What would you do if the person you love most were being taken away against your will to the most dangerous place on Earth? A place where the people would like nothing more than to see that person humiliated, tortured and killed.
Most Americans don’t have any such concern, because most of them don’t have a loved one in the military.
But for those who do, it’s a reasonable fear, and it’s about to get a lot more intense. My son and a nephew left the Marines not long ago after four long, honorable years, so I’m breathing easier.
Yet, if you have any compassion, let it go not just to those who may be about to fight in your country’s name, but let it go also to their families, who are absolutely powerless to help those they love the most.
Amid a rekindled, though weak and largely symbolic, debate over resuming the draft and sharing this grief, the government has assured us that our professional military is cheaper and more efficient than a drafted one. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week apologized for implying that Vietnam-era draftees were anything less than solid military citizens. But his original point remains that we need not be concerned that we or those closest to us would ever be forced into harm’s way.
What about those “professionals,” however, who chose this way of life? How much does the American public really feel for them?
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These young people might have been lured by sheer loyalty or promises of college money or an idealistic dream that they could make a difference keeping the peace. Or maybe the lure was as simple as the promise of a paycheck in a tough economy.
But they chose this. People signing up for the military do so fully realizing that they might die, right?
Maybe not. Teens in particular are not renowned for careful deliberation. If they were, they would be charged less for auto insurance, and nobody would have made a film geared to them called “Jackass: The Movie,” in which young people do stupid and dangerous things.
As parents, President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush know the sting of faulty teen judgment. When their 21-year-old twin daughters were 19, they apparently made some poor choices with alcohol. Yet at that age they were one year older than many young men and women who sign up for the military, supposedly knowing full well what they are doing.
But at least the Bush girls didn’t accidentally sign up to drive ammunition trucks in the Middle East.
And they couldn’t be drafted, because they are the wrong gender and the draft went out with the Vietnam War.
Currently, with the professional military, most of us have the luxury of being able to sip a latte while debating the pros and cons of messing up Saddam Hussein’s face. Then we can all go home for a good night’s sleep.
As can so many of our political leaders, who also don’t have to worry about their children or grandchildren being shipped across the sea, then sent home in a bag.
But military families will not be resting comfortably for quite some time.
And that is the point being made by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who has introduced legislation to reinstate the draft. Rangel argues that those deciding to send other people’s children to die might be less inclined to do so if they knew their own children might never be around to hug them again, to celebrate a holiday, to bring grandchildren for a visit–to even have grandchildren.
At this moment, thousands of America’s young people are being rocked back and forth in coffin-sized berthing bunks on ships bound for the Persian Gulf. They are heading for an unknown but possibly dramatic fate.
If we could be sure that those who decided to send them had done so with tears in their eyes, we would have a clue that this was the only answer, that this sacrifice was mandatory for our own survival and that peace has no chance.
As the draft eventually forced a broad swath of the American population to question the validity of war in Vietnam, so, too, might a modern draft force us to reach to the bottom of ourselves before we resort to the worst mankind has to offer.
As Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee said, “It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.”
The problem is, perhaps it’s not quite so terrible if you personally have little to lose.
If it’s the family down the street, well, that’s too bad. How sad for them. By the way, how’d the Bulls do?
Sometimes war is avoidable, sometimes it isn’t.
The difficulty–and the natural control against war–comes in deciding whether it’s so necessary that we would sacrifice those we cherish most.
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Send e-mail for Ross Werland to [email protected].