by now i hope you’ve seen the picture of the coffins which ran in the seattle times. yesterday, the woman who took the pictures was fired for violating her contract.
she may have been technically in the wrong, but her photographs – and the decision by the seattle times to publish them – finally broke the embargo.
i think it is complete bullshit that we’re shipping our dead soldiers home in the dead of night. i am disgusted at our leadership for acting like our soldiers are something to be ashamed of.
and people have finally started talking about the draft. well you know what? i mentioned that possibility over six months ago to the monkey and i still feel the same way about it as i did back then. i’m appalled at some of my liberal counterparts who’ve suggested that a draft is the best way to “wake people up”. that’s insanity. i am unwilling to provide the neocons with more warm bodies to turn into cold ones. if we have a draft, i will be among the first to protest.
we do *not* need a draft to accomplish the goal of turning public opinion against bush. what we need is HONEST media coverage.
now far be it for me to suggest that the media “use” these pictures (click to see over 300 photos of our dead, courtesy of the memory hole) to wake people up, but i don’t see any other option. i want to see these pictures on the news every single time one of our soldiers comes home in a steel coffin. and i don’t want them snuck in during the dead of night. i want them to come home in broad daylight. i want a military band to meet them on the airstrip, i want the color guard to raise the flags in honor of our fallen, and i want us to STOP PRETENDING THAT THIS ISN’T HAPPENING.
yes, i’m angry about this. and why shouldn’t i be?
the annatopia.com weblog archives 
April 23, 2004 at 12:11 pm
Although I sympathize with your feelings on the draft, I’m going to have to disagree.
For me it comes down to the following… In the US, we find that the army is becoming increasingly culturally homogeneous, increasingly allied with certain political and economic sectors in the nation. Naturally, this can change with the advent of a full scale war. But as it is, I actually don’t know anyone who is currently serving in Iraq, although I imagine that my less privledged buddies from high school are there, with whom I’ve lost touch, primarily because I went to college and surround myself with like-minded liberal upper-class types, etc. I imagine most middle-class GOP types are in the same boat.
If we have a draft or some other form of compulsory national service that includes the possibility of military service, then suddenly war becomes an issue effecting every single one of us. Ultimately, it is fundamentally undemocratic and unjust when wars are carried out on the behalf of impassioned minorities, as is the current situation, while the majority is largely indifferent, easily manipulated, and without a visible stake in demanding truth or accountability from politicians or the media. The alliance between the leaders of the professional military and the current crop of war-mongers makes this a hell of a lot easier to pull off.
Historically, professional militaries are generally either a symptom or cause of imperialism, militarism, war profiteering, tyranny, and continued wars. It goes without saying that the history of American imperialism is directly linked to the rise of the professional army. I wonder if any US Senator has a relative currently serving in the military and I think it’s even less likely that they have relatives serving in Iraq. Conscription radically alters the situation.
IMO the possibility of conscription should be the price to pay for citizenship in any democracy. And I would point out that the most pacific democracies in the modern world all feature compulsory military conscription in one way or another. Indeed, IMO the most reasonable objection to conscription is that it will in fact make our military weaker and less likely to wage just wars. However, I think this risk is decisively outweighed by the dangers of imperialism and simple fact that the result of war is usually more militarism and more war.
As citizens, we need to commit to wars on a collective basis, meaning that the burden falls on each of us more or less equally. But as it is, the American middle class is essentially sponging off of the imperialistic labors of a largely seperate military class. Lately, war has become something of a spectator sport, with no effect on our daily lives outside the thrill or agony of defeat.
Conscription means that every single citizen has to take an active interest in foreign policy. In such a case, the media will endeavor to serve the citizens, rather than entertain them.
April 23, 2004 at 4:19 pm
believe me, scott, i sympathise with your point of view. and i find much in your argument that is persuasive. i have absolutely no problem with burden sharing as long as *everyone* is sharing the burden.
as for national service, you know, i’m still trying to figure out exactly where i stand on that. i do feel that we could do a LOT of good by enlisting our citizenry in national service projects, like americorp type things. but i’m not sure how i feel about compulsory service. as i said, i’m still working through that concept.
it’s the humanist in me which prevents me from supporting the draft, put simply.
but again, thank you so much for your well thought out and eloquent post. i appreciate dissenting opinions over here as long as they can be discussed civilly. =-)
April 23, 2004 at 5:12 pm
Don’t let his support for conscription fool you. Scott is definitely a Lefty.
April 25, 2004 at 3:17 am
I’m pretty much with Scott – IF Bush manages to win a second term (they won’t start a draft before November, so that’s a moot point.)
If the majority of Americans are going to keep insisting Bush is some sort of infallible demigod – then let them put the blood of their young family and friends where their mouths are. We don’t have enough soldiers to invade more than one country at a time right now (if that.) No one seems to care about the $2 billion a day we spend on the military. Maybe they’ll start caring when people they know come home in body bags. Of course, I don’t want to see that – but if people vote for Bush’s foreign policies and scare tactics – then they deserve what they voted for.
Now I have to disagree with Scott that:
“most pacific democracies in the modern world all feature compulsory military conscription in one way or another.” According to the wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription
It is not seen in Europe except for Austria, Germany, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland. The programmes in most of these nations is less than one year and are often more like Government service than military training. And of course, citizens of these countries get huge benefits we’d never see here – free college and graduate school, free universal health care, free childcare, government-subsidised vacations, unemployment covering the entire time one is unemployed, etc.
I think in theory some sort of national service could be a good thing. But I’m not sure if it would work in America. This country is so large, and there is not the same sort of sense of community and public good found in most countries. Americans seem more programmed to think of the government as a burden, and more inclined to compete against one another and race for social class rather than work together. And given the way the US government works, I can’t say I really blame them. Hard to get behind a nation where you can die from illness in the street simply because you’re poor.
April 25, 2004 at 11:39 am
Thanks for your kind words–honestly, I’m not so sure my argument holds up against both the libetarian/humanist and conservative objections. But I like the idea of community-building national service and I think the bulk of the military needs to be deprofessionalized in addition to all sorts of other needed reforms–we don’t need a large sector of our society having a real interest in building new weapons and starting new imperialist adventures. I think conscription might be an effective way to return to the idea of a citizen military.
As for other societies… France only recently abandoned conscription, and Russia is in the process of doing so…but I don’t really think the US has much to learn from either of them. Germany and Sweden, on the other hand, have a well-established pacifism and a widespread intolerance for imperialism that is definitely worth closer consideration. The arguments for continuing conscription are hardly ever made on the level of required troop levels, but rather on the need for a diverse citizen-based military.
May 4, 2004 at 10:08 am
Hell no, I won’t go! I refuse to end up in one of those caskets. I am not cleaning up our President’s mess with my own blood. I’m in college, and I’ll be damned if someone tries to yank me out and make me fight against my will.
I read the proposed bills (H.R. 163 and S. 89) and I am outraged. I’ll protest with ya!