Recently, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been sounding the alarm about the fact that the burden of "our" wars is being disproportionately borne by a very small slice of the population: soldiers and their families.
Like, I am sure, many Americans, I have sharply conflicted feelings about this.
One the one hand: I strongly agree with Secretary Gates that the burden is disproportionately falling on a few, and that this is unjust, and I am glad that he is trying to use his position to call attention to this injustice and urge that it be remedied.
On the other hand: They are not my wars. I did not vote for them, I did not and I do not support them. I have worked with others to end them; obviously, my companions and I have not yet succeeded in this endeavor, but going forward, I am more seized with the urgency of ending the wars than with the urgency of spreading the pain more fairly while they continue.
Moreover, I am not a little irritated that my opinions, and those of my companions, are systematically marginalized when major decisions about the wars are made, but we are then urged to more fully share the sacrifices resulting from the decisions into which we were told that our input was not welcome.
Secretary Gates is surely aware of the paradox of his position: He bemoans the fact that the burden of the wars falls disproportionately on a few, but he is well aware that the fact that the burden falls disproportionately on a few is a policy choice that has been made by his colleagues with the goal of facilitating war politically.
If we allow ourselves to consider all possible remedies to the problem posed by Secretary Gates, including those that are politically absurd, an obvious solution presents itself: Reinstate the military draft.
But this is a dead letter politically. The Pentagon doesn't want it; Congress will never approve it.
Moreover, even if this were not a dead letter politically, I could not in good conscience advocate for it. I cannot advocate that Americans should be compelled to participate directly in an unjust war against their will, even if such compulsion would help end the war.
However, if there were a form of the draft that would not compel Americans to participate directly in an unjust war against their will, I would enthusiastically support it.
Here is my proposal for such a draft.
From now on, when the country is at war, there shall be a national service draft. Every resident of America, male and female, documented and undocumented, who is in the age range of those eligible to volunteer to serve in our armed forces shall be required to make themselves available for national service, military or civilian.
No one will be compelled to participate in military service. A person called to national service who does not want or is not able, for whatever reason, to participate in military service, will be given a civilian assignment. The term of service, and the pay and benefits, including educational benefits, of the civilian service, will be similar to that for soldiers who do not receive pay or benefits specifically linked to combat service.
In other words: During wartime, no one will be compelled to participate in combat, but one may be compelled to give up as much time as a soldier does. Furthermore, to the extent practical, the civilian service will be designed to bring those not participating in military service into contact with those serving in the military and with the human costs of war. National service draft civilians will be assigned, for example, to serve at VA hospitals. National service draft civilians will be assigned to help provide day care and other support services to military families.
Because no one will be compelled to participate in the military, we will still have an all-volunteer military, as the Pentagon wants.
However, every American of eligible age who does not want to participate in military service during wartime will have to say why. Every answer will be legally accepted; but every American of eligible age will have to give one, they will have to sign their names to it, and their answers will be a matter of record. If they are ever candidates for elected or appointed public office, journalists will be able to look up the answers they gave. That would be a strong incentive for them to give thoughtful and true answers, because they will have to live with their answers.
In order to know when the national service draft should be in effect, we will need an operational definition for this purpose for when we are at war. I propose the following definition for this purpose: If, in any two consecutive months, at least two US soldiers are killed in combat, we are at war, and the national service draft shall be in effect for the following month. US soldiers killed in combat is a category of data kept and made available by the Department of Defense, so this definition should be unambiguous.
Note that a universal-time tax is highly progressive, because the richer you are, the greater the opportunity cost of your time. At this writing, 40 year olds are eligible to volunteer for military service, and therefore 40 year olds would be subject to the national-service draft. That means that some bankers and corporate executives, and other extremely wealthy people, would be eligible for required national service, not to mention their children and family members.
Since bankers, corporate executives, and other extremely wealthy people have very disproportionate influence in our political system as it now exists, I think this mechanism would be a significant disincentive for the country to go to war, and when we are in a war that is unpopular and dragging on, like the war in Afghanistan, it would increase the pressure to end it.
If you agree that this is a just idea, then the question that remains is how to make it a live proposition politically. And my proposal to do that is this: integrate it into an improved version of the DREAM Act, around which there is already a highly mobilized political constituency.
Recall that among us dwell many young people who have grown up in the U.S. but cannot go to college or work legally because they do not have documents, having been brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were small. To remedy this obvious injustice, a bill called the DREAM Act was introduced. The version recently rejected by Republicans in the Senate would have allowed these young people to normalize their status if they go to college or serve in the military.
