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Mr.
Rangel's Modest Proposal
January 7, 2003
By punpirate
While I'm often in agreement with Bill Berkowitz, his recent
column approving of Rep. Charles Rangel's proposal to reinstate
the draft is off the mark, if only because it ignores a few
political realities. When I read Rep. Rangel's opinion piece
in the New York Times, I sent the following email to Mr. Rangel:
While I'm not one of your constituents, I hope you'll
take a little time to consider these comments on your
proposal on legislation reinstating conscription.
While I think I understand the underlying motive--to
establish some equality in defense of the country, especially
with regard to the children of national legislators and
administrators, and therefore deter the impulse to war--I
doubt that simple conscription will ultimately effect
that end.
I say this for some, I hope, obvious reasons. During
the country's previous period of conscription, the children
of the wealthy and the influential still managed to escape
service, or, at least, proximity to harm. No further proof
of that fact is necessary than to look to the service
histories of the current occupants of the White House.
There are other more pragmatic concerns, based on both
history, and trends. Conscription during the years of
the war in Viet Nam provided a ready pool of people which
enabled the continuation of an ill-thought-out policy
process for far too long. Even with that large pool of
people, people of color were over-represented in the ranks
of combat troops, to the extent of approximately three
times that of their percentage of the general population.
A lot of that had to do with socioeconomics, and the
changing ratio of combat troops to support personnel.
With each successive war, that ratio has been progressively
skewed toward support. Those without the educational background
to convince the military of their ability to enter training
for support jobs ended up in the field, in one of the
combat arms.
Other concerns might be that a new draft would provide
enough personnel for an increase in wars waged
around the world by the United States. More practically,
since current military practice seems to be Blitzkrieg
followed by indifferent occupation, more troops would
be left to defend themselves against residual and continual
internal attacks and civil strife while serving in an
occupying force.
Politically, this seems a very unwise suggestion, for
two reasons: first, no matter what the text of the original
bill entered into consideration, it will not end up being
what you intend, after a Republican House and Senate are
through with it, and any conscription coming from it may
end up creating precisely the conditions you sought to
avoid. Second, if the draft is deemed by the general populace
to be unpopular (and it will be), it will be very easy
for Republicans to, in 2004, blame Democrats for the legislation
(even if they fiddle with it to their hearts' content).
To my mind, it's far better to punch holes in the reasoning
behind the current administration's determination to wage
war than to facilitate their ability to do so, which any
eventual conscription act may do.
All that said, I appreciate your interests in deflecting
the forces bent on unnecessary war. Sean Gonsalves of
the Cape Cod Times reminds us of A.J. Muste's "famous
quip, which must irritate the sensibilities of those who
ask: what is the way to peace? 'There is no way to peace.
Peace is the way.'" Good advice in the near future and
beyond, I think."
This email was undeliverable, since Mr. Rangel's office will
only accept email from constituents (an odd policy when their
boss is proposing legislation which affects the entire nation,
but, no matter).
In this missive, I hoped to throw up a few red flags, nothing
more. But, in reflection, a couple of points should be explored
further. First, the notion that a large pool of available
bodies can facilitate war, rather than prevent it, is by no
means a specious one. The draft, first initiated to provide
the forces necessary to engage in WWII, was continued post-war
for less than obvious reasons. The "containment" philosophy
espoused by George F. Kennan against the Soviet Union practically
demanded a large peace-time military. The budget for that
large peace-time army, in turn, facilitated the expansion
of the military-industrial complex, which has created its
own bureaucratic juggernaut.
Second, that juggernaut, as history informs us, helped precipitate
the Viet Nam war, and by almost any definition, kept that
war going far longer than necessary. Kennedy, before his death,
had profound misgivings about the war, even in its early stages.
Johnson, thoroughly perplexed and troubled by his own decisions
with regard to the war in Viet Nam, and feeling more than
a bit pressured by the military to continue when his gut instincts
told him to cut our losses, simply walked away. Nixon, seeing
political advantage in prolonging the war (and in favoring
the perceived interests of the military), dispatched Henry
Kissinger, by some reports, to sabotage the Paris peace talks
during the 1968 election.
But, no matter the political considerations, the draft provided
the raw material to continue that war, and dozens of other
minor conflicts around the globe in furtherance of US political
and economic interests. Had there been no peace-time draft
(drifting into a war-time draft), the military would have
been hard-pressed to justify increasing engagement in what
was, essentially, an internal civil war. Regardless of the
current reliance on high-tech weaponry, people still make
that happen, on the ground, in the air and at sea. No one
to man the catapults? Planes don't take off from carriers.
No one to maintain jet engines and avionics? F-16s crash.
M-1 tank treads break? Just another lump of metal in a ditch.
