This critical essay overlooks the fact that most senior military leaders hesitate to use force unless absolutely necessary and strongly advocate diplomacy (see Secretary of State Colin Powell). In Iraq, General Petraeus and his successor General Odierno have sought to bring stability through infrastructure building not merely engaging in hostilities. With Iran, former CENTCOM Commander Admiral Fallon resigned over what he perceived as the Bush Administration's aggressive plans for action in Iran. These leaders have chose the military as their career and served honorably. These are not abberations, but representative of responsible leadership and attention to serious issues. They recognize that the military has its limits and that soft power is essential in assuring American self-interests. Go back to reading Aristotle and leave the real world to those willing to accept the risks.

Mark Lance
Brendan:
I actually agree with you to some extent. Military leadership tend to be far less eager to engage in hostilities than do political leaders and weapons manufacturers. No doubt in part because they know the realities of war first-hand. I don't, however, think that means that they generally only endorse the use of force when absolutely necessary -- I think hardly any actually live up to that principle and many are nowhere close. And in any event, I don't think this really speaks to the argument of my article, that when military force is used in morally or legally unacceptable ways, it will be easier to resist with a draft. That is true regardless of whether it is politicians or military commanders behind the decision.

Huh, a "libertarian" that favors restricting people's liberties. Makes about as much sense as everything else you've said.

Like this article, which is probably the most ignorant, logically unsound editorial you've ever written. Did you even do any research on the central assumption of your argument: that the military is made up disproportionately of the poor? Or did you just accept the tired leftist groupthink on this issue like you usually seem to do? Do us all a favor, and read this report:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda08-05.cfm

I'll give you two key findings of the study if you're too lazy to actually read the research on things you write about:

"2. Members of the all-volunteer military are sig­nificantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 per­cent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) pro­gram, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods—a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.

3. American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted per­sonnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18–24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor’s degree."

I'd like to say I'm surprised by your shoddy attention to facts in this article, but, sadly, I'm not.

Another good quote from that study:

"Every income category above $40,000 per year is overrepresented in the active-duty enlisted force, while every income category below $40,000 a year is underrepresented. Low-income families are sig­nificantly underrepresented in the military. U.S. military enlistees disproportionately come from upper-middle-class families.

Members of America’s volunteer army are not enlisting because they have no other economic opportunities. Most recruits come from relatively affluent families and would likely earn above-aver­age wages if they did not join the military."

Also, I would question your Machiavellian logic that the good end of stopping a bad war is best achieved through the bad means of instituting an unjust draft. Sure, it might work, but at what cost?

Mark Lance
JP:
After several of your diatribes against my column, I have to ask: do you know how to do anything other than pound tables and call names? You devote your entire two responses to denouncing me for something I didn't even say. Please tell me where I say that the poor are the majority of the military? Do you bother to read my articles before repeating the official denunciations of leftists that you've obviously memorized? Whatever you might have heard about what Michael Moore, or any other official enemy says, I said there are two groups that make up the majority of the military, those who have little choice, and those who want to be there. I made no claims about the relative size of these groups because it is irrelevant to the argument I wanted to make which is larger.

You even label this my "central assumption" when I never said it at all.

Funny also that you once again rage on about logical absurdity without ever pointing to a single inference that you can give a cogent complaint about. So, for example, you notice the obvious fact -- one I highlighted -- that there is a prima facie tension between libertarian values and restricting liberties by the draft. But of course the whole article was explaining how they are compatible. And you ignored everything I said -- literally, everything. You provide lots of Heritage Foundation PR to refute something I didn't say, but announce that I don't know about logic without referring to a word I do say.

So here's some homework -- go back and actually read the article, just for a moment with an open mind, and see how I respond to your first sentence. Try to repeat back what the argument is. Then, after you've done that, decide if I'm a moron by reference to the argument that I made.

If you want to demonstrate to Fox News that you have learned the sound bites of a right-wing attack journalist -- "tired leftist groupthink," etc. -- you don't need to do any such homework. You can just note -- "he's critical of Cheney, therefore bad, therefore ..." throw out the standard names. On the other hand, if you want to be taken seriously by people who think about things, or to have me respond to anymore of your posts, you will have to engage in this minimal homework. I have far better things to do that respond to name-calling that can't even be bothered to read what I wrote.

