes before going into a war. Those stakes need to be personal. Yes, it will keep us out of many needless conflicts (probably would have included Iraq), but I would also hope it would make the victory deeply personal too so that when we do have to go to war, we will all be involved in winning it, if not in the battlefield in the marketplace of ideas, because we all will share the stakes.