I Want a Draft

Dear President Obama:

I am a student, and I support the draft. As an eighteen year old male, I remembered only a few days ago my obligation to sign up for the Selective Service, the institution tasked with maintaining the lists and mechanisms in the case of a draft. Pressing the "Submit" button provoked my musings about the potential consequences of reauthorizing this institution. Such an event would require approval by Congress and yourself, an unfortunately unlikely circumstance. Nevertheless, I would support fully an attempt to reinstate it, as Rep. Charles Rangel, a veteran and the Democrat from New York has done twice in the past decade.

First of all, I adamantly oppose a "surge" in Afghanistan, and actually support complete withdrawal. I understand however, the point that my government teacher makes when he says that if you were to announce withdrawal, the United States would not see the end of the recession until President Palin's second term. Since it appears almost (but not completely) politically impossible to withdraw, I request that the United States restart the draft. This would "bring the war home," in a much more constructive (and morally permissible) way than the Weather Underground's bombings in the 1970's.

The history of the draft, given that it is now disbanded, is filled with controversy. The first national draft occurred during the Civil War and provoked riots in NYC in 1863. The draft instituted for WWI led to harsh imprisonments and vigilante attacks on evaders, resisters, and conscientious objectors (CO's). WWII saw the birth of the modern draft mechanism (heralding a more harmonious draft), and the Korean War saw the end of the paternity deferment. In terms of the draft (and, of course, many other things), the Vietnam War was the great cataclysm.

The experience of the police action in Vietnam and the accompanying draft, however, is part of the reason that I support conscription. The Vietnam War was a major player in the generational crisis of the '60s and '70s. This crisis was nevertheless demographically inevitable, given the affluence of the Baby Boomer generation compared to the oppression of blacks, women, and other groups at the time. But in a war of incomparable imbecility, the draft galvanized millions of students to stop talking and begin acting for peace. Their self-interest was at stake which pushed them to eventually take selfless action--witness the Kent State shootings, for example.

Beyond building a student movement for peace, reauthorization of the draft would dampen the aggression of the American electorate. My father, a small business owner, abortion opponent, and staunch Republican, acknowledges that he would not have voted for President Bush a second time had I been liable to be sent to the Middle East to search for weapons of mass destruction. He was however, willing to support President Bush's attempt at nation-building because his upper middle class son had a bright, collegiate future ahead of him. The draft would build not only a student peace movement, but a desire to resolve issues without war in the greater body politic.

This mention of class segues perfectly to my third, final point. In 1968 during the Democratic primary, Senator Robert Kennedy, running on a social justice and antiwar platform, denounced draft evaders and resisters. He said that when a rich boy receives a deferment, a poor boy dies in a Vietnamese foxhole in his stead. While you denounced the idea of two Americas in your campaign, President Obama, you are surely not blind to the reality that the American military is not at all representative of the nation's socioeconomic situation. Our all-volunteer military relies disproportionately on the working and lower classes to secure our freedoms. This is a tragic irony because in the end, it is not the poor who need the military. They do not have real estate that rival nations wish to capture, they do not have positions of authority that rival countries desire to seize, nor do they hold bank accounts that rival states want to empty. The rich profit from the military, yet they do not serve in its ranks.

President Obama, if you decide in the upcoming days to maintain or expand the American occupation of Afghanistan, please tie such an action to reauthorizing the draft. Such a draft of course, would need to avoid the faults of the one from which Dick Cheney and Tom Tancredo received deferments. Sit down and listen to Congressman Rangel's ideas. While we often associate solely the ability to choose with freedom and democracy, the social and racial makeup of the army does not reflect democratic or egalitarian values.

The Binyam Mohamed Papers

Torture papers surrounding the treatment of British citizen Binyam Mohamed are the subject of acute controversy in both the United Kingdom and the United States. In February, the Obama administration released Mr Mohamed from Guantanamo Bay and threatened the British government with a reduction in intelligence sharing if the details of his internment are released. While the British High Court has ordered the surrender of said documents, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, David Milliband, is appealing the decision because of the American threat, something that is widely construed to be a weakness on Britain's part and illegal on the United States' part, not to mention immoral.

Truthout's Andy Worthington, Guardian's Clive Stafford Smith, and Salon's Glenn Greenwald all report and commentate on the information-control struggle between the United States, the British Department of Foreign Affairs, the British High Court, and Binyam Mohamed. Worthington provides a detailed history of the ordeal. Because of "national security concerns," the British High Court initially ruled that the documents ought not to be released, but have now reversed themselves and are emphasizing "democratic accountability and the rule of law." He writes primarily from the point of view of the two judges on the court and the bind that they have found themselves in, however he does not excuse them for their poor decisions of the past. Analogous to his judge-centric point of view, Worthington cites numerous statements made by the judges regarding the legal intricacies of the case. Mr Smith, however, provides a typically British scathing news article that roundly criticizes his government. He brings in another player, Karen Steyn, the barrister (lawyer) representing Mr Milliband and the dialogue between her and the judges. In this article, Ms Steyn emerges as the pathetic tool of an unscrupulous politician (Milliband) fighting against two honourable justices, one of whom, Lord Justice Thomas calls the American threat, "an exercise of naked political power," and remarks that it has no legal foundation whatsoever. If the British government is going to act legitimately and in line with the laws by which it is bound, the High Court, Smith argues, must stand up to the American threat and to Mr. Milliband's ugly opportunism. Glenn Greenwald, representing the perspective from across the Atlantic, accordingly makes frequent mention of President Obama in order to express his disdain for his government's perceived anti-human rights stance. He notes that the High Court made its initial ruling in favor of Mr. Milliband while the Bush administration still occupied the White House. When the Obama government assumed the mantle of power, Mr. Mohamed's lawyers reintroduced the case with the argument that President Obama would not interfere with intelligence sharing in the manner that President Bush had threatened to do. Mr. Mohamed's lawyers were wrong, but did manage to convince the High Court to reverse their ruling. Greenwald provides extensive quotations from the justices' opinions, but also quotes the CIA, the American government, Mr. Milliband, and Mr. Mohamed's lawyers.

This legal ordeal precedes a looming election in Britain in which the ruling Labour government is widely expected to lose its majority in Parliament. While the British and the Americans have historically cooperated on numerous issues (e.g. the Iraq War), British voters could easily perceive this event to be bullying coming from Washington. Indeed, threatening an ally to subvert the rule of law seems to ride roughshod over the concept of the sovereignty, and thus the legitimacy of the British state. The Mohamed trial also is a chief line in the narrative accompanying the figurative can of worms that Mr Obama opened upon his election and policy promises in which he promised transparency. He even made a speech in which he stated, "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." Mr. Milliband, the Lord Justice Thomas, and Mr. Justice Lloyd George have that very choice before them, and have not, as of now, completely rejected it as false.