The Devil's Advocate Asks - Would You Enlist?

Okay - I enjoy chickenhawk baiting as much as the next guy. Scratch that - I love it.

The spectacle of enthusiastic young Collegian Republicans cowering in their Guccis at the concept of actually, you know, putting their own butt on the line - ah, the sweet gamey taste of hypocrisy is unlike any other.

But - I hate myself for asking the question - is it fair? I can cheerfully say I won't enlist (assuming Canada joined the war) because I don't believe in the war, and in the astronomically unlikely event that there was a draft I think I can safely say I'd opt for jail.

And yet - devil's advocate, remember - because this is a matter of life and death, deep, deep in the back of my mind I wonder if I'm not using my principles as a shield while asking others to risk death for theirs. And that is, after all, exactly what those young, comfortable Bush-Boosters are doing.

This isn't to say by any stretch that any one who has principled opposition to war is masking cowardice. This is rather to ask the question, assuming that there was a call to join a war you did think was a necessary conflict, would you fight in it? Would you feel comfortable supporting it and sitting on the sidelines? Is there an absolute obligation to risk life and limb for our principles?

My own answer? - since I'm not really a pacifist, and I do believe that on rare occasions there are such things as Just Wars, I like to think I would enlist. I mean, aside from the fact that I'm too old and would likely end up planting an RPG firmly up my own behindus in the first two seconds of combat...

But anyway, since this has been on my mind, I thought I'd put the question out there.