Reply #35: I agree and disagree...

[IntravenousDemilo]

A lot of people from lower-income and minority (read: black) people find they must enlist because it's the only way to pull themselves and their families out of poverty -- not that your average soldier is paid all that well -- whereas upper-income white children don't feel the same compulsion to join up, because they want for nothing. So a preponderance of poor people find themselves as cannon fodder.

A draft, however, if consistently applied along the whole spectrum of incomes and ethnicities (no deferments because Daddy or some other family member is a high muck-a-muck, for instance), is something progressives should embrace as the right sort of social engineering -- but only if it promotes egalitarianism, with the sons and daughters of plutocrats and politicians being shot up with the same frequency as the sons and daughters of coal miners. Ah, if only it were for a JUST war!

But it's not, so I'm a little torn. As well, we in Canada do have a history of sheltering Americans dodging the military draft. We did it during the Vietnam conflict, and we're fully prepared to do so again, since we disagree with this war on principle as well. But we won't take in volunteers who happened to change their minds.