It is gratifying to wing opinionated and potentially provocative words into the blogosphere and have words come back, whether affirming or not. The words (and website) below reverberated from my previous question about whether people know the rationale for our waging war in Afghanistan (and a corollary, Iraq), and whether they support it.
This inquiry caused me to discover and be shocked by the estimated number of nearly ONE MILLION DEAD in combined military and civilian casualties between the two conflicts in the last near decade. Most are civilian. Many of those had nothing to do with terrorism and will not have been drawn closer to the US as a result of the deaths of loved ones, I would suspect.
From a New York City mother of two teenage girls and a younger son:
This will tell you, among other things, that a veterans' protest is scheduled in Washington, DC for March 19, next Saturday, on the anniversary of the Iraq invasion. The argument and its passion may surprise you. You may even be moved to think/feel differently, and possibly to act, on the strength of it. Also, the demonstrations the following day want to bring awareness to the situation of Bradley Manning, the US Army intelligence analyst currently imprisoned in Quantico and awaiting court marshal, whose allegedly inhumane treatment in custody has been brought to Obama's attention.
From a former Navy pilot, who came of military age in the Vietnam era:
How about immoral and irrational? The war in Iraq is immoral and the war in Afghanistan is irrational. Iraq sustained the predilection of the US to engage in wars of aggression. Can anyone reasonably doubt that either Vietnam or Iraq was such a war? Both were a departure from our nation's traditional values.
Afghanistan was presumably directed to thwarting Al Quaeda, which in the interim has sprung up like mercury under the thumb in places like Somalia. Nonetheless, we continue to pretend that we are fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. Your "energy lawyer" is spot on, to wit: this is merely a political action initiated by Bush and perpetuated by Obama for political purposes. Can any action possibly be more cynical?
On a related note, the volunteer force disassociates the rest of America, other than the friends and families of those who serve so honorably, from those political conflicts. The detachment permits us to remain disengaged from the conflict. It doesn't touch us so we do not object.
Universal service requires everyone to give something back to the country, and requires each individual in the country (or someone with whom they are related or acquainted) to be "at risk" of serving in each conflict. In addition, it gives those with a VALID moral objection to conflict the mechanism to channel their obligation into an area devoid of the prospect of armed conflict.
As it happens I agree with this reader and feel vindicated that someone of military commitment and bearing sees it this way.
From an author of historical books and former national political reporter:
I of course disagree with your thesis. I don't have much to contribute to the canon on Vietnam - wretched costly mistake steeped in the stupidity of the best and brightest ... but I still think there was a case for invading Iraq and unseating Saddam. The fatal blunders there were:
1. You simply cannot lie about the casus belli for war in a democracy; hanging onto the convenient "Tonkin Gulf" justification of weapons of mass destruction, when at best we had no proof of them and at worst knew they did not exist, laid a flawed foundation for our being there that could not be cured;
2. We did not sustain the wobbly security forces there or replace them with anything else, and did not send enough men - our (Phillips Academy graduate) Andover man Paul "Jerry" Bremer deserves the blame for this, with others; and,
3. We did not respond even remotely adequately to Abu Ghraib. I remember being stuck in a hotel room at Gatwick during Senate hearings when Evan Bayh asked Rumsfeld if he should have resigned over Abu Ghraib, and after a long pause Rumsfeld said, "Yes." He says so again in his new book. Then why, oh why, didn't he?
As to Afghanistan, I have only a layman's sense that no one can "win" a war there. But it is very hard for me to think that President Obama has some ulterior motive such as re-election driving his support for the surge there - and I do have some qualifications as an expert on presidential elections, so I will say with confidence that I do not see how he picks up a single vote by supporting the surge, but I think he loses some potential support in the primaries for doing so.
I agree that drafting everyone was a vastly fairer and more sensible way of prosecuting wars than the mercenary military we have today. But the reason we do not have universal two-year public service is not the right...it is organized labor.
I cannot anticipate the expressed view of "organized labor" in the universal national service debate. I doubt that "labor" would think and act on this as a monolith. It makes more sense to me that labor in general would favor wars of various kinds, because they are stimulative of basic industries that we have not yet farmed out to other countries. Now that might be considered cynical.
Please do write.
Or call.
Someone.
This is not a neutral topic worthy of indifference or inaction.
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