Ira Smolensky
In search of citizen-soldiers, and peace
Thud!
That was the sound
of Charles RangelÕs recent proposal for a military draft crashing
inconsequentially to the ground.
Rangel, U.S.
Representative from New YorkÕs 15th District, and a Democrat, also
proposed a draft back in 2003.
At that time,
RangelÕs effort focused primarily on the class bias of our volunteer armed
forces. Wars, Rangel argued,
should be fought by the citizenry as a whole. The volunteer army, on the other hand, has utilized market
forces to produce a military resembling that of the Vietnam war era, when well
off kids could (and usually did) avoid service by going to college, leaving the
battlefield largely to the poor and lower middle class.
The argument Rangel
made last week was somewhat similar, though, with the Iraq war now thoroughly
discredited, his emphasis was more on peace than socio-economic equity. To put it in a nutshell, Rangel asserted
that, if all our kids, including those of the economic and political elite,
were equally liable to serve on the battlefield, then the nation would be much
less likely to engage in ill-conceived wars.
In a rare display of
party unity, RangelÕs fellow Democrats—now the Congressional majority--
immediately distanced themselves from his proposal, making clear that it would
not even be considered by the 110th Congress. Democrats did so without consulting
polls, or even putting their finger to the wind to test the currents of public
opinion. They already know what
the American people think about a draft— itÕs thumbs down, all the
way. And so they abandoned
RangelÕs baby on the Capitol steps, lest Republicans use the issue of a draft to
bludgeon their way back into public favor.
Needless to say,
Republicans are of a like mind.
The 2006 midterm election was bad enough without embracing politically
suicidal causes such as a draft or even national service.
And so Charles
Rangel and the handful of enterprising commentators who take his idea seriously
find themselves on a cul-de-sac of political irrelevance. For now, theyÕll probably stay there.
But I donÕt think it
will always be so.
Because
Representative Rangel has a point.
As an old timer who
came of political age during the war in Vietnam, and who has, sadly, seen
history repeat itself, I think Rangel is correct in his assumption that the way
we select our fighting men and women has a deep effect on our decision to go to
war. In the case of Vietnam and in
this most recent conflict in Iraq, we rolled all too comfortably into war in
part by putting the burden on those least able or inclined to speak out against
bad policy. The result in both
cases has been tragedy, the full depth of which we do not yet know.
I also think Rangel
is more in tune with the intent of the nationÕs founders than are his critics.
While fully
cognizant of the uses that might be made of self interest, politically through
checks and balances, and economically through the free market, our founders
also thought that civic virtue—including the willingness to fight for
what is right-- was indispensable to the health of the republic. In fact, for them, the term citizen
probably implied soldier.
On the other hand,
there is no evidence that the founders were lovers of war.
This, I believe, is
just what Rangel has in mind. He
thinks a well-ordered draft will lead both to a more virtuous citizenry—willing
to fight when necessary-- and to a citizenry more inclined to reject the
clarion calls of spurious wars.
The fact that the
notion is somewhat old-fashioned does not necessarily make it wrong.