Bring back the draft – part II (Ellen Ratner's Advice For War She Hopes We Mess Up)

WorldNetDaily ^ | January 2, 2003 | Ellen Ratner

[PJ-Comix]

Loyal readers may remember last year's column calling for a return of the draft. Just to show that I wasn't quite howling in the wilderness, the same cause has now been publicly embraced by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who has promised to introduce new Selective Service legislation when Congress reconvenes.

Since my last column on the subject, the nature of the War on Terror has been clarified, and with it, my thoughts on mandatory service. I would like to take this opportunity to modify my original proposal along the lines of the reality now facing the country. During the last century, American wars were largely foreign affairs. Drafts raised armies and navies largely to serve abroad. World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam were the places men and women were sent to fight. Not since the Revolution, the War of 1812 or the Civil War has the country faced the necessity of doing battle on our own turf.

But wars have changed, and nothing dramatizes the shift better than the War on Terror. After 9-11, terrorists partially succeeded in shifting the battleground from foreign lands to our own country. They also succeeded in declaring that innocent civilians were now targets – that the enemy was not just an Abrams tank or a missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf, but a parent strolling with children, a stockbroker in a suit, a fireman, a secretary and an office janitor. As a result, what this country must do – and what the Bush administration has signally failed to inspire – is to prepare for "the common defense" at home. Accordingly, I stand by my original call for a return of the draft and would add the following:

1. Draftees would be given the option of serving in the military, but the emphasis would be on homeland security.

2. Draftees would serve for two-year stints, and would be given the choice of serving in the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, Port Security or Airport Security.

3. Draftees would also be given the option of doing mandatory two-year terms as rural and inner-city teachers, police, fire, hospital, national guard, EMT and other functions closer in definition to social rather than security functions.

It is patently ridiculous that a country of 280 million people is unable to properly inspect commercial traffic on our Mexican and Canadian borders; ridiculous that every container on a ship docking in U.S. ports can't be inspected; absurd that the Border Patrol and Immigration and Naturalization Service are unable to properly process people seeking entry into the country. The type of war our military will have to defend against is no longer the mega-division, combined-force conflict of Europe or Vietnam – it is, now, as Max Boot describes it, "small wars," in which compact, professional forces armed with high technology and first-class intelligence will do battle. Sure, the "enemy" may be some bio-weapons lab in the mountains of western Pakistan, but it is also the guy strolling through Times Square holding a suitcase filled with plutonium. In short, the battle is being (so far, badly) fought at airport security gates, port warehouses, bus terminals and border crossings – official and unofficial.

You don't have to be a conservative to know that any country whose people are unable to defend themselves doesn't deserve to be a country. So far the Bush administration has been waging a modern version of Lyndon Baines Johnson's Vietnam War, in which he promised a pain-free conflict of guns and butter. Nobody at home would have to sacrifice anything. We could fight a war in Vietnam with 500,000 troops, but at home, the party would just keep rolling. Well, it didn't work then, and – heaven forbid – it will only take another 9-11 disaster to prove that Bush's "keep shopping" approach to the War on Terror won't work now.

The country wants to be led, wants leadership that will do more to provide security than just a few well-televised "perp-walks" of olive-skinned terror suspects. What Bush is doing is selling motion for progress, but it won't wash. We need to put the country's young people to work – and that means all of them. No more phony, class-based deferments for college or divinity school. And in a world in which somebody sitting at a computer can wage war as effectively as an F-16 pilot, that also means no more exemptions for mild disabilities, sexual orientation, flat feet, bad breath, hair-loss or bad taste in ties. The Constitution says "for the common defense," and that means everybody but the certified dead.

If you want real security, don't crush civil rights. That's the lazy and stupid approach. Bush and Congress ought to be thinking smart – and that means providing for our own defense.

[xm177e2]

If you want real security, don't crush civil rights. That's the lazy and stupid approach.

Instead of violating peoples' civil rights, we just need a return to the draft! </sarcasm>

[Tailback]

So you agree then, good.