I'm disturbed by the consensus-building the media are doing ahead of Obama's Afghanistan speech. It obviously reflects a new conventional wisdom, and good liberals are engaged in the toil. We all watched the same process during the buildup to the Iraq war. And I imagine the same thing happened during Vietnam. A set of beliefs took hold. They were furthered by sage public counselors, who were more protective of their position than the public interest.
Two statements have upset me. Last week Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker was on Chris Matthews, and put in the unfortunate position of arguing for Obama's troop injection opposite Dennis Kucinich, as I recall. Hertzberg said in so many words, Well it's a very confusing situation and I can't claim to know as much as the guides whom Obama has sought out. So I defer to them. I found it disturbing because Hertzberg is a real smart cookie, and here he was saying, I will have no independent judgment, even if I find this unsettling, because these guys know more than I do. Actually, this is precisely when smart independent people have to stand up and say (as Matthews has), Wait, no, this doesn't pass the smell test. I've been reading Herzl and Tolstoy lately; both these observers of court life make it clear that the councils of the great are far less intelligent than we think they are. No, they're ordinary boobs, stumbling around with half-truths.
Then this morning I heard Cokie Roberts on NPR softening the way for the Obama push by comparing him to George Washington at the time of the end of the Revolutionary War. Washington had to hold an army together after an 8 year war that had drained public patience while the peace was negotiated in England. He did so from West Point, Roberts said--as Obama is speaking at West Point. And now patience is required again.
I wonder who supplied this historical hokum to Roberts; and I won't begin to tear apart the failures of the analogy. Roberts was mythologizing Obama to make his decision that much more palatable to the liberals who listen to NPR.
There's only one answer to this. Bring back the draft. Force the elites, who construct conventional wisdom as a kind of parlor game, to experience something of the pain that we are forcing on a new soldier class in our society. Then there would be a more vigorous and open conversation.
I will NEVER suggest that the draft be reinstated.
You were 19 once, and you had a mother that cared about what her sons were exposed to.
I have two children draft age.
You sound like a neo-con when you recommend the draft.
I get your point. Do you get mine?
I once borderline assaulted a recruiter that came to my door (when my kids were in their mid-teens, they start that young) asking to speak with my sons. I told him that I regarded military recruiters speaking to 14-year-olds as more threatening to me than pedophiles, and that there were only a few actions that I would consider it moral to defend against violently.
He left and didn’t come back.
What exactly are the criteria for your stated violent morality? Does it apply equally once your kids turned age 18, or 17 with your consent? If not, why not? If so, why so?
You forgot, after all the name calling and such, to tell Mr. Weiss to say “hi” to his parents for you.
So, Dick Witty, are you implying that working class and lower middle class American mothers don’t care about what their sons are exposed to? You feel so entitled? Why should your children not fight the war over there, so it doesn’t come here? And, don’t you know, the principle neo-con scribblers and supporters were/are draft dodgers, chicken hawks? From whence comes your ignorance? If you agree that the USA needs a military force to defend itself, then why so adamant your children not participate
in that force? Do you agree also that conscription is not a good thing for Israel? Who should fight the USA and Israel’s wars? Anybody, just not your kids? In what circumstances would you agree your own children should join a military force?
Do you think all wars should be fought by the working and lower middle class, as happened with the draft in Vietnam, and as is happening now in Iraq and Afghanistan? If you are not a pacifist, what exactly is your criteria regarding how
to erect and maintain an army? Who should do the dirty work? Clearly its not you or yours.
“In today’s all-volunteer military, three of every five soldiers are white; two of every five are African-American, Hispanic or other (Asian, Native American or Pacific Islander). This force is not fully representative of America: proportionately, there are more African-American, Latinos, and (white) working class people in the military than in American society. The wealthy and the very poor are underrepresented. (Statistics from the Department of Defense’s Population Representation in the Military Services, as reported in the New York Times, 3/3/03.)
link to teachablemoment.org
BTW, there’s more Muslim Americans in the US military now than American Jews.
What moral turpitude Mr. Witty! To me that’s the point of having the draft – if you don’t support the war enough to send your own children, then you shouldn’t support the war at all.
I think it’s a great litmus test that would keep us out of a lot of trouble.
Neo-Con’s, I would think, don’t want the draft – it would stop all these idiotic ‘wars’.
I am against all forms of involuntary servitude.
Thus, I am against the draft.
As far as policy, what do you propose?
Take the risk to state overtly, you already invest in the innuendo.
I continue to be amused by the fact that you think this blog is some sort of exclusive, personal line of communication beteen you and Mr. Weiss. No one cares about your attempts to distract from the core issues of this article, Witty.
