I knew it was coming. With all the demands on our military,
worldwide, and the ascendancy of feminist thinking in the Pentagon
and political establishments, it was only a matter of time that
someone would propose drafting my daughters.
Given that more than 16,000 single mothers have served in Iraq
and Afghanistan, an “unprecedented” number as reported by the Washington Post, this
cultural train wreck was bound to happen.
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), incoming chairman of the House Ways
and Means Committee, has proposed (re-proposed, actually) just such
a
plan. He is proposing a draft for both men and women “with no
exemptions beyond health or reasons of conscience.” Granted, his
primary motivation is to deter an interventionist foreign and
military policy. He appears to assume that a more broadly
representative military, made up of citizens of all walks of life,
from Blue states as well as Red, would put a political brake on
preventive, preemptive wars of choice.
However, Congressman Rangel also claims a moral purpose in
proposing a new draft: “I believe it is immoral for those who
insist on continuing the conflict in Iraq, and placing the war on
the table in Iran and North Korea, to do so only at the risk of
other people’s children.”
I am old enough to recall Senator-elect Jim Webb’s arguments,
back when he was a Republican, that, even with a draft, America’s
elites took a pass on the Vietnam War due to the college exemption,
monkey business with local Selective Service boards, and other
political interventions to secure assignments to National Guard
duty. This was in stark contrast to the elites of Britain who
suffered brutally in the First World War. I recall the scene at
Cambridge, at the beginning of the movie, Chariots of Fire
(1981), where the camera moves across endless lists of the
college’s war dead during a white-tie dinner, all lost in the Great
War.
I was a junior in college during the big lottery to establish
the order of priority for men who were eligible for the draft. I
drew number 366, the extra day added for Leap Year. So by the time
I graduated in 1971, heading on to law school, I did not have any
expectation of being called up.
Looking back, Jim Webb was absolutely right. It was a terrible
injustice, a sharp sword severing the body politic, that those of
us fortunate or inclined to attend college were exempt from
military service. Following the exemption path was something one
just did without thought or reflection. I can think of only one
person in my college prep school graduating class who served in
Vietnam. His name is written on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington,
a Notre Dame football walk-on, who quit college to join the
Marines.
For this reason I came to accept the idea of some form of
universal military service sans college exemptions, but
not the politically correct social service options preferred by
liberals. The latter hardly seemed to justify the involuntary
conscription of young men, taking them away from their freely
chosen paths in life. Community service is a valued calling, but it
should not be an excuse for extending the power of the federal
government over the lives of its citizens through compulsion.
But drafting women into military service is hardly the sort of
thing a conservative can endorse. While many women forego the
demands of child-rearing, it is a unique, necessary vocation which
the government should be encouraging and protecting. Drafting women
of child-bearing age would compel women who desire the vocations of
wife and motherhood to enter an environment hardly conducive to the
upbringing of their young.
When I read of a woman killed in action, with children at home,
I grieve for her, her children, and for my country which allows
such a barbaric and unchivalrous thing to happen. While fathers are
essential to the flourishing of children, they are, in truth,
expendable when compared to the nurturing and sustaining role of a
mother. A hard truth, but one which the history of the human family
has proven time and time again. As George Gilder taught us three
decades ago, the role of mother is biological. The role of father
requires socialization. We seem to be doing everything we can to
deny both truths.
So my belief in the importance of national and political unity
must yield to my commitment to the unique role of women as mothers.
If the price of a draft is the conscription of women, I vote Nay.
The brutal fact is that we can live with casualties in war, but we
cannot live without vibrant families which love, cherish, and
protect children. In this way death will not triumph over life.