Today, the tables are turned a bit--the military, if recent
leaks can be believed, is a bit chary of becoming embroiled
in conflicts throughout the Middle East and central Asia,
of becoming spread too thin, of having its ass hanging out
in the midst of prolonged occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq,
and possibly other theaters, without the political will to
rebuild those countries and get the military out. . Some of
that reticence on the part of our current military leaders
may be due, precisely, to an understanding of the situation
which politicians do not have--that there's no moral imperative
for war in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, or anywhere in the world,
where US public perceptions include the remote possibility
that war is being fought for corporate interests. Despite
the general flag-waving in the US, if there's even a suggestion
of the war in Afghanistan having been to enable a pipeline
or the pending war in Iraq to "liberate" oil fields, the public
is not inclined to put sons and daughters on the line.
The military brass also know that a conscripted force is
an unhappy one, too. When the war is either unpopular or immoral,
conscripts gum up that supposedly well-oiled military machine.
No honest military man will fail to acknowledge that reality,
after Viet Nam. Nor will any fail to acknowledge that most
of the Iraqi soldiers killed in or leaving Kuwait in 1991
(approaching 180,000, by some estimates) were conscripts.
This, I think, is what Rep. Rangel wishes to address with
his legislation. But, in today's world, where Bush, Inc.,
has a very strong desire to spread US military power far and
wide, that means, without a draft, diluting troop concentrations
to dangerous degrees. The military understands this. If the
public has even partial reservation about the ultimate intent
of this administration's war-making, there will be no surge
in voluntary enlistment to accomplish those aims. Perhaps
proof of that was the virtual lack of change in enlistments
after September 11th. There was a brief blip upwards, and
then all went back to normal.
Of greater consideration, however, is the ultimate rectitude
of supporting an administration's quest for domination through
conscription. In the late `60s, one of the predominant anti-war
slogans was, "What if they gave a war, and nobody came?" Today,
that's verifiably true, for much of the US population. No
one wants war, at least to the extent of putting one's life
on the line. The professed causes, by most evidence, are febrile
and friable. No matter what Bush and Co. say, Hussein is not
Hitler. The Taliban, for all their institutional insanity,
were not the Visigoths. Al Qaeda is a near wraith in the mist,
for all the administration speaks of them today, despite renewed
activity in possibly Bali, and certainly in Kenya. There's
simply no binding cause to initiate the volunteerism of WWII,
however desperately the Bush Administration has attempted
to drum up both political and military support for its efforts.
Perhaps the public intuitively understands that, after decades
of political manipulation, wars are the creations of politicians,
rather than the necessary responses to pure evil which George
Bush imagines, or purports. Even the attacks of a year and
half ago can be seen by a sensible population as the acts
of small numbers of extremists, and not the aggression of
another nation. Perhaps, after almost three decades of relative
peace (if we ignore Grenada, the first Gulf war, Bosnia, Kosovo
and skirmishes elsewhere, and ignore the latest administration's
forays into central Asia), the US people have become accustomed
to not fighting major wars, and see that war is not the preferred
means of conflict resolution.
Much is made of the flag-waving these days, but the truth
is in the response of the public to the prospect of war. The
young don't feel that their participation in a war in Iraq
or elsewhere is something which will protect them from harm
in later years, that failure to do so will utterly condemn
them to foreign slavery in later life. At this point in history,
they are more likely to be enslaved by their own government
than by any oppressor advertised by this administration. The
people of this country, whether they think of it in those
terms or not, have voted against war--by denying war their
bodies. By not volunteering, they have said that they and
theirs are not sufficiently threatened by other nations to
require their sacrifice. At this time in history, they're
right.
It's unfortunate that, at this time, so many young men and
women joined the military without any thought of having to
get in the way of a bullet. If there were any teeth to truth-in-advertising
law, every recruiter should be obligated to tell each prospective
volunteer that, upon enlistment, their body belongs to the
government and that the government can put it anywhere it
likes, including in front of a hostile force, that they must
be willing to die and/or kill in the government's service,
even if the government is working for multinational oil corporations.
That might reduce the number of kids enlisting to avoid poverty,
something Mr. Rangel's proposed legislation intends to correct
by drafting other kids.
But, Mr. Rangel's modest proposal, like Jonathan Swift's,
depends upon the recognition of his irony by the target. The
current administration is so lacking in the requisite skills
to understand irony that it may embrace Mr. Rangel's proposal
(privately), all the while feigning indifference. Sadly, irony
is wasted on those in our midst who are so single-minded in
their quest for power as to ignore both common sense and their
own responsibility for the mortality of others. Like Swift's
English, Mr. Rangel's Bush Administration will not recognize
the irony in a proposal to raise babies for slaughter.
punpirate is a New Mexico writer with a heightened sense
of irony.
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