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If there were a draft, I might be dead, which would mean that I wouldn’t be writing this, but at the same time maybe the war in Iraq would be over, and our generation might be seen as activists or leaders or difference-makers or benevolent (yet dirty) hippies. So clearly there would be pros and cons to a draft.
Here’s the difference between the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam as I see it (but keep in mind I am neither a political scientist nor a historian): In Vietnam, your brother or boyfriend was quite possibly in the jungle, smoking pot, listening to Jimi Hendrix, and avoiding stray missiles. Or he was about to do all that. Everyone was hostage to the lottery that determined your draft number. Imagine knowing that a bouncing ping pong ball could determine your fate – not just how much beer you had to drink, or how much beer somebody else had to drink, and whether or not you would vomit into a trash can later in the night.
Iraq is different because all our soldiers ostensibly volunteered to be there. This is not actually true. Except for the rare psychos who join the military so they can shoot terrorists while listening to Korn on their iPods, most of our soldiers enlisted with the belief that their government would not ask them to fight unnecessary wars. But because our military is constructed exclusively of volunteers, we are made to believe that they’re all happy to be there, which makes getting them back less of a priority. Would you run screaming into a taping of The Late Show to warn the audience that David Letterman is no longer funny and that they were about to endure an hour of misery? No. Because they should have figured that out before they waited in line.
For those young Americans like myself, fortunate enough to have a family who can pay for school and fortunate enough to not need personal training from a diabolical drill sergeant, the war seems like it’s being fought by a different nation of young people. I know two people in Iraq – that’s it – and I didn’t even know that one of them was there until he was seriously injured in a Humvee a couple weeks ago. From all accounts, he’ll be okay, but for the first time I realized that there were real people fighting a real war.
What’s the matter with you? Did you think they were robots?
No, but I guess since I didn’t know anyone over there and since Iraq is so far away, the news never seemed that relevant. It’s like that book, The Darwin Awards – where people die in stupid ways and you’re supposed to laugh. I bet that book’s a lot less funny if one of the chapters is about your wife.
Probably a significant portion of privileged young Americans don’t know anyone affected by the war, and certainly they don’t know anyone who joined the military against their will. That just doesn’t happen anymore. Because there’s no draft. If there were a draft, people like me who have political opinions but rarely use megaphones to express them would be much more likely to protest and carry around signs that say SEND OUR TROOPS HOME or BUSH IS A PENIS-HEAD. And then maybe our generation could shed the “apathetic” label. We would come to be regarded as motivated young thinkers who will change the world as soon as we learn how to make better signs because that one about Bush being a penis-head was just plain pathetic.
I want to clarify two issues: First, I am not against the military’s practice of recruiting from lower class and minority communities. The military has a lot of nice things to offer if you ignore their penchant for picking random fights with random nations. It’s kind of like your college buddy who was normal and nice 99% of the time, but sometimes when he got drunk he would start irrational scrums just to prove his mettle. Even though you liked 99% of the guy, that 1% was too big to overlook, so he was a good friend, but not your best friend. The military is exactly like that. 99% of it is nice and protects you, but 1% of it gets wasted, decides it needs to fulfill its late-night craving for oil, and fights the first guy that cuts him in line even though the guy was really just rejoining his buddies after going to the bathroom.
So I’m not against the military presenting itself as a positive option for young people who maybe need some direction or money or education. When I was driving cross-country, we picked up an eighteen-year-old hitchhiker in Idaho. This kid, Vernon, was going from Pocatello to Boise but he didn’t really know what he was going to do when he got there because his only contact was his best friend, but his best friend was
A) dating Vernon’s ex-girlfriend
B) living with a mother who had banned Vernon from her house
C) the same best friend who had helped Vernon steal the mother’s car
Vernon was a sweet kid and wanted to be a chef but he had never cooked anything and didn’t have the faintest idea how to get a job in a kitchen.
After he exited our RV, I suggested that he might be a good candidate for the Army. Then I felt bad. Is it fair to tell someone else to join the military when you would never consider doing so yourself? I think it is, so long as the someone else is in serious need of navigational assistance. Vernon was totally directionless, like when my mom tries to find my apartment coming from Maine.
So I’m not against the military recruiting lower class and minority kids, but I am against sending those kids to spring break in Baghdad.
That was the first thing I wanted to clear up. Here’s the second: I am not for a draft. In fact, I’m not for any kind of mandatory service. I don’t like the idea of the government making me do anything other than pay taxes or evacuate my home if global warming makes Boston Harbor rise into Vermont.
Here’s what I propose – make a year of national service sound so awesome that everyone wants to do it. We already do this with college, disguising four years of optional education as a booze-filled sex romp. Everyone wins because young people have a great time and get smarter, and old people can sleep comfortably knowing that most of the country’s 18-22-year-olds are confined to college dormitories.
There are basically two kinds of national service. The first is the aforementioned martial kind. I don’t like that kind because I’m a pacifist (I’ve never been in a fight – I’ve only been punched in the face on one occasion, and I didn’t punch back.) However, I’d be much more likely to join the Marines if I thought my superiors would only send me into battle if
A) there were a Nazi resurgence in Northern Germany that needed to be squelched
B) people were getting killed en masse in some place like Darfur and we actually wanted to do something about it, or
C) a group of evil rulers had built a “Death Star” that was capable of blowing up planets with a super strong laser beam, but luckily all their foot soldiers were “Storm Troopers” who couldn’t aim a gun and wore completely ineffective, yet restrictive, white armor.
After 9/11 I, like a lot of other nineteen-year-olds, was ready to fly to Afghanistan and risk my life spelunking until I was able to find Osama and knock him out with his own dialysis machine. But that patriotic zeitgeist was short-lived. We need to get it back. We need to make patriotism cool again. Here’s how we can do it:
The next time we’re thinking about invading a nation under false pretenses, let’s punch a pillow instead, and preferably that pillow will be the needlepoint hammer-and-sickle one that our communist aunt knitted for us.
Very few young men and women are going to enlist if they don’t trust the government.
Duh.
Exactly.
The other kind of national service is the Peace Corps kind where we spread goodwill throughout the world. This is a good way to fight terrorism because people will be less likely to bomb us if they like us.
But how do we make the Peace Corps sexier? First of all, let’s not make it such a time commitment. Let kids sign up for one or two month installments. We’re at an age when time slips away too fast, so giving away two years of our early twenties seems drastic. Second of all, let kids party. They should distribute AIDS medication or build houses during the day, then let loose at night. Using this format will boost enlistment, increase fun, and enhance the local economy because if anyone opens a bar and serves party pitchers of iced margaritas, they’re going to be a huge success.
Our generation is not like the one that fought World War II and it’s not like the one that fought – or refused to fight – in Vietnam. But we do have the opportunity to bathe the world in warm American light, like the glow that falls from Times Square onto a Broadway tourist. If we use our military to fight justified wars against Nazis and Storm Troopers, and if we make the Peace Corps a sexier program, pretty soon the world will be saying, Hey, the U.S. isn’t all that bad. And it can drink a crap-load of iced margarita.
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