Apparently, Mr. Kane’s article touched a bit of a chord. Here are some reader responses published in the NY Times.
To the Editor:
President Bush has turned me into someone I never thought I would
become: a supporter of the Selective Service.
My support is not based, as Paul Kane ("A Peaceful Call to Arms," Op-
Ed, April 20) would have it, on a belief that we Americans are
willing to "make sacrifices in the form of military service, homeland
defense and conservation," at least not for dubious adventures in
distant nations whose internal workings we do not understand and
whose direct threat to our own well-being is far from clear.
Rather, if all of us across the nation faced losing partners and
children and brothers and sisters and neighbors and perhaps our own
lives, we would think long and hard about whether a war was worth
fighting.
Julie E. Dinnerstein
New York, April 20, 2006
•
To the Editor:
"A Peaceful Call to Arms" advances an absurd reason for reinstating
the draft of young men and women on the grounds that it will deter
Iran's nuclear program and conceivably an American attack on Iran.
A draft will only create more potential American cannon fodder and
eventual war memorials to the dead, sharpen antiwar protests
everywhere, awaken renewed civil strife at home and add ever more
billions to our national debt, not to mention whetting the appetite
of our bellicose administration and its neoconservative allies eager
to promote yet another war in the volatile Middle East.
Rather than a draft, what may prevent another American military
adventure in the Middle East is for Washington to stop threatening
Iran, recall the bulk of our troops in Iraq, work hard to establish a
just peace between Israelis and Palestinians and, of course, learn to
control our insatiable appetite for oil and the demands it makes on
our nation's military.
Murray Polner
Great Neck, N.Y., April 20, 2006
•
To the Editor:
Whether or not a peacetime draft would help defuse current tension
between the United States and Iran (a highly debatable suggestion),
the question is: at what cost?
Reactions to a draft would likely tear apart the social fabric of
this country, and represent another blow to civil liberties and
freedom. Feasible does not equal desirable; a draft is not our only
option.
Paul Kane would possibly reply to this that a draft would build
character in our citizens. Perhaps, but this legislation of morality
is antithetical to American, democratic values. I am not willing to
destroy America to protect it.
Benjamin Guthrie
Northfield, Minn., April 20, 2006
•
To the Editor:
As the mother of two twentysomething daughters, I have no intention
of standing quietly by if the military draft is reinstated. I, and a
number of others, do not support women in the military, on the front
lines, despite the louder voices of my feminist sisters pushing this
as a vehicle for equality.
Female soldiers and interrogators at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, used
to soften up prisoners for interrogation by engaging in sexually
demeaning acts directed at the prisoners, were sexually exploited in
the most vile way.
These behaviors are not the acts of a few renegades but the policies
of our new streamlined military under the tutelage of Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the cooperation of Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey D. Miller. The treatment of our soldiers and our prisoners
under this regime is devoid of moral consciousness.
As for calming down the Iranian nuclear wildfire, I think reinstating
the draft would only fan the flames.
Joan Z. Greiner
Flemington, N.J., April 20, 2006
•
To the Editor:
By focusing upon an imaginary future conflict with Iran, Paul Kane
misses the best argument in favor of national conscription: it would
bring our present-day misadventure in Iraq to a hasty conclusion.
Most of my students are vehemently opposed to American involvement in
the Iraq war, but very few of them have engaged in organized protest
against it. If they knew that they could be drafted, however, they'd
take to the streets. So would millions of other young people, along
with their parents and grandparents.
Our elected officials would sit up and take notice, ending the war in
Iraq before their own daughters and sons faced the terrifying
prospect of fighting and dying there. Fear has a way of concentrating
the mind.
Jonathan Zimmerman
New York, April 20, 2006
The writer is a professor of education and history at New York
University.
