Don't all yell at once. I know the sentiment here will be overwhelmingly opposed. So let me rephrase the question: should we institute compulsory national service broadly defined, which would include military service as one option?
If your answer is still no, and you oppose the latest military surge of more than 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan, at least you are intellectually consistent.
Still, even if you answered forcefully negatively to BOTH questions, I am going to strongly suggest you read Bob Herbert today. Allow me to offer this quote:
The idea that fewer than 1 percent of Americans are being called on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending them into combat again and again and again — for three tours, four tours, five tours, six tours — is obscene. All decent people should object.
His column is titled A Fearful Price, a title referring to the price paid by the tiny portion of our population that serves, and also their families, especially their children. I want to explore that column and its implications.
I am one of the minority who frequent this site who has military experience, albeit strictly stateside and not in a combat arms unit. During the Vietnam era I volunteered for the Marines because I believed I had an obligation to serve. My perceptions have changed as I have aged, and I would approach the subject differently now: my nation can still demand of me service, but while that service might include my life it cannot automatically include my being ordered to take the life of others, something I would do only in the most extreme circumstances, which for now would be limited to things like protecting the school children in my care.
In my relatively short military service I got to know many who had served in Vietnam, including some with PTSD. I have watched our recent conflicts in the past two decades and seen that PTSD is only one of the costs we ask our service personnel to absorb, and for which we have scandalously not provided sufficient care. I have also watched the scandal of those who opposed Jim Webb's new GI Bill on the grounds that it might mean people would more readily leave the service to pursue other opportunities, thus denying the military sufficient manpower. As a school teacher I have seen an education bill include giving the military more access to school age children at a time when their understanding of what military service means is far from complete.
Herbert starts by telling us about an intelligent student who enthusiastically supports Obama's increase of troops, but who also has no plans to himself join the military to help achieve the "grand mission" he so enthusiastically supports. Herbert then pivots to yesterday's Times article about the impact of deployments on the families of our service personnel. He doesn't think we should be surprised by the study:
into combat are among that tiny percentage of the population that is unfairly shouldering the entire burden of these wars.
unfairly shouldering the entire burden - our military and their families.
His next paragraph is the one quoted above the fold, reminding us that it is obscene, that All decent people should object.
There is too much of value to quote - I would certainly exceed the limits of fair use. But consider this snip:
Most Americans do no want to serve in the wars, do not want to give up their precious time to do volunteer work that would aid the nation’s warriors and their families, do not even want to fork over the taxes that are needed to pay for the wars.
To say that this is a national disgrace is to wallow in the shallowest understatement.
Those words read in context remind us powerfully of the cost of wars for which too many are unwilling to accept any fair share of the burden imposed upon those who do serve.
The RAND study in yesterday's article was commissioned by the National Military Family Association. Herbert offers some quotes from their website, words of children with deployed families. Read them. Ponder them. Consider what they mean.
Herbert then points out that it is easy for us to declare wars and extend them is that so few of us actually feel the pain, that we have now been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than we did in the two World Wars combined. He bluntly reminds us that if voters were given the choice of reinstituting the draft or pulling out of our two current conflicts, "the troops would be out of those two countries in a heartbeat."
Perhaps. But at least if we had the issue of national service including a draft on the table, we might have a more meaningful discussion of whether these conflicts are truly in our national interest. To my point of view, we have never really had that discussion, not in a way that would invoke the attention of all. To rely upon those who patriotically responded in 2001 to the attacks upon New York and Washington and to misuse that patriotism in extended conflicts that have little to do with the original attacks is obscene.
And, as Herbert points out clearly, it violates much of our national history as well. He writes
I don’t think our current way of waging war, which is pretty easy-breezy for most citizens, is what the architects of America had in mind. Here’s George Washington’s view, for example: "It must be laid down as a primary position and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government owes not only a proportion of his property, but even his personal service to the defense of it."
There was no draft to generate troops for Washingont's army during our Revolution. Our first drafts (note the pluarl) were during our internecine conflict, our bloodiest conflict, the war of brothers in the 1860s we call the Civil War although much of what happened was far from Civil. We did not again see drafts until the First World War, and even with patriotic fervor after Pearl Harbor it is hard to believe that we could have fought as successfully as we did in the Second World War without mandatory national service.
We moved away from the draft during another unpopular war which Americans increasingly came to believe was not necessary to our national security. I was in the military in the mid 1960s, at a time when opposition to the war had not yet grown to a majority of the nation. I was in touch with friends in college who actively opposed it, and I heard the voices of those in service who were subject to its risks. I have clear memories of the lack of understanding between the two sides. I did not speak out much then, even though I opposed our being in Vietnam. I was young, and I was also in a military which was still strongly supporting our efforts in Southeast Asia. I also had a certain amount of pride in my own VOLUNTARY service - there were some who being drafted were beginning to be given the option of the Marines rather than the Army, as more personnel were needed for combat arms units. I can remember seeing us ramp up our efforts: when I arrive at Parris Island for Boot Camp in June of 1965, those finishing their training were taking 12 weeks. We went through in 10, and those arriving as we were leaving were going through in only 8. The need for personnel was so great that training of all kinds was being accelerated, probably with some concomitant risks to those undergoing that abbreviated training.
I am not yet ready to argue for a mandatory draft. I have for several years been in favor of some sort of national service commitment broadly defined. I would include a number of demanding civilian positions as well, including police and fire, and possibly teaching in difficult settings like rural and inner city schools.
For me there is a responsibility for shared sacrifice if our liberal democracy is going to survive. I understand that higher ranking military commanders prefer an all-volunteer force. I have also experienced the pride of being in an all-volunteer service, one that still advertises itself as "The Few, The Proud, The Marines." Against that I offer that service should be a requirement of all who benefit from what this nation can and should offer. Of course, we do not currently share those benefits equitably, which is an argument against mandatory service. What troubles me even more is that those who benefit the least are often those upon whom we are depending to provide the military component of our national service. That seems very wrong. That our society provides few opportunities except through military service seems to me to both demean that service and shame those of us unwilling to properly share the burdens.
I think we really need to talk. As a nation. About the seriousness of asking such a small portion of our society to bear the burdens and traumas of service, military and otherwise.
Herbert's conclusion makes the point more forcefully than I can:
What we are doing is indefensible and will ultimately exact a fearful price, and there will be absolutely no way for the U.S. to avoid paying it.
a fearful price - we need to be honest about that, and not impose that upon the less than 1% of our population in uniform and their families.
Especially not on their children. Not unless we are willing to share those burdens.
Peace.