[Peace-discuss] O-bomb-a calls for US military mobilization.

[C. G. Estabrook]

Triangulation being the vogue, I'll take a third point on this one.

First, I think Ricky's right about the unlikelihood of the draft's returning in
the foreseeable future. The primary reason is the unwritten chapter of the
Vietnam War: the revolt of America's conscript army in Vietnam.  Forty years ago
the Pentagon found what the French had found before them, the Portuguese were
about to find, etc.: you can't fight a war of colonial suppression with an army
of draftees.

As we've found in the new century, the US substituted a remarkable two-tiered
mercenary force: the low-paid regular army (and its derivatives -- the marines
etc.) for the poor and the higher-paid private military (Blackwater, etc.) for
the middle-class.  (That's a crude distinction: it would take more bandwidth to
sort out the real class relations, programmatically hidden as they are, in this
and other aspects of contemporary America.)

But, second, I think Charlie Rangel was right: an honest draft would in fact be
a deterrent to war.  And I say this as an opponent of the Vietnam-era draft
(which of course wasn't honest, as the chicken hawks in the Bush administration
prove).  My wife was in fact the founder of the anti-conscription group, the
South Bend (IN) Draft Union (modeled on the Boston Draft Union).  But what the
nation-wide draft-union movement proposed was simply to provide for the poor and
black legal exceptions of the sort Dick Cheney took advantage of (not of course
an easy thing to do).

But those who ascribe the desuetude of the current anti-war movement to the lack
of a draft are not wrong, altho' there are of course other (and perhaps more
important) factors.  I do think that if our military were per impossibile formed
from all classes, equally subject to danger, there would be greater political
limitations on its use.  Counter-examples usually ignore the exemptions the
upper classes find for themselves: take, as a random example, John McCain, whose
war heroics consisted of a total of a few hours in an airplane (plus of course
an elementary error).  And the example of Sparta ignores the quite strict class
division on which its military was based. A better example -- WWI -- finds the
upper classes' sense of a great adventure descending rapidly to a situation
where it became common to say that a bayonet was a device "with a worker on both
ends."

So I agree that "the draft is not a real possibility."  But it should be.

And "Obama is offering the ruling class a brutal bargain: 'Select me as
president, and I will repay you in blood'" -- but not the blood of PLU. --CGE


