Johann Hari: Bring back conscription (even for me)

milmor_1 · 02-01-2007, 15:51

The content of the article below raises some issues.

Johann Hari: Bring back conscription (even for me)

Would MPs have backed the war if they had known their kids would end up on the streets of Mosul?

Published: 01 February 2007

There is a surreal disconnection between the war Out There and the calm Back Here. As it waits for another of George Bush's futile "surges", Baghdad is melting ever faster into a sectarian Chernobyl. My friends there say that every street is being turned into an ad hoc fortress, with barricades at each end manned by impromptu militias to keep out the sectarian death-squads as best they can. One friend - a rational graduate of science from Oxford University - is muttering about the End of Days. British boys and girls are staggering through a similar implosion in the south of the country - but have we noticed?

The troops in Iraq are stuck in a paradox. A majority of the British people (62 per cent) want to bring the troops home now. A majority of the troops (72 per cent) - if they are like the recently polled American soldiers - want to come home now. And a majority of the Iraqi people (78 per cent) want the troops to go home now. So the unwilling are occupying the unwilling on behalf of the unwilling - in the putative name of democracy.

Why? When we in Britain are asked by opinion pollsters which issues we consider to be a priority for us, the war doesn't even feature. To most of us, if we are honest, Iraq is a depressing two-minute item on the news and nothing more. Perhaps when a new strain of psycho-fundamentalism flickers into the news - as it did yesterday in Birmingham - we wonder about a possible connection. But we know it is complex, and it soon fades. The war in Iraq continues because it doesn't matter enough to us to stop it.

Representative Charlie Rangel, a congressman for New York, has been proposing a way to make it matter. You won't like it - I don't, but I am finding it very hard to give a convincing counter-argument. Before I outline his case, I should explain that Mr Rangel is one of the most liberal members of the US Congress. He is an African-American who grew up in poverty-sunk Harlem. His mother was a maid, his father did a runner. He has been one of the most indefatigable opponents of the Reagan-Bush assault on the American poor. He opposed Vietnam. He opposed Iraq.

And his solution? Reintroduce the draft. Enter the name of every citizen between the ages of 18 and 30 - male or female, gay or straight, no exceptions - into a ballot, and make the people who "win" enter the military. I can hear your splutters; I made them myself. I just turned 28. How, I cursed, can a liberal advocate an authortiarian Nam-flashback? Mr Rangel recently explained on CBS's Face the Nation: "There is no question in my mind that this President and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if members of Congress and the administration thought their kids would be placed in harm's way."

The liberal case for the draft boils down to two arguments. First off, a draft would change the attitude towards war back home: we would need a lot more persuasion to allow a war to be launched, and we would follow its course much more carefully. Most of us place so little importance on the war because we don't know anybody who is fighting it. Speak to military mothers, and they know the map of Basra better than the Tube map; but how many of us can even picture it? It's hard to sympathise with abstract people, no matter how nice you are. The people fighting the war are overwhelmingly black, brown or poor. Most of us are not.

Mr Rangel points out that the US - and, by extension, Britain - has a form of economic conscription. The poorest kids join the army, because they have very few other options; for many, the road to university runs through Fallujah. For example, in 1956, 400 out of 750 Princteon graduates went on to serve in the military. Last year, out of 1000 graduates, three - that's three - did so. Black Americans make up 12 per cent of the population, but 26 per cent of the US Army. It's hard to find the hard figures for the British Army, but the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru recently revealed that, while schools in the economically withered Valleys area had received 10 visits on average from army recruiters, those in the wealthier Vale of Glamorgan had not received any visits.

What if the Army was made up of a genuine cross-section of classes and professions? Picture it. Would enough MPs have walked through the lobbies to back the war if they had known their kids would end up on the streets of Mosul facing a slew of suicide-bombers? Would I have (stupidly) supported the war if there was a chance I would have ended up patrolling Basra with a machine-gun? Honestly? Professor Charles Moskos, a former draftee, takes this further, arguing: "I suggest we start drafting at the top of the social ladder. Who better to serve a short term for their country than those benefitting most from living here? When the children of our nation's elite perform military service for their country, our national interests will be taken much more seriously."

Conscription would, paradoxically, reduce war. Richard Nixon sensed that. He decided in 1972 the best way to "cripple anti-war movements" was an all-volunteer army. He was right. It's why the former Nixonian stage-hand Donald Rumsfeld told Congress in June 2005: "There isn't a chance in the world that the draft will be brought back."

He knows, too, the second liberal argument for the draft: a conscript army fights wars differently. One of the great forgotten stories of Vietnam is that, placed in an immoral war, the conscript troops rebelled en masse. It began in 1969, when an entire company of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade sat down on the battlefield and refused to fight.

By 1971, the US Armed Forces Journal wrote: "Our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers, and dispirited where not near-mutinous... Conditions [exist] among armed forces in Vietnam that have only been exceeded in this century by... the collapse of the Tsarist armies in 1916 and 1917."