Phil told you; he proposed bringing back the Draft. That’s the only way congress
takes the same risk as the rest of us (assuming this time around, it would actually be a fair Draft with no socio-economic exemptions). It’s the difference between playing video games or chess and being a grunt on the booby-trapped road amid people sans uniforms). How overt can Phil be? You are the one over-invested in innuendo.
How much did the elites suffer under the draft? Wasn’t the fact that the elites didn’t suffer proportionately under the draft one of the wedges that the counter-culture exploited?
Maybe, but the so-called elites were forcred to be overt in their power to allow themselves and their kin to avoid the draft, and that’s part of what fueled resentment about the war. Apparently people blithely forgot Cheney’s and Rove’s deferments and Bush’s easy ride during Vietnam, but I don’t think people would quickly ignore the next generation of neo-cons getting the same free ticket.
I agree, but do we need a draft to know that the elites don’t go to war, voluntarily or otherwise? Couldn’t we just reflect back on our draft experience, and combine it with what we have learned from our volunteer military to know who does the fighting and who does the deciding? Why risk another generation to prove the same point?
What do you recommend, Todd? Is there an analogy to the health reforms in congress now–notice congress is exempting itself for the health reforms it advocates for the rest of us.
It’s hard to make recommendations for a system that is broken beyond repair, as your healthcare example further illustrates.
Did it save us from going into Iraq, reflecting on our draft experience?
NO. And it won’t save us from attacking Iran (to save an earlier or simultaneous Israeli bombing of Iran). We will be there soon.
A campaign of public outrage would save us from attacking Iran, but the MSM will not allow it.
Obama is making a big mistake by proposing a tax to pay for this military adventure, even if he thinks it will go down more smoothly under the guise of taxing “the rich.”
Better he should tax the people who support the war in the first place, let them put their money where their mouth is. I propose he consider the WWII idea of war bonds. People who support this war can dig into their pockets to pay for it. If they come up with the scratch, the war goes on. If they don’t, well, this is a referendum.
Both taxing and war bonds were used. The Department of the Treasury was successful at generating money to pay for the war, including the first general income tax in American history and the famous “war bonds” sold to the public. Beginning in 1940, the government extended the income tax to virtually all Americans and began collecting the tax via the now-familiar method of continuous withholdings from paychecks (rather than lump-sum payments after the fact). The number of Americans required to pay federal taxes rose from 4 million in 1939 to 43 million in 1945. With such a large pool of taxpayers, the American government took in $45 billion in 1945, an enormous increase over the $8.7 billion collected in 1941 but still far short of the $83 billion spent on the war in 1945. Over that same period, federal tax revenue grew from about 8 percent of GDP to more than 20 percent. Americans who earned as little as $500 per year paid income tax at a 23 percent rate, while those who earned more than $1 million per year paid a 94 percent rate. The average income tax rate peaked in 1944 at 20.9 percent .
The contrast in the public sentiment between then and now is profound. “Patriotism” had not become a dirty word, and “don’t you know there’s a war on” was uttered without irony.
Yeah, that’s true. Does any American still believe in fighting for our country in the sense of simply being patriotic? My guess is only the white boys form the working class and lower middle class who are 3/5ths of all USA volunteer grunts now, at best those of that segment who don’t simply look at being a grunt as better than flipping McDonald’s burgers. I mean, if you were Dick Witty’s kid, would you
give a crap about the USA enough to volunteer to be a grunt? Case closed.
oops “form” =from
Actually, there is a statistical analysis of socioeconomic data for the military which shows that 1) median income for recruit families is slightly higher than national median income 2) educational levels from enlisted recruits to officers are higher than the national average and 3) middle-class areas are overly represented in the military while poor areas are under-represented.
Yes, I know it’s the heritage foundation, but the data exists.
link to heritage.org
And I should add–that upper income areas are under-represented.
The vets I knew were drafted, but they were mostly from lower middle-class backgrounds and up by income. But middle-class and elites are very far apart.
I have male relatives who were drafted and served in the military during wartime. Some where shot up, and all seemed to have mental woulds that lasted a lifetime. None of the combat vets that I have known recommend the experience. My father told me to stay away from the military, and advised me to leave the country if I were drafted for war abroad.
So, Todd, do you believe the USA should not have a US military? If so, who should
participate in it?
To be fair, Todd didn’t make any statement in supporting the draft, one way or another.
Personally? I think the draft is important because war needs to have those consequences. Otherwise, it’s too easy for us to declare war on a whim as part of some foolish poltiical agenda (e.g. Iraq)
Of course we need a military, but not the one we have. I don’t have to be able to identify or solve most of the problems to know that the situation that exists is out of order. But don’t think I blame the military for being the military. The military is just another rotten branch of the same diseased tree as the government.
