The more I observe politics, the more confused I am!  Spending just a few hours at kennywolf.com would convince anyone of that.  In reading my latest issue of “Liberal Opinion Week” (a publication that collects the columns of liberal commentators each week), I see that the liberal writers Bill Press and Marie Cocco are making a case for the reinstitution of a military draft in America.

     They each talk about New York congressman Charles Rangel putting together a bill to bring back the draft.  (Congressman Rangel is to be applauded for serving as a combat veteran of the Korean conflict and for being awarded the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for selfless acts of courage and bravery.)  Rangel says that the present military disproportionately reflects poor and minority families.  The congressman recently stated in print, “I believe that if we are going to send our children to war, the governing principle must be that of shared sacrifice.”

     Bill Press ends his article with the words, “Rangel’s right.  Bring back the draft.  Require the children of all American families –men and women; rich and poor; black, Latino, Asian and white—to sign up.  Then, let’s see if we really want this war.”

     Marie Cocco writes that “Everyone would be eligible for conscription, save conscientious objectors and people who fail the physical.  No guard duty for the politically connected, nor the polished offspring of the affluent.”

     In so many words, the argument is that the military should not be composed of volunteers only, but should include those who do not have what it takes to “be all that you can be.”  (In fairness to these particular liberals, they say that the drafted would all measure up just as well as the volunteers—they site World War II and “the greatest generation”).

     Does this sound like a winning issue politically for Democrats all around the country in the next election cycle?  I would have said “no” with my first reaction, but these liberals must understand Americans more than I do.

     Oh, I might cynically assume that under the surface, the real reason is that liberals feel that if more than America’s military professionals were in uniform, America would choose to reward our enemies for not carrying out their threats to annihilate us from the face of the earth rather than start wars to defeat them with our own sons and daughters who do not “voluntarily” choose to serve their country and fellow countrymen in this courageous way.

     Sure, we have a history of engaging in “conflicts”, while certain types of politicians are in power, where our military commanders were ordered by politicians back home not to bomb certain villages in their conflicts and told that they could only bomb half of some bridges in brilliant orders of “limited engagement”.  But I think that when allowed to fight as though the very survival of our nation and the survival of other allied nations are in the balance, well equipped voluntary military forces would be very successful at winning wars.  Some of our greatest war commanders, like General Douglas MacArthur, hated war.  But when they were called to fight, they wanted to fight to win, not fight to politically appease politicians on both sides!

     Maybe we do not all want to fight to win and that is the greatest objection to the whole nasty ordeal of wars—by volunteers, the conscripted and some of the rest of us?  I guess I just can’t figure why liberals would pick an issue like the military draft, that I sense so many Americans are against, as their platform to power.  Could they just be willing to say and do “the right thing” regardless of the political consequences?  But these are the same folks who favor abortion of their own potential liberal voting children; thus decreasing their own political population.  They are also the folks who are against guns in the hands of law-abiding fellow liberals, except for the rich liberals who have their own armed bodyguards.

     Maybe “reason” and “rationalism” are not the proper instruments by which to measure them.  Maybe liberal idealism is passion driven and is beyond reason?  Maybe they see some truthful elements with this issue, but may lose the presentation?  Maybe I’m just confused?

Kenny Wolf
January 21, 2003