If we had conscripts patrolling Iraq, there would be a similar mass rebellion. This is another example of how the draft requires politicians to provide overwhelming and on-going justification for wars - or end them - rather than the babble we hear today on the subject from Bush and Blair. So, even as I find his argument terrifying, I must admit Mr Rangel is right. If a war is worth fighting, it is worth fighting with everybody's children. And if it's not worth fighting - like the barely supervised collapse in Iraq - then nobody's child should die in its futile name.

Independent Online Edition > Johann Hari

Joker · 02-01-2007, 18:04

This article probably won't be readable in it's entirety for long because of The Independent's 'Portfolio' subscription system, but it can always be read on Hari's home page

I didn't buy the Indie today, but I happened to catch a glimpse while visiting Shire Hall with some school documents, and read enough to think this would be worth a mention. Beaten to the punch

Conscription would make a hellacious difference, which is why, like proportional representation, it will never happen. I've always felt, and anybody, feel free to disagree, that since World War 2, for Britain anyway, wars have been fought on the sly, like the way we run our government. If a fair balance of the population were forced to get involved, rather than people who chose to sign up, theoretically of their own free will, the horrors of war simply could not be concealed, because communications have advanced that far since WW2, the Sixties, even the Nineties. Remember that bit in 'Heartbreak Ridge' where one of Eastwood's squad uses his mobile to call for an airstrike, if I remember correctly, because the field radio is broke? If he were a conscript with a mobile phone, he could just as easily be spilling to the folks back home instances of cruelty that happen in a war situation, but don't often get reported because the kind of person who would report it, rather than putting his comrades first, doesn't make it through training. The draft would bring in a lot of people who wouldn't react to discipline like volunteers could be expected to, and the forces would have to learn how to deal with that. Not all the timebombs would (try to) blow away their drill instructors before shipping out.

So, like a lot of good ideas, it would sure shake things up, but it'll never happen.

leobold1 · 02-01-2007, 20:55

More of the "only the dumb and poor" join the military.

Did a draft keep the US out of Korea and Vietnam...two wars that fit the description of "in the back door" way of getting into a war.

Personally, I don't want a draft. I would rather have some dumbass who can't tie his boots without someone doing it for him, if he's there because he wants to, rather than having someone forced to be there and resenting it the entire time.

ptco911 · 02-01-2007, 21:27

I saw the expertise and morale of the US Army when I joined in 1972. It wasn't a pretty sight. The all volunteer force currently serving are a dedicated, well trained force. They are still a cross representation of American society. The talk of the uneducated and unemployed being the primary source of recruits is a crock of bull.

The re-introduction of the draft would solve some manpower problems for a long term slow build-up of the armed forces or in the event of a full mobilization, but would not assist in any immediate increase in the force structure.

The rich and privileged in our society may not have the financial need for the military, but many join because of family history the belief in what we are fighting for is just.

I was not by any means from a wealthy family, but we were well off and yet I chose to make the military my career and never looked back. None of the careerists are forced to reenlist.

If the full baloon does in fact go up, everyone WILL be in the fight draft or not.

Joker · 02-02-2007, 08:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by ptco911

The rich and privileged in our society may not have the financial need for the military, but many join because of family history the belief in what we are fighting for is just.

That's what I was about to say in answer to Leobold1. It's not just the 'dumb and poor', but it is the people who are motivated to join in the first place, and who are already halfway to believing the system works, if only because their dad or aunt or other relative have served, rather than because they're stupid or desperate. Draftees would be a pain, and a lot more trouble, practically speaking, than they were worth. We can probably agree on that. Where we may differ is that I like the idea of the challenge in principle because we are going to be looking at a lot of changes in the next few decades, and may as well get used to it.

Maybe conscripting people for more than just war is one answer. Community service is something you do in this country as alternative to prison, or a fine. In the US too, if Boy George's experience is anything to go by. If everyone had to do that, as a duty, not a punishment, it could do wonders for community cohesion.

Woodmonkey · 02-02-2007, 14:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joker

Maybe conscripting people for more than just war is one answer. Community service is something you do in this country as alternative to prison, or a fine. In the US too, if Boy George's experience is anything to go by. If everyone had to do that, as a duty, not a punishment, it could do wonders for community cohesion.

Now you're singing my song. I've often said that, if we had a draft it should be for more than the military. We have millions of acres of forest land that needs the underbrush cleared out so they don't burn down during our fire season. That would be a community service that would be invaluable. Some wouldn't even have to leave their communities to do that. Look at the fires in Southern California that they could help prevent.

ptco911 · 02-02-2007, 15:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joker

Maybe conscripting people for more than just war is one answer. Community service is something you do in this country as alternative to prison, or a fine. In the US too, if Boy George's experience is anything to go by. If everyone had to do that, as a duty, not a punishment, it could do wonders for community cohesion.

I agree with that 100%. There is nothing wrong in serving the country in some way rather than walking around with a hand out.

Maybe these great words will again be remembered.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy - in his inaugural speech, January 20, 1961