Here It Comes: Draft Now Getting Democratic Support

One of the favorite fantasies of
right-wing talk radio and Fox "News" is that only
Bush-hating liberals oppose the Iraq war and additional
US military incursions into the Middle East or wherever.

Yet, it is the March issue of the
Washington Monthly, a magazine with a

liberal Democratic audience, which makes a case for
the draft as the only way "America can remain the
world`s superpower."

The authors, Phillip Carter and

Paul Glastris, take it for granted that America`s
duty is to make the rest of the world conform to
America.

They regard this virtuous calling
to be so great that a draft is a small price to pay. [The
Case for the Draft, March 2005]

The authors have no doubts that
Americans exist in order to serve other countries.
American lives, limbs, and treasure are required to
rectify whatever happens elsewhere that fails to meet
with our leaders` approval.

Since other countries are not
willing "to share the burden" by sacrificing
their own citizens and resources, America must build a
large enough army to do the job on its own.

The authors try to devise a draft
proposal that "would create a cascading series of
benefits for society" by instilling "a new ethic
of service" among college-bound youth. Before
America`s youth could be admitted to college, they would
first have to serve either in the military or in
tutoring disadvantaged children or by helping old folks,
or in homeland security by guarding ports.

The authors admit that few would
choose combat abroad, but say that some would out of
patriotism. They write:

"Even
if only 10 percent of the one-million young people who
annually start at four-year colleges and universities
were to choose the military option, the armed forces
would receive 100,000 fresh recruits every year."

The authors mean "nationalism,"
when they say "patriotism." True patriots would
oppose the

Jacobin agenda of Global Cop and demand that America
stick to its founding principles. But the authors cannot
imagine America without "its mantle of global
leadership" and regard enslaving youth in the
service of the state as a small price to pay.

The authors are probably correct
that the

neoconservatives` war plans cannot be undertaken
with the present US force structure. The neocons thought
that in Iraq all the US had to do was to defeat a poorly
equipped army. They overlooked that insurgency is a
different kind of fighting.

To deal with insurgencies requires
vast numbers of troops and practices that tend to
produce more insurgents. When the draft army fails to
impose America`s will on the world, we will hear the

case for

"useable nukes."

The US desperately needs to escape
from Iraq before America is sucked into a wider conflict
that will necessitate a draft. Once the Bush
administration has created so much instability in the
Middle East that a rising Islamic revolution is afoot,
the stakes will be too high for the US to be able to
withdraw.

What might save America from
further neoconservative miscalculations is the

collapse of the US dollar. A country dependent on
foreign financing, as is the US, cannot fight wars that
its

foreign bankers do not approve.

I suspect America`s foreign bankers
would let the US fight itself into a deep hole before
pulling the plug. It is the best way the world has of
getting rid of us.

Paul
Craig Roberts, a former Reagan Administration official,
is the author of

The Supply-Side Revolution and, with Lawrence M.
Stratton, of
The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and
Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name
of Justice.
Click

here
for Peter Brimelow`s
Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the
recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

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