2008 Woodie Awards
Hell, no! We won't go (because we're rich)
Phil Primeau
Issue date: 11/9/06 Section: Opinion
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The reinstating of the draft is the boogeyman of many college-aged students. It's used as a threat, a warning and a fear tactic. Few issues illicit as much passion.
However, it's time to put all the rhetoric aside and realize that reinstating the draft is the only moral and practical thing to do, given the circumstances of our nation today.
In the 1960s and '70s, at the height of the antiwar movement, protesters took to the unsavory practice of publicly burning their draft cards. Standing beneath radical banners, they would chant for peace in Vietnam and an end to involuntary service.
Their slogans echo through the corridors of history, and still today we know many of them. Few are unfamiliar with the grainy footage of demonstrators crying, "Hell no, we won't go!" as they swell in great numbers against police lines.
Who were these ignoble youths? Were they not, in fact, sons and daughters of privilege? Were they not white middle-class kids playing rebel within the cozy insulation of the academy's walls?
Meanwhile, as they sought desperately to save their own skins from the increasingly wide-ranging conscription calls, their countrymen born black or poor were dying by the tens of thousands. The under-classes had no viable recourse to submitting to the pressure of the war machine.
Not much has changed in the last 40 years. Today, the American military-a force which is disproportionately poor and non-white-is locked in a brutal conflict sparked by and sustained for the interests of mostly rich and white elites.
Horrifying as the Iraq War is, the vast majority of our society does not feel its most dire consequences. The tragic weight of this quagmire is being shouldered by individuals who have and will continue to be marginalized by our present socioeconomic system.
Consider the poorly balanced composition of the American military. In 2002, blacks made up 22 percent of all personnel, while comprising no more than 13 percent of the civilian population. Hispanic Americans are also over-represented in the American military.
However, it's time to put all the rhetoric aside and realize that reinstating the draft is the only moral and practical thing to do, given the circumstances of our nation today.
In the 1960s and '70s, at the height of the antiwar movement, protesters took to the unsavory practice of publicly burning their draft cards. Standing beneath radical banners, they would chant for peace in Vietnam and an end to involuntary service.
Their slogans echo through the corridors of history, and still today we know many of them. Few are unfamiliar with the grainy footage of demonstrators crying, "Hell no, we won't go!" as they swell in great numbers against police lines.
Who were these ignoble youths? Were they not, in fact, sons and daughters of privilege? Were they not white middle-class kids playing rebel within the cozy insulation of the academy's walls?
Meanwhile, as they sought desperately to save their own skins from the increasingly wide-ranging conscription calls, their countrymen born black or poor were dying by the tens of thousands. The under-classes had no viable recourse to submitting to the pressure of the war machine.
Not much has changed in the last 40 years. Today, the American military-a force which is disproportionately poor and non-white-is locked in a brutal conflict sparked by and sustained for the interests of mostly rich and white elites.
Horrifying as the Iraq War is, the vast majority of our society does not feel its most dire consequences. The tragic weight of this quagmire is being shouldered by individuals who have and will continue to be marginalized by our present socioeconomic system.
Consider the poorly balanced composition of the American military. In 2002, blacks made up 22 percent of all personnel, while comprising no more than 13 percent of the civilian population. Hispanic Americans are also over-represented in the American military.
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