Hagel: It's Time To Talk About A Military Draft
It was time for someone to say it
By ED HOWARD
April 22, 2004
Someone finally said it aloud and it turned out to be Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
The country needs to think about drafting young people into the military, Hagel said.
He added that even certain rodents in D.C. know that the war is going to require lots more of the public treasure.
Hallelujah! The king is as obviously naked as a streaker on the 50 yeard line.
America's far-flung interventions and its role as bodyguard in many nations have stretched the military too thin, Hagel said.
You can't argue with that view. You can debate whether the U.S. should pull back from some of those deployments; but not that the military is a too-thin khaki line.
The senior Nebraska senator also said that it isn't right that the sacrifices of war are falling on the poor, the lower middle class and the middle class.
That was a somewhat politically correct way of saying that people with money seldom see their young trodding the deadly roads of Fallujah with other grunts.
Hagel, a sometimes-maverick Republican, softened the texture of this reality check. He did so by saying "national service" would be a good thing, whether it was in the military or doing something else around the country.
He might be correct, but it hardly matters. Putting more people in the military is the real issue.
During several interviews from Washington, Hagel said talking about the draft is a "nuclear" political issue and that "no one around here will touch it."
Hagel can talk about it because he is not up for re-election and because he is from a hard core Republican state where his position might be applauded more than criticized.
Critics can accuse Hagel of floating a trial balloon for the Bush administration, but his motive hardly matters.
Hagel is correct in saying it is time to discuss conscription or "mandatory national service," or whatever you want to call it.
Clearly the U.S. can't revert to a Vietnam-era system. That's the one that put mostly more white folks and black people in harm's way, while letting those who could swing deferments for college spend the war in ivy-covered foxholes.
How would America's young people – and their parents – react to the notion of a draft?
Like a rocket-propelled grenade hitting a brick wall, most likely.
A song performed by the late Phil Ochs in the 1960s noted:
"It's always the old who lead us to the war; it's always the young who fall ..."
It has been ever thus, for reasons that are obvious.
There was also a slogan: What if they gave a war and nobody came?"
Through a voluntary military the government responded, in effect: If we give a war, no one has to come who hasn't volunteered!"
The military is running short of volunteers, and something has to give in terms of policy. It will come down to a choice of fewer military deployments, or requiring mandatory military service for some.
On the money side of the war:
The cost of the war isn't obvious to Americans, and thus not much of a hot political issue, because it is being financed via credit card. Future generations will have to pay, and pay and pay for it. Like Lyndon Johnson, Bush isn't billing taxpayers who might take a dim view of a conflict that boosts their taxes. Both presidents enjoyed a public sense that the nation could simultaneously support guns and butter.
Officials of the Bush administration have said they won't know how much additional money will be needed for the war effort until (guess when?) until after the November election.
However, it appears the war effort might need lots more money very, very soon to keep things properly replenished over there. The top military brass is saying so. Loud and often.
Every ground squirrel in the nation's Capitol knows that a whopping increase in spending, far more than previously projected by the administration, is going to be needed for the war, Hagel said.
Administration spokesmen began acknowledging Wednesday that more money will be needed, but they declined to name figures.
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