JAMES CARROLL
When war hits homeAT ARLINGTON National Cemetery, my mother and father are buried a few tombstones removed from the grave of General Lewis B. Hershey, who presided over the Selective Service System from World War II to Vietnam. Whenever I visit my parents' grave, my eyes drift to Hershey's, and I remember the anguish people of my generation associate with the draft. We -- and our children -- are feeling it again.
As a college chaplain, I was privileged to serve as a draft counselor for many young men. I saw up close how the draft was a crucible of conscience, the occasion for a profound moral reckoning with the real meaning of a distant war. The war was blatantly wrong. Many young men, out of love of country, decided to serve in it anyway. But, equally, the draft forced many others -- and many of those who loved them -- into a position of resistance. Those who sought to avoid the draft, in a range of ways, because they opposed the war had a kind of heroic integrity about them (as opposed to those, like George W. Bush, who supported the war, but evaded it). Yet no one I knew faced the draft question without large ethical second thoughts, no matter what they did. A main result of such intense moral reckoning, of course, was a burgeoning peace movement, as thousands and thousands of young men -- and those who loved them -- underwent conscription of a different kind. It was to undercut this mass civic confrontation with the true character of Washington's war policy that Richard Nixon abolished the draft. Master cynic that he was, Nixon knew that ending the draft was necessary to prolonging the war. The "volunteer army" has been a mainstay of an unchallenged American militarism ever since. Now anguished talk of the draft is in the air again. The ghost of Lewis B. Hershey lives. Citizens who know arithmetic understand that there is no way America "holds the course" of its present wars without forcing young men (and women) into the uniformed ranks. Young people and their parents are fully aware that legislation to reactivate the Selective Service is pending in Congress, although politicians and generals alike deny any intention of actually restoring the draft. That was the point, during last week's debate, of President Bush's unprompted (but not unscripted) affirmation of an all-volunteer army. Bush, like Nixon, knows what inconvenient things would follow for the warrior government if its willfully detached citizenry were forced to think seriously about the havoc being wreaked in its name. There is a conundrum here. Horrors unfold in Iraq (and Afghanistan) largely because they remain abstract, and therefore not so horrible, to the American population. Using the trauma of 9/11 and its nearly 3,000 dead as a measure, the United States has caused multiple 9/11's among already beleaguered peoples. What would it take for Americans to feel the full weight of that reality? Well, in a word, the draft. When young men and women, and their parents, shudder at the prospect of a renewed Selective Service System, it is not mainly physical fear they are feeling or worry about interrupted educations or postponed careers. Even in anticipation, the draft is disturbing because of its proven character as a moral crucible in which distant policies of an impersonal government become intensely personal. The question moves from, What do you think of Bush's war? to, Would you kill people because Bush told you to? And killing people is the issue. I never counseled a young man during Vietnam for whom the paramount question was, Will I be killed? (Presumably, that was George Bush's question when he avoided Vietnam.) Instead, the question was, Will I kill for this? Often, the answer was no. President Bush knows full well that if the question were put to Americans today -- Will you kill these people in Sadr City or Fallujah? -- the common answer would again be no. That and that alone is why he, and his Pentagon, do not want a draft. But it may come anyway. The American imperial impulse has been set loose, and it has a dynamic of its own. "Insurgents" of various kinds will impede this global military project, and the far corners of Arlington Cemetery will be filled. But only one thing will actually stop Washington's wars. I oppose the restoration of any form of draft, but I long for what it would prompt in America at once -- a broad moral reckoning with the truth of what our nation has become.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. His most recent book is "Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War." © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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