Some objected that these were the choices: If you can't go to college, you have to participate in the unjust wars.
But in my proposed version of the DREAM Act, these wouldn't be the choices. In my version, undocumented Americans would be subject to the national service draft. When they've completed national service, they get documents. They would not be compelled to serve in the military, but they would be compelled to serve, just like other Americans.
Moreover, in my version of the DREAM Act, no one could plausibly argue that someone was benefiting from special treatment. In my version, during wartime, there wouldn't be a special "path to citizenship" for a group of undocumented Americans. There would be one path to "citizenship," in the broad sense, for all Americans of service age. You're American? You serve. You've served? You're American.
My version of the DREAM Act would bake a bigger pie so that more may eat. Every American who completes national service would get the education benefit, so every American could go to college. And for this purpose, we would count certified vocational training as "college," so if you want to learn how to build or repair something socially useful, we'll count that as good as studying neoclassical economics or French literary criticism.
And at a time when officially measured unemployment is almost 10%, my version of the DREAM Act would allow the government to soak up some of that unemployed labor and put it to good use.
Let's call it the Wartime Patriotic Americans National Service DREAM Act, and pass it without delay.
Follow Robert Naiman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/naiman
The American infrastructure has also eroded over time, since monies spent on unjust wars, especially the corrupt Bush/Cheney debacles, was transferred to overseas locations, when the monies could have been spent on local needs of Americans. There are 100 American made Iraqi millionaires for every one of the American deaths in Iraq. And the same corruption is happening right now in Afghanistan.
If you examine the draft, several research studies have demonstrated the disproportionate number of lower class men who were drafted. It seems every kid born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like our incompetent president Bush, got deferrals. In Bush's case, his dad paid for his pilot training, where he was caught flying military aircraft drunk. Bush - drunk and incompetent.
"The amendment would do more to keep American boys out of slaughter pens in foreign countries than any other measure that could be passed. It is based on the philosophy that those who have to suffer and, if need be, to die and to bear the awful burdens and griefs of war shall have something to say as to whether war shall be declared." - Ludlow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Amendment
Then wouldn’t one be for secretary G, to get out from behind his modesty-panelled desk, and lead the forces into combat. That way he can discover for himself, precisely how acceptable he finds the reality of the matter.
“However, every American of eligible age who does not want to participate in military service during wartime will have to say why”.
Couldn’t they just render themselves unacceptable, by virtue of DADT?
“At this writing, 40 year olds are eligible to volunteer for military service”
Why stop there? How about providing an opportunity for those elderly citizens with the inclination and/or a terminal illness, to volunteer as IED disposal engineers?
“my proposed version of the DREAM Act”
We had a dream. We (en)acted it. We went to war. Against all threats to our species.
Constitutionally, the Commander in Chief has no power to make war. The power of making war rests solely with congress who illegally (IMO) relinquished that authority to the president.
Instead of instituting a draft, I recommend that any new war has an accompanying tax increase to help pay for the war, in which case, only the most serious of wars would ever be waged, because Big Business, the GOP and the Democrats would probably try to find a non-tax solution. Would FOX News support taxes to pay for WWII, of course, but would FOX support taxes for Iraq and Afghanistan? Of course NOT. Maybe Halliburton and Blackwater only, but the rest of the country would not choose to pay for war, therefore we were never serious about the war in the first place.
Money is so much more important to Americans than human life, which is why taxation rather than the draft would do more to stop profit-driven adventurism.
I was drafted and ended up in the Army. I hated every minute of it but I did my duty and learned things about myself I never would have had I been allowed to just continue my career. It definitely changed me for the better. Involuntary servitude? Perhaps but I came out of that experience a winner!
I support a War Tax for any type of invasion, occupation or "peace keeping" mission the Pentagon is involved with.
This War Tax should appear on your paycheck stub, as does FICA, and be explicitly labeled "War Tax" or "Iraq Occupation Tax" or something similarly explicit. Imagine the outrage and how rapidly support for these illegal and immoral wars would fade if people could see how much of their paycheck was being stolen every pay period to fund this.
What about it, folks? Let's bring this idea to our congressional representatives; we want a War Tax, clearly earmarked on every paycheck stub, so people can see what these wars REALLY are costing them.
Do you think the Military Industrial Complex and the congressmen and senators who shill for it would ever support such a thing?
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.