Given that’s not going to change (the diseased tree), I’d like to hear you address my original question, and Chaos too. Thanks.
I don’t have a good answer to that question, actually. I think after what we’ve done with our military, we don’t deserve one, but I imagine disbanding it for purely ideological ideas is a bad idea. :)
It begs the questions as to what we need a military for, certainly one of the size and budget that we field. Who’s a threat to us, militarily speaking? Canada? Mexico? Realistically, China could be, Russia might still be and India could become one, if they put their mind to it (and I doubt very much that they would) but I don’t see any of those countries staging a full out invasion of US soil in the near future.
So why do we have a military of this size, again?
If the question is whether or not the U.S. should have the military we have, overreach and debt may take care of the problem for us, no matter what my opinion is.
My opinion is that the U.S. military is too large, and creates unnecessary problems by being in too many places. I’m sure that there is quite a bit that I don’t know about how things work, but being bound to the system leads to problems of its own.
Most of the combat veterans I’ve known don’t feel that their sacrafices made sense, or that the government stood by them afterwards. In short, they viewed themselves as being as dispensible as those they were supposed to bomb or kill. I guess this is why I was told to avoid the military and foreign wars.
You’re right, we don’t need 700 plus military bases around the world, way more than ancient Rome ever had. OTH, you agree we shouldn’t disband our military defense force. So I ask again, what’s the best way to get our “cannonfodder?” I never said we needed a military of this size–I asked, if you concede we need a military defense force at all, how should we get our “cannonfodder”? You did not answer.
And BTW, Dick Witty has not answered either except to say it won’t be his kids who pay the price. Thus, Dick is saying by default, it should be your kids.
I don’t believe we need cannon fodder. I think, as Todd pointed out, the pervasive attitude by the masters of the Pentagon that our men and women should be shuttled around as cannon fodder is the main problem. Even more so than the economic cost (as massive as that is).
We’re (supposed to be) the most modern, civilized, democratic country on the face of the Earth. There’s no reason that each and every one of our soldiers should be treated as indispensible and irreplacable and should be invested with the finest training, and rewarded for their sacrifice and oath just as exceptionally. They’re the ones that deserve the VIP treatment, as far as I’m concerned, not corporate execs.
We’d spend more per soldier, but we’d have a smaller fighting force that was infinitely more effective and efficient, and overall it would cost us less. You put our high tech military hardware in the hands of that fighting force, and the US has all the defense it will ever need.
Having to have a military at all is an ugly reality of human existence, but if you’re going to do it there’s no reason you can’t do it as best as possible.
The best way to obtain cannonfodder is to defend America’s legitimate interests, so that the people who make the toughest sacrifices do not feel that their sacrifices were made without good reason. Since we know that the deciders are out of control, and have interests and ideologies that are wholly separated from those of the average American, I see no moderate way to reduce the size of the military or to reconcile elite and common interests. If you know the answers, I’m all eyes.
I see nobody is answering my question. It’s real simple, considering we need some amount of ready “boots on the ground” no matter how hi-tek we are, how should we select those boots? I am waiting with baited breath for your answers.
I suppose I didn’t make it clear. I think it should be entirely voluntary. Anyone who thinks the war is worth fighting, becomes a soldier — or, anyone who thinks the rewards are worth the risks, and is up to the intense training I specified. This might sound a bit twisted, perhaps, but I think if we’re going to have a military at all, they should be treated with a rigor, reverence and compensation that we instead devote, as a society, to professional sports. (Although of course, I do not think the military should have games, as such, televised or not).
There is no good answer as far as I can tell. As it is, you either draft people for wars that they don’t understand or support, have a volunteer army, where the naive and hopeless enlist, or use mercenaries and desperate immigrants. I guess you could mix the methods, but I don’t see how any can work long-term when the leaders are nuts, and the military is overstretched and underfunded.
We have a military because we have a subsidized jobs program for the defense industry. Same thing with Nato.
Vietnam is an apt analogy since Afghanistan is increasingly being justified in terms of the “domino theory.” But they have yet to convince me, if I don’t care about Afghanistan, why I should care about Pakistan.
I disagree. I think Pakistan matters more now, from a genuine military standpoint, because Pakistan can be a genuine threat — not the least of which being their nuclear capacity.
I think the sad irony is that our actions in Afghanistan has actually metastasized into a genuine threat. Prior to our invasion, al Qaeda lurked in the rural provinces with a few dozen fanatics training with rusty AK-47s in the shadow of an indifferent but bought-off theocracy. They were a terrorist threat certainly, but not a military threat and treating them as such was folly.
Eight years later, al Qaeda has fled Afghanistan, leaving us stuck beating a straw man there and having turned the population hostile to us, made in roads into Pakistan and become a genuine threat to stability (such as it is…) in that country.