Ricky Baldwin wrote:
> I assume Wayne is passing this along to us in the interest of debate and not 
> necessarily as his own opinion, which is great.  This "bringing back the 
> draft" bogeyman/bluff has been bouncing around for some years, but it's just 
> rhetoric - or in this case a misreading.
> 
> The draft didn't just end because it became unpopular, but because it created
>  more problems (for the elites) than it solved.  McCain expresses the opinion
>  of the military-industrial complex these days, to the extent that such a 
> phrase makes sense: a smaller, more specialized, more automated, more 
> outsourced military works much better - and as long as the "economic draft" 
> gets its proper stoking by GOP/Dem economic policies there are actually 
> plenty of people trapped inside to do the trick.  (Of course, the neocons 
> have shown themselves capable of overspending practically any budget - in 
> money or lives - that you can name, but even they don't actually try to bring
>  back the draft.)
> 
> The only real discussion, and it's a bit of a stretch to call it 'real,' has 
> been from the left and it started some 4-5 years ago, when Obama was a 
> twinkle in the Dems' eyes.  The point made more explicitly then and more 
> vaguely now (naively, I think) was/is that the reason, or one big reason, 
> it's so easy to start a war these days is that only (or disprortionately) the
>  poor kids have to fight.  Draft the rich kids, too, the argument goes, and 
> you'll ahve a broader, deeper anti-war movement reaching all the way up the 
> economic ladder to include the big corporate sugardaddies, or puppetmasters, 
> or whoever controls Congress.  *They* would never let *their* kids get sent 
> into this nonsense ... right?
> 
> The trouble is, they would.  They do.  There's a long history of it, right 
> back to ancient Sparta and before.  A sick militarist - and not necessarily 
> elitist - set of cultural mores allows it.
> 
> Not all the rich buy in, of course, which leads to the other trouble with 
> this analysis: there's also a very long history of rich kids getting out of 
> the worst, most dangerous sh*t even with a draft - e.g. infamously our 
> soon-to-be ex-president GW Bush.
> 
> And if the proponents of this little game of brinksmanship played with young 
> people's lives think a draft wil necessarily lead to draft resistance and 
> mutiny, well, they may be right, but it takes a helluva lot of that to get to
>  the desired result of pulling out (e.g. Vietnam - 10 years, depending on
> what you count).  And the cost of the game is pretty high.  (When we say we
> want to raise the price of waging war, I think we usually mean raise the
> price that the *warmongers* pay, not that *we* pay.) The discussion may have
> some rhetorical value, talking about the economic draft - which is what Obama
>  seems to be doing here - but the draft is not a real possibility ... and 
> shouldn't be a real fear.
> 
> Ricky
> 
> "Only those who do nothing make no mistakes." - Peter Kropotkin
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ---- From: E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> To: 
> Peace-discuss List <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> Sent: Friday, September
>  19, 2008 7:51:51 PM Subject: [Peace-discuss] O-bomb-a calls for US military 
> mobilization.
> 
> 
> World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> *WSWS : News & Analysis : North America*
> 
> 
> National service forum at Columbia University
> 
> 
> Obama calls for US military mobilization
> 
> 
> By Patrick Martin 13 September 2008
> 
> In remarks that clearly pointed toward the restoration of the military draft 
> under an Obama administration, the Democratic candidate said Thursday night 
> that his job as president would include demanding that the American people 
> recognize an “obligation” for military service. “If we are going into war, 
> then all of us go, not just some,” Senator Barack Obama declared.
> 
> Obama’s comments came as he and his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain,
>  took part in a forum on national service at Columbia University in New York 
> City. Earlier in the day, both candidates joined in a memorial service at the
>  site of the World Trade Center, commemorating the victims of the 9/11 
> terrorist attacks.
> 
> While “national service” encompasses more than the military, including such 
> government-run programs as the Peace Corps, Americorps and Teach for America,
>  as well as private and religious programs, both McCain and Obama focused on 
> expanding the US Armed Forces as a major goal of the next administration, 
> whether Democratic or Republican.
> 
> In an indication of the bipartisan support for the increasing militarization 
> of American society, McCain jokingly offered to name Obama his coordinator 
> for national service if the Republican were to win the election, and Obama 
> reciprocated.
> 
> The forum was co-hosted by Judy Woodruff of the Public Broadcasting Service 
> and Richard Stengel, editor of /Time/ magazine. Woodruff introduced Stengel 
> as the man responsible for the magazine’s 2007 cover story, “The Case for 
> National Service,” which Woodruff said had “ignited this movement.”
> 
> McCain was the first of the two candidates to appear at the forum. In 
> response to a direct question from Woodruff, he rejected the restoration of 
> the draft, voicing support for maintaining an all-volunteer army. Such a 
> disavowal is to be expected 55 days before a presidential election, and no 
> doubt Obama would have given a similar response had he been asked the same 
> question.
> 
> But in the course of his discussion with Woodruff and Stengel, McCain 
> repeatedly connected the imperative of “national service” with the outbreak 
> of international crises in which an American military role would be posed. 
> Citing the Russian intervention in Georgia and the deteriorating position of 
> the US-backed regime in Afghanistan, he said the American people could “see a
>  whole lot of things happening in the world that’s going to require us to 
> serve.”
> 
> McCain also said that he would sign the bipartisan legislation, co-sponsored 
> in the Senate by Democrat Edward Kennedy and Republican Orrin Hatch, to 
> triple the size of Americorps, the domestic version of the Peace Corps.
> 