"our long-term goal should be to abolish military force as a mode of human engagement."

we tried that in 1928, called the Kellogg-Briand Pact. As Kornheiser might say, how's that working out?

Paraphrasing Michael Howard's classic, Studies in War and Peace, force is [unfortunately] an ineluctable element of international relations not because of any inherent tendency on the part of man to use it, but because the possibility of its use exists. Those who renounce the use of force find themselves at the mercy of those who do not.

I suppose we could try to renounce the use of force via some paper commitment again, but what did Samuel Johnson say about a second marriage...the triumph of hope over experience.

Mark Lance
MKS, if the only way to abolish the use of force was via pacts between governments, I'd very much agree. But that is not at all what I have in mind. I have in mind changing the modes of economic cooperation, so that we have no incentive to go to war. (How often do you worry about a war with Canada. Or consider England and France which had a war about every fifteen minutes for 200 years and now can't imagine it. the change was a change in the economic and social relations between the countries.) I'd also work to change the available war technology. It is not inevitable in the modern world that the use of force is possible. There is an enormous literature on this and some fairly well understood methods for lessening the likelihood of the use of force. Unfortunately, we have enormous industries in the US devoted to just the opposite -- to seeing to it that we maintain the policiies that make the use of force more likely.

Of course we aren't going to solve a huge issue like the possibility of this sort of social transformation in a little online debate like this, but I'd suggest you take some classes in sociology of violence, in peace studies, etc. In any event, I'm certainly not willing to give up the goal, just because a few countries were hypocrits or because an IR book says that something is inevitable.

Sorry Mark, I have to give some credit to JP here about how you make the burden of the military falling on the poor and powerless the hallmark of your piece. A few quotations from your op-ed:

"The first group, a very substantial portion of the enlisted men and women, is comprised of the economically disenfranchised who join out of economic necessity — Go Army or Go Live on the Street"

"It should be uncontroversial that the first should not have to fight and die in the country’s wars so that we, the relatively privileged, can avoid that service."

"But better-educated, more privileged, drafted soldiers are less vulnerable and hence less obedient soldiers, less willing to fight and die just because a politician told them to."

"But the solution is to work against war and militarism, not to outsource the danger to the most vulnerable members of society."

----

Burden of military service falling on the poor isn't a central point?!? It just shows up in practically every paragraph!!!

And since the military isn't overwhelming or disproportionately comprised of the poor as the study JP posted shows, then having a draft to include the rich and privileged doesn't serve its purpose of rectifying some imaginary social ill. And your argument there doesn't hold up.

The reason people resisted the draft in the past maybe wasn't that they opposed the war ideologically but that they opposed doing something they didn't want to do in the first place. How would you like it if someone forced you to stop being a professor and told you you could only be a trash collector or work at a McDonald's or an insurance collection employee? I'm sure you'd be pretty annoyed too, just like someone who got drafted.

This may be a surprise to you but people at home and people in the military who are fighting and dying do support wars. And plenty of people in both groups don't support some wars either. But implying warmongering is a cheap shot.

As for impact you write:
"Those of us who lived through the Vietnam years remember families across America nervously waiting to see what lottery number their son, brother, boyfriend or buddy would draw. Parents scattered across America lost sons; every child knew they could die. In Iraq, the war is cleanly out of sight of those respectable eyes that influence policy, easy to ignore because the dead are largely from somewhere else."

Well maybe the impact was felt because we had more than half a million troops in Vietnam at peak and 58,159 dead while the Iraq War has only 152,000 troops 4,177 dead. Big difference in scale in absolute terms and in relative terms since there were almost 100 million fewer people living in the US at that time.

The impact seems less because it is less as the numbers show. And I'm sure there are plenty of average Americans at home who feel the pain of war firsthand. Perhaps you live in an area that doesn't see these things firsthand (neither really from where I come from) Bayesian updating skewing your perceptions perhaps, Mark?