So we’ve actually given al Qaeda everything they wanted — demonstration to the rest of the world that the United States was engaged in a war on Muslims (just ask Friedman…), an all out war in a country historically reputed as an empire-killer, a test that didn’t kill them and thus made them stronger, and a terribly selfish foreign policy and indiscriminate bombing strategy that has convinced a lot of Pakistanis to seriously consider who is the bigger threat to their personal safety, the Taliban or the US Army.
Pakistan is no threat to America. Bring the troops home and station them on the Mexican border. That’s where the threat is coming from.
You know, as much as I want to argue about that, I’m just not. I don’t feel the need to start that argument here.
That reminds me of an incident a few years back. There is a major military base near my home, and to get to certain places without driving around the base, I have to cut through the base after showing my id to the guards. One day I drove up, and the guard could barely speak English. He looked like he was 14 yrs-old, and obvioulsy of Latin American background. I have no clue what his situation was, but I have to wonder what soldiers like him would do if they were ordered to the border.
I think the core
theory is that we have to maintain a military presence there because
Pakistan is where the 9/11 culprits were trained (after leaving Sudan?),
and the Pakistan government has to be monitored closely due to the fact
Pakistan has nukes and the ability to pass them out via corruption; also,
that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is but a line on a map, totally unrealistic in terms of the tribal conflicts there, which is centuries old; but
untied against foreign interlopers, no matter their altruistic pretext, USA or USSR, or old England’s.
oops
“untied” =united
“I’ve been reading Herzl and Tolstoy lately; both these observers of court life make it clear that the councils of the great are far less intelligent than we think they are. No, they’re ordinary boobs, stumbling around with half-truths”
Not quite: they’re ordinary boobs being goaded by other parties with clear, self-serving interests.
Here, one of those parties is the Foreign Policy Initiative, composed of the same PNAC scum that brought us the Iraq War: Kristol, the Kagans (who scripted McChrystal’s demands) and ‘Start Me Up’ Senor.
If you’re seriously wondering who is behind the ‘historical hokum’ posing as strategic reality, I’d begin by investigating these revisionist clowns .
I’ve been reading Herzl and Tolstoy lately; both these observers of court life make it clear that the councils of the great are far less intelligent than we think they are.
I can recommend A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin. You can learn about the mindsets that led to dragging the Ottomans into the Great War, WWI and the aftermath. You can learn of the motivations for Sykes-Picot and Balfour. You will learn than Churchill was moron. Maybe he got smarter later. maybe…… it’s a good book. Great for anyone to get a grip of the modern state of the Middle East.
RE: “I can’t claim to know as much as the guides whom Obama has sought out. So I defer to them.” – Hertzberg
SEE: “So Who Were the Advisers for McChrystal’s 60-Day Afghanistan Review?”, By SPENCER ACKERMAN 7/30/09
(excerpt) So we know about Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations. But who else advised Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s 60-day Afghanistan review strategy?
Biddle, who held a conference call this afternoon to discuss his views now that he’s back from the review — more on that in the next post — clarifies that it wasn’t so much that they advised the review. A group of about a dozen civilian experts, mostly from Washington think tanks, were the review. When Defense Secretary Bob Gates asked McChrystal to send him an assessment of the war’s fortunes and the resources necessary to turn it around, the civilian experts were flown to Baghdad to conduct the “overall assessment,” Biddle said. Officers from the USFOR-A headed “subtopic” groups of “particular interest to Gen. McChrystal like civilian-casualty minimization, strategic communication and so forth.” But the band of (mostly) Beltway think-tankers were the review.
So here’s the list of attendees:
Exum
Biddle
Cordesman
Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute
Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War
Jeremy Shapiro of Brookings
Terry Kelly of the Rand Corporation
Catherine Dale of the Congressional Research Service
Etienne Dumont Etienne de Durand of Paris’ Institut Francais des Relations Internationales
Whitney Kassel from the Office of the Secretary of Defense
Luis Peral of the European Union’s Institute for Strategic Studies
Air Force Lt. Col Aaron Prupas from U.S. Central Command
Biddle said that there were some “fireworks” between attendees…Notice how very very few of these experts are primarily Afghanistan experts…
RE: “So Who Were the Advisers for McChrystal’s 60-Day Afghanistan Review?”, By SPENCER ACKERMAN 7/30/09
LINK – link to washingtonindependent.com
Kagans. Evil neocon warmongering Kagans.
RE: “Kagans. Evil neocon warmongering Kagans.” – potsherd
MY COMMENT: Yes, Fred “The Neck” Kagan and his equally evil (but considerably more attractive) twin*!
* figuratively and/or metaphorically speaking