Emerald Takes Bold Stance Against Military Draft
Today’s Emerald editorial discusses the impending involuntary military draft. Charles Rangel (D-NY) recently stated that he’ll attempt to introduce a bill to reinstate the draft, claiming that if it made a comeback lawmakers would be far less likely to, say, start an unnecessary war. Hmmm… I wonder why he didn’t talk about this before the election?
Unsurprisingly, the ODE opposes Rangel’s proposal. And unsurprisingly, House Dems have already killed the proposal since they’re hoping to not play Glass Joe in 2008. But what is surprising is the Emerald’s refutation of Rangel’s logic:
We should not need a draft to make lawmakers thoroughly consider whether the nation should go to war. As a result of the bad intelligence and somewhat shady reasoning that drew America into Operation Iraqi Freedom, Congress should be even more inclined to deliberate any justifications given for war, even above and beyond what the public expects.
Congress tends to take far more stock in current popular opinion than lessons from the past. It isn’t often that I can say this, but Rangel is absolutely correct: it’s difficult to imagine that the Iraq war would have been authorized had the draft been a prerequisite. Public opinion would have been dead set against the war rather than strongly supportive of it. That doesn’t mean that the draft is a good idea– god only knows how poorly the Army would operate with infantry platoons full of Sociology and Gender Studies students– but it does mean that we as a citizenry should not be surprised when a war that a majority of us are in favor of is started. Where Congress did drop the ball is in the examination of prewar intelligence (which the Emerald correctly points out) and oversight of the war’s execution and progress. And you can bet that these problems wouldn’t have existed had involuntary conscription been in effect.