In sum, the military is not a tool for putting the burdens of society onto the back of the poor/powerless as the compositional demographics show. And there is no sophistry that masks the hardship of the Iraq War: turns out it actually is less of an impact than Vietnam!

So your neo-Marxian arguments of the socially oppressive nature of the military seem pretty much de-fanged as of now.

I thank you for your thoughtful reply.

if you wish to maintain the goal of eliminating the use of force between nations, and would do so by "work[ing] to change the available war technology," then the change you should have in mind actually is to encourage the spread of nuclear weapons. the absence of war between the great powers since 1945 is/was as much a function of nuclear weapons as it was a "change in the economic and social relations between the countries."

I doubt that is what you had in mind, and is likely not a wise policy for many reasons, but empirically speaking, the absence of war between the US and USSR rested as much on nuclear weapons as it may have on any other factor.

moreover, empirically, I'd say the book is still out on the prospect of the modes of economic cooperation lessening the possibility of wars between actors. For example, Germany and Russia maintained not insignificant trade relations and negotiated trade agreements as late as 1938, and history is pretty clear on what happened shortly thereafter.

I welcome your viewpoint, it was an interesting read.

Professor Lance,

Please admit that you were PWNED by JP and Jared, especially Jared.

Thanks,

TD

Mark Lance
Mark Lance
Jared: You quote four things from my article and not one of them says what you say they do. The first says that the poor are a substantial group. The others talk about the effects on the poor, differences between poor and rich, etc. Not a word about relative numbers. And then you go off on a diatribe that ends with the really silly attribution to me of neo-marxianism. As with JP, you have to choose between reading what I wrote and responding to it, or having a monologues with yourself.

The one real point of your comment is the claim that more people were in Vietnam and that the overall impact on the US was greater. That is obviously true, but I think doesn't begin to account for the massive difference in attitude. The numbers of people who oppose the war now are nearly as great as at the height of vietnam resistance, and certainly higher than many periods in the VIetnam war. But the level of concrete resistance -- inside and outside the military -- is much lower.

And suggesting that soldiers mutinied because they'd like a better job is a breathtakingly insulting interpretation. Soldiers resisted because they knew their lives were being thrown away in a criminal murderous enterprise that they wanted no part of. They were the bravest of Americans, the ones who took their moral duty not to follow illegal orders seriously.

MKS:
Again, thanks for the thoughtful comments. I don't think much of anything can be inferred from a one case correlation. My sense is that the US and Russia were never at serious risk of war and that nuclear weapons had little to do with it, but certainly nothing can be reasonably inferred from one case. As for Russia and Germany, the fact that Germany was in about as bad an economic shape as a country can be in in 1938 means that there was not, by definition, the kinds of productive economic interdependence I'm talking about. Obviously that sort of thing leads to extreme political reactions.

But you are certainly right that "the book is still out" on any speculative social prediction. I certainly don't claim to know how to organize society to end war. I have ideas, and plausible plans,reasonable things to try, but not knowledge. No one does. But I still think it is the only respectable goal.

Mark,
The quotations don't apply?!?! Sorry, you're not making sense.
You replied that there was "Not a word about relative numbers." But let's look. The studies say the poor aren't overrepresented in the military. I'll give an example: let's say, if 20% of the population is "poor" and the same percentage of poor is in the military, how is that unfair or unequal? Relative numbers is important to the validity of the argument.

As for calling your argument "neo-marxian" and how it seems an irrelevant comment to you, I'm just calling it what it is (with respect to power structures and "oppression" in society). Transparency and openness should be part of the debate, right?

Also you reply back:
"soldiers mutinied because they'd like a better job is a breathtakingly insulting interpretation"

I'm actually not slandering them: I said early "there are people at home and people in the military who are fighting and dying do support wars. And plenty of people in both groups don't support some wars either trying to tie all the unrest to that might be a stretch"
Not all who opposed the war and suffered from low morale were conscientious objectors: some soldiers definitely were not happy about being shipped over, and thus morale suffered. Now compare that to the present with the volunteer military: now you get soldiers who are enthused about doing their duty and willingly want to serve.

Mark, if people aren't replying to what you are saying are your substantive points, then perhaps the goal of your article isn't clearly expressed.

