The Draft

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Crazy Liz said:

If a FREE country decides to invade another country, aren't they forcing people to fight and die who do not want to?



It's not free. However, it is less hypocritical, since it is treating the nation's own citizens similarly to the way it is treating the citizens of the other country.

I think a lot of the people in favor of the draft right now think making military service involuntary would simply prompt more citizens to face up to the impact of war in more immediate ways. As a consequence, they expect opposition to the current wars to become more galvanized. Personally, I'm concerned that tactics of this sort seem always to have unintended consequences that end up making things worse instead of better. That is why I'm cautious about it.

However, I don't find your argument about freedom convincing. It is putting a higher moral value on our own citizens' freedom than on the freedom of others.

Click to expand...

My bolding in CL's quote.

Even members of the military have complained that the American public is largely insulated from the war in Iraq. In almost every other war, people at home have had to face various privations, shortages, rationing, shifts in employment, and when a draft was in effect, the possibility of themselves or their children having to face the direct threat of dying in a war. This war has been largely unfelt on the homefront, thus protest against it and demands to end it have been nowhere near as galvanizing as, say, the reponse to anti-VietNam war protest.

A draft has the advantage of putting every citizen at the same risk, forces the government to face all of the people instead of being able to smugly point to all troops having volunteered for service.

OTOH, a draft is a nasty thing, interrupting people's lives and putting them at risk against their will.