[Peace-discuss] Liberals propose draft

[C. G. Estabrook]

	March 28, 2005
	Draft Needed to Bail Out Neocons
	by Paul Craig Roberts

One of the favorite fantasies of right-wing talk radio and Fox "News" is
that only Bush-hating liberals oppose the Iraq war and additional U.S.
military incursions into the Middle East or wherever.

Yet, it is the March issue of the Washington Monthly, a magazine with a
liberal Democratic audience, that makes a case for the draft as the only
way "America can remain the world's superpower."

The authors, Phillip Carter and Paul Glastris, take it for granted that
America's duty is to make the rest of the world conform to America. They
regard this virtuous calling to be so great that a draft is a small price
to pay.

The authors have no doubts that Americans exist in order to serve other
countries. American lives, limbs, and treasure are required to rectify
whatever happens elsewhere that fails to meet with our leaders' approval.

Since other countries are not willing "to share the burden" by sacrificing
their own citizens and resources, America must build a large enough army
to do the job on its own.

The authors try to devise a draft proposal that "would create a cascading
series of benefits for society" by instilling "a new ethic of service"
among college-bound youth. Before America's youth could be admitted to
college, they would first have to serve either in the military or in
tutoring disadvantaged children or by helping old folks, or in homeland
security by guarding ports.

The authors admit that few would choose combat abroad, but say that some
would out of patriotism. They write: "Even if only 10 percent of the
one-million young people who annually start at four-year colleges and
universities were to choose the military option, the armed forces would
receive 100,000 fresh recruits every year."

The authors mean "nationalism," when they say "patriotism." True patriots
would oppose the Jacobin agenda of Global Cop and demand that America
stick to its founding principles. But the authors cannot imagine America
without "its mantle of global leadership" and regard enslaving youth in
the service of the state as a small price to pay.

The authors are probably correct that the neoconservatives' war plans
cannot be undertaken with the present U.S. force structure. The neocons
thought that in Iraq all the U.S. had to do was defeat a poorly equipped
army. They overlooked that insurgency is a different kind of fighting.

To deal with insurgencies requires vast numbers of troops and practices
that tend to produce more insurgents. When the draft army fails to impose
America's will on the world, we will hear the case for "usable nukes."

The U.S. desperately needs to escape from Iraq before America is sucked
into a wider conflict that will necessitate a draft. Once the Bush
administration has created so much instability in the Middle East that a
rising Islamic revolution is afoot, the stakes will be too high for the
U.S. to be able to withdraw.

What might save America from further neoconservative miscalculations is
the collapse of the U.S. dollar. A country dependent on foreign financing,
as is the U.S., cannot fight wars that its foreign bankers do not approve.
I suspect America's foreign bankers would let the U.S. fight itself into a
deep hole before pulling the plug. It is the best way the world has of
getting rid of us.

<http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=5354>