Isn't it kind of selfish interest? To allow others to fight in your place? Others who have little choice but to join the military in order to survive economically.
The war would have been over almost before it started if everyone's ass was on the line.
Progressives, if they are really progressive, should be all for the fairness which a draft brings to the table.
It's the one way to insure that everyone has a vested interest in the possibility of a war.
In a private school for which I worked for years, the spoiled rich boys were all to happy to have others go and fight. They were, in fact, cheering on the war. And yes -- it was in their selfish self interest to not have a draft.
But they really didn't care if others died in a war which they'd never see first hand.
If there'd been a draft, many more of those students would have joined me when I took a very small group out to a demonstration against the war.
But, in their self-interested way, most of them chose to stay behind and let others do the fighting and the dying.
Yes, if there was a draft, there quite possibly would have been no Iraq war.
If George W. Bush had instated the draft after 9/11 in a move of real leadership instead of asking us all to go shopping or on vacation, I don't think anyone would have complained seriously. After 9/11, we all wanted to do something. Anything. We wanted to help.
Even if it only lasted until we'd secured Afghanistan and there was a mass discharge, we would've been in a better place now.
