> I cannot believe that anybody on this list is defending a military
> draft. That's just so fucked up.
Defending a draft... as opposed to what we have now? Does that really seem like an improvement on the draft?
Seems to me, if a society is going to have an army, it ought to be a conscript army. It's like taxes: if it's going to be done, then everybody has to do his or her bit.
The only tolerable alternative is not having an army. Which seems like a great idea but may be a little Utopian for the next six or seven years.
Given that there will be an army for a while, a cold-blooded lefty might ask himself, what is likely to make it the most inoffensive army, the army least useful for mad imperial projects like the Iraq war? And surely the answer -- driven home by the Vietnam experience -- is that a conscript army is much less useful to the empire than a volunteer army.
Which is, of course, why we now have a volunteer army.
-- --Michael J. Smith --mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org