Rangel is making an important point, even if his argument for the draft does not work. War is a special activity of society. It is one of the few in which the citizen is expected -- at least in principle -- to fight and, if necessary, die for his country. It is more than a career. It is an existential commitment, a willingness to place oneself at risk for one's country. The fact that children of the upper classes, on the whole, do not make that existential commitment represents a tremendous weakness in American society. When those who benefit most from a society feel no obligation to defend it, there is a deep and significant malaise in that society.

Perhaps. Certainly the nature of political discourse has evolved (for the worse, most would agree) since World War II.

I might argue that the apparent absence of obligation can be easily explained. "Those who benefit most" are not compelled to defend because they do not really feel threatened and do not feel that running around Ramadi in a HMMWV is really protecting Americans. If the mood of the general public reflected the sense that America faces an existential threat, I think plenty of people would be ready to make an existential commitment.

So when "those who benefit most" display no feeling of obligation, they are reflecting a general disregard not for the fundamental existence of America, but for the chronic plight of the rest of the world. This disregard is quite widespread and does not split along class lines. Why should Americans feel more obligated to prevent civil war in Iraq than in Sudan? That's easy; because Americans actively established the conditions for civil war in Iraq, but merely failed to act in Sudan.

The reasons given by enlisted volunteers are as various as the volunteers themselves, but broadly, the Army is seen as both an opportunity and (perhaps ironically) as a (financial) "safe harbor". As evidenced by the "who's Rumsfeld?" comment, the motivations of volunteers are not necessarily political. If you polled new Army recruits about their reasons for joining up, I think you'd find very few who refer to the prevention of African genocide or to the encouragement of women's literacy.

There is room among the arguments against leaving Iraq for something about not creating a "haven" for anti-American terrorists. But this does not translate into an argument for going to Iraq. By staying in Iraq to suppress civil war, we accomplish very little toward eliminating the existential threat to America, to the extent it is even real. There is little reason to expect successful businessmen to join the Army when the threat is sufficiently abstract that the most accessible means to understanding it is a RAND monograph.

If, as the RAND monograph suggests, "deny[ing] sanctuaries to terrorists" is a pillar of the war on terror, and if civil war zones are assumed to create such sanctuaries, then the war strategy now obligates the US to intervene in all future civil wars. Clearly our (in)actions indicate that we do not believe in our own strategy -- neither in its merits nor in its practicality.

This is amusing:

If you can play tennis as well as you claim to for as long as you say, you can patrol a village in the Sunni Triangle.

As for Friedman's claim that

There is no inherent reason why enlistment -- or conscription -- should be targeted toward those in late adolescence.

I wonder about the futility of trying to train a 50-year-old bankruptcy attorney how to hunt terrorists in the caves of Afghanistan. Something about old dogs ...

noteworthy wrote:

There is room among the arguments against leaving Iraq for something about not creating a "haven" for anti-American terrorists.

The most frustrating thing about this is that this was supposedly the reason that we went in to begin with. Is it possible to argue that the situation is better now than it was before in this regard? I don't really think so. Its a "third rail" discussion because it hurts people's feelings ("morale"), particularly when so many have given so much to the effort, but I'm not willing to be unrealistic about this in order to be polite. Call me an "asshole" or a "liberal" or "brainwashed by the MSM" but failing to see how this is an improvement is not the same thing as sympathizing with Saddam Hussein.

I wonder about the futility of trying to train a 50-year-old bankruptcy attorney how to hunt terrorists in the caves of Afghanistan. Something about old dogs ...

I don't see it happenning. I DO see 50 year old GenX video gamers being recruited in 10-20 years to run UAVs or other kinds of robots, or, for that matter, the morass of computer equipment in your typical armored infantry vehicle, artillary system, or warship.

Decius wrote:

Is it possible to argue that the situation is better now than it was before in this regard? I don't really think so.

Talk radio is proof positive that you can argue anything. But this particular argument is one you can't win. By virtually any measure, things are worse. Your consolation is Rumsfeld's observation that "freedom is untidy."

Decius wrote:

I don't see it happening. I DO see 50 year old GenX video gamers being recruited in 10-20 years to run UAVs ...

The thing is, we don't really need to recruit anyone for that. There are so few UAVs to be flown, and those people are in Las Vegas. But if you've never been on the ground in Afghanistan, you may have a hard time looking for them from the Strip. You don't know what to look for.

Also, in the current military structure, the types of jobs you've highlighted are worker-bee level jobs. Most 50-year-olds aren't going to want to take them, and they aren't going to pay well enough to be filled through recruitment. Also, UAV pilots are still pilots, and it's not the sort of thing you just show up for. And the flights are often quite long, though not so long as a round-the-world B2 flight or anything.

The warship is probably the most likely of the options you listed.

Decius wrote:
I don't see it happenning. I DO see 50 year old GenX video gamers being recruited in 10-20 years to run UAVs or other kinds of robots, or, for that matter, the morass of computer equipment in your typical armored infantry vehicle, artillary system, or warship.

I think it might be more likely that this will be the eventual legacy of the drug war. Why force a draft when it's easier to coerce crack dealers into being human shields?