> Obama’s comments were even more directly related to building up the US 
> military. He spoke at some length to offer effusive praise for the armed 
> forces. Woodruff asked him about the record number of Army officers leaving 
> the military because of repeated, lengthy overseas deployments.
> 
> The candidate responded, “Well, first of all, as commander-in-chief, my job 
> is to keep America safe. And that means insuring that we’ve got the best 
> military on Earth. And that means having the best persons in uniform on 
> Earth. We have that right now, but as a consequence of these wars, they have 
> been strained incredibly. I think it’s important for us to increase the size 
> of our Army and our Marines so we can reduce the pace of tours that our young
>  men and women are on.”
> 
> After recalling his grandfather’s service in World War II, in the army of 
> General George Patton, he noted that his grandfather was eligible for GI Bill
>  education benefits and Federal Housing Administration loans to help purchase
>  a home because of government policies favoring the discharged veterans. 
> “There was that sense of sacred obligation that, frankly, we have lost during
>  these last two wars,” Obama said. “I want to restore that.”
> 
> Obama went on to make his most direct statement of the campaign about 
> expanding military service, declaring: “But it’s also important that a 
> president speaks to military service as an obligation not just of some, but 
> of many. You know, I traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19 months. And 
> if you go to small towns, throughout the Midwest or the Southwest or the 
> South, every town has tons of young people who are serving in Iraq and 
> Afghanistan. That’s not always the case in other parts of the country, in 
> more urban centers. And I think it’s important for the president to say, this
>  is an important obligation. If we are going into war, then all of us go, not
>  just some.”
> 
> Taken in the context of a forum on national service, these comments have an 
> unmistakable and ominous implication. Military service in the volunteer army 
> is undertaken disproportionately by small-town and rural youth, for both 
> economic and cultural reasons. It is far less common for middle class and 
> working class youth in large cities, and especially their suburbs, to enlist 
> in the military.
> 
> Obama holds out the prospect that, at least initially, his demand for wider 
> participation in military service would consist of encouraging more 
> enlistments in the volunteer army. When that failed, as it undoubtedly would,
>  to produce sufficient cannon fodder for the next round of imperialist wars, 
> the logical next step would be reactivation of the Selective Service System, 
> which still exists, albeit in mothballed form.
> 
> In political terms, Obama’s appearance at Columbia was aimed at demonstrating
>  to the American political establishment that he is prepared to reject any 
> pressure from antiwar college students, who are a major component of his 
> campaign’s personnel and volunteers. To that end, Obama not only called for 
> expanded military service, he directly attacked the exclusion of the Reserve 
> Officers Training Corps (ROTC) from many college campuses.
> 
> Stengel noted that Columbia had invited President Ahmadinejad of Iran to 
> speak on the campus, but “haven’t invited ROTC to be on campus since 1969.”
> 
> Obama replied, “Yes, I think we’ve made a mistake on that. I recognize that 
> there are students here who have differences in terms of military policy. But
>  the notion that young people here at Columbia or anywhere, in any
> university, aren’t offered the choice, the option of participating in
> military service, I think is a mistake.”
> 
> The suggestion that young people at Columbia or anywhere else are denied “the
>  option of participating in military service” is preposterous. In no country 
> in the world is there so much media advertising and societal 
> pressure—largely, at this point, economic—to impel young people into the 
> military.
> 
> ROTC became a focus of hostility on hundreds of campuses during the Vietnam 
> War era, and was in many cases banned as a student organization. These 
> restrictions largely ended after 1975, but they were continued or 
> reestablished on a handful of campuses after the Clinton administration 
> established the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, reaffirming the longtime 
> Pentagon ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. Such a ban 
> violates the non-discrimination rules imposed by many campuses on corporate 
> recruiters.
> 
> In response to a further question from Woodruff, Obama elaborated on his 
> efforts to recruit young people to become participants in, and potential 
> victims of, military violence. “Inspiring young people to serve is something 
> that the president is uniquely positioned to do,” he said, adding that this 
> could be for civilian positions that are adjuncts to US military operations 
> overseas, such as the State Department, USAID or civil engineering.
> 
> Obama returned to the subject of widening participation in military service 
> in words that were cautiously phrased but deeply reactionary. “I think there 
> are special obligations during wartime,” he said. “We always have potential 
> conflicts around the world, and our military has to remain strong and ready. 
> And so I want to encourage military service, as well as other ways of 
> serving, regardless of whether there’s war or not. But I do think that over 
> the last several years, the fact that the burden has been shouldered by such 
> a narrow group is a problem.”
> 
> In a closely balanced election, with the outcome still very much in doubt, 
> Obama hopes to win the support of the real decision-makers—the topmost levels
>  of the financial, political and military elite. Only a Democrat, he is 
> suggesting, with the smokescreen of “equal sacrifice” and “fairness,” can 
> provide the millions of recruits for the US military machine that will be 
> required for wars against countries such as Iran, Russia and China.
> 
> While utilizing the occasional high-flown phrase to appeal to the idealism of
>  youth and students, Obama is offering the ruling class a brutal bargain: 
> Select me as president, and I will repay you in blood.
>