Hitchens Slaps Moore Around

I've noticed a whole raft of polls lately showing that (surprise!) the American people overwhelmingly oppose the draft.

Why?

No. Not, "Why do we oppose the draft?" This is a nation of free men and the right to one's own life is the most fundamental of all. What I was wondering is, "Why are all these polls cropping up?"

Yes. There have been stories about the armed forces failing (e.g., link above) to meet enlistment goals. So Congress must be getting ready to do something about it, right?

Well, not unless you count Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) quietly reviving the draft legislation he sponsored in pre-election demagoguery last year before voting, with the Republicans, against it. This year, he wishes to use the draft to "correct" the fact that "the burdens of the war disproportionately have fallen on the poor and minorities" in our all-volunteer forces. Or not unless you consider that Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) recently said that "'We're going to have to face that question,' ... on an NBC television show when asked if it was realistic to expect restoration of the draft."

I so far have heard nothing about the draft from the other side of the aisle or from the White House. (Except to say that we won't have one.) This talk of a draft is more of the anti-war drumbeat from the left. Democrat politicians serve it up as a topic of discussion (and something to benefit from should it actually be instituted) and the media dutifully blather endlessly about it with the implication that our administration wants it. The polls predictably show that we Americans don't want a draft and this fact will eventually be contorted until it is somehow taken to indicate a groundswell of Democrat support among the electorate. Only the authors of that propaganda, the left, will believe it.... And we will still have no draft.

But I'm really just talking about the anti-war drumbeat, and on that subject, Christopher Hitchens does a great job dismantling that hackneyed leftist canard about those who have no children in the fighting being unqualified to speak about the war. He makes a few great points. I'll put down a couple here.

These aren't children. They're adults. So let's quit infantilizing them.

But when it comes to the confrontation in Iraq, the whole notion of grown-ups volunteering is dismissed or lampooned. Instead, it's people's children getting "sent." Recall Michael Moore asking congressmen whether they would "send" one of their offspring, as if they had the power to do so, or the right? (John Ashcroft's son was in the Gulf, but I doubt that his father dispatched him there, and in any case it would take a lot more than this to reconcile me to Ashcroft, as Moore implies that it should.) Nobody has to join the armed forces, and those who do are old enough to vote, get married, and do almost everything legal except buy themselves a drink. Why infantilize young people who are entitled to every presumption of adulthood?

Interestingly, it is the Democrats, in their fervent desire to reinstate the draft, who would abrogate by military draft that great right of adulthood: Choosing one's own destiny. I see the infantilization and the willingness to run roughshod over the rights of adults as two sides of the same paternalistic coin. So they damn Bush for "sending" adult volunteers into war, and yet they propose drafting people into the military! The differences between the two? (1) Bush is doing one, automatically making it a sin. (2) The state doesn't have a say in who volunteers for the military. Gotta fix that!

And, in a point I've never heard articulated, the "only if you have a child" argument also undermines the idea of civilian control of the military. Hitchens drives this home beautifully, but not before first exploring the implications and history of heads of state practicing what the Democrats preach.

Further on in the same portentous article, we encounter one Andrew Bacevich, a "professor of international relations at Boston University and a retired Army officer." What could be more impressive? This expert delivers himself of the opinion that, "If this is such a great cause, let us see one of the Bush daughters in uniform." Let me do a brief thought experiment here. Do I know a single anti-war person who would be more persuaded if one of the Bush girls joined up? Do you? Can you imagine what would be said about such a cheap emotional stunt? Stalin's son was taken prisoner by the Nazi invaders (and never exchanged), and Mao's son was killed in the war that established the present state of North Korea. I am not sure how encouraging such precedents are supposed to be, but they have nothing at all to do with the definition of a just war.

Much more important than this, however, is the implied assault on civilian control of the military. In this republic, elected civilians give crisp orders to soldiers and expect these orders to be obeyed. No back chat can even be imagined, let alone allowed. Do liberals really want the Joint Chiefs to say: "Mr. President, I'll respect that order when you have a son or daughter in uniform"? [Actually, they do. Anything to undermine authority, especially legitimate authority. -- ed] It was a great day when President Lincoln fired Gen. George B. McClellan.* It was a great day when President Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur. No presidential brat needed to be on the front line for this point to be understood.

Once again, the words of Hitchens are a breath of fresh air.

-- CAV

Updates

7-5-05: Removed a formatting glitch.