I would be interested in seeing more input from other lbo-posters on this.
Joseph Catron: I, for one, am enthusiastically and vocally in favor of a draft. And while I suspect this is a minority position on the left, I know of enough others who share it to be sure that it's not entirely heretical.
DouH Henwood: I'm with you, esp now that I'm well over draft age! The ruling class understands that it's much easier to wage aggressive imperial wars with a professional army. With a draft, popular resistance is likely to be much stiffer. They were in a dither over the state of the military late in the Vietnam War, and rightly so from their POV.
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Off and on during the tears subce 9/11 there have been rather successful local campaigns interfering with military recruitment. Now on the assumption that the U.S. is involved in just one phase of what has been and will be an endless war to maintain order in global capitalism, it will face (and is facing) problems of maintaining adequate military forces. If counter-recruitment were made a major, perhaps central, tactic of the anti-war movement, this could be in fact the best way to campagn for a draft. And in the meantime, let us recognize that we are a very minor force, and that nothingf we do is going to be translated in to government practice. That is, our formal campaigning for a draft would have no material effect while dividing our forces, while we might have a real effect, at some point, in choking off the flow of volunteers.
Thoughts?
Carrol