April 20, 2006 Op-Ed Contributor
A Peaceful Call to Arms
By PAUL KANE
Cambridge, Mass. -- The American public needs to be prepared for what is shaping up to be a clash of colossal proportions between the West and Iran.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt masterfully prepared Americans before the United States entered World War II by initiating a peacetime draft under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.
Now, President Bush and Congress should reinstitute selective service under a lottery without any deferments.
This single action will send a strong message to three constituencies in the crisis over Iran's nuclear intentions — Iran, outside powers like China and Russia and Americans at home — and perhaps lead to a peaceful resolution.
Iran's leaders and public will see that the United States is serious about ensuring that they never possess a nuclear weapon. The Chinese and Russian governments will see that their diplomatic influence should be exercised sooner rather than later and stop hanging back. But most important, America's elites and ordinary citizens alike will know that they may be called upon for wartime service and sacrifice.
President Bush has the perfect credentials overseas to execute this move, and little political capital at home to lose at this stage. Polls confirm that a wide majority of people in many countries view him and the United States as the major threat to global peace. Why let them down on this count? Go with the flow. ...
(Paul Kane, a Marine who served in Iraq and a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, is writing a book about national service and sacrifice.)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/opinion/20Kane.html>
Carl