Mark,
This just dawned on me: the title of your piece is "Spread Cost of War to All of Society" and you're telling us the supposed burden of war falling on the poor isn't the central point of it?!

Also an explanation of perhaps why we aren't seeing eye to eye on the "main point" behind this article:

AJ Ayer's emotivism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism#A._J._Ayer

Mark Lance
I'll try one more time. The quotations do not say anything about the relative amount of poor folks in the military. That's just obvious. As for the "validity of the argument" does an argument that slavery is wrong require that the majority of people be poor? In fact, the stat's you are citing from right-wing think tanks are actively debated. But this is all quite irrelevant to my argument. I said that there are three groups that together make up the bulk of the military. Some are there because they feel they have to be for economic reasons. That, I explained, is a morally problematic way to push anyone into the position. Others are there because they enjoy the practice of warfare and we shouldn't want those. They are dangerous. Finally, there are those who are misguided about the nature of what our military does and they are, well, misguided. Nowhere does a premise about relative numbers matter. Even if it were true that the same number of poor are put into the military under the two systems, it would be wrong to allow the military to be a choice for one group and economically coerced for another.

As for 'neo-marxian' I guess you think that any claim involving social fairness, or talking about a sociological disparity is marxism. You are wrong, but it's a familiar sort of right-wing name-calling.

You don't get to say that a comment isn't libel -- not slander, that's verbal -- by quoting a different comment that isn't. I wrote that people mutineed, and worked to subvert the war effort. You said they did it because they wanted a better job. I call that libel of the bravest people of the time.

On "people" replying without understanding, we aren't talking about people in general. We are talking about JP and you, who seem to be the only ones that can't grasp what I wrote. Others both here and in conversation have done fine. Please note that I have always been very patient in explaining what I mean in these pages, devoting lots of time. But you and JP don't respond with arguments, ask questions, etc. YOu launch into name-calling insults, sarcastic comments, and diatribes. If you are going to do that, you can certainly expect me to point out clearly where you are confused.

On your second post -- perhaps it could "dawn on you" that the Hoya writes the titles, not me.

Finally, I haven't the slightest idea what emotivism has to do with what we are talking about.

Ah, you're right: the emotivism has nothing to do with your article. It was a potential explanation for why our discussion is derailing.

I'll borrow a line from you in another thehoya.com thread and bow out due to "diminishing returns to scale"

Wow, "professor" you need to come out of that ivory tower and interact in the real world. Where did you come up with those stereotypes of the kind of people you think join the military? Some leftist hippie crap from the 60s?

Better yet why don't you join the military to find out what you're talking about.

LTC U.S. Army (Retired)

Mark Lance
Thanks Mike for that thoughtful reply. "leftie hippie crap from the 60s." If I'd thought of that I never would have written what I did.
If you ever get the urge to read what I wrote, think about it, and write a response that actually engages, I'll certainly take your comments seriously. (I don't really think I stereotyped anyone, but if I was trying to, I would have certainly suggested that a military person would write a response with this level of thoughtfulness. But I know enough military people -- starting with my father who fought in the Pacific in WWII and in Korea -- to know better.)

As for my coming out of the ivory tower, perhaps you should join a movement working for peace and find out what you are talking about?

I stopped reading at "nearly every US war has been unjust."

Mark Lance
Good plan. Reading is dangerous. Start reading and next thing you know you might question something you've been told.

Are you a real professor, or are you a professor in the way that the guy on And1 Mix Tape is a professor?

Mark,
Keep up the excellent columns. I read some of the responses and find them very troubling. Most likely, the same student (if you could call him/her) posts under different names.
This should be a forum of ideas, not name calling. It's a shame the rhetoric spewing out from right-wing ideologues continues in full verbosity here.

OK so I read it.

A) The idea that the army is 'unfair' is more like the idea that 'life is unfair.' No one forces poor people to join the army. If they do it because they have no talents, don't blame the army.

B) Nearly all US wars were not unjust.

C) you dont need to be involved personally in something to know its a good or bad idea. I can say we should have gotten involved in WW2 without having to have served in the war..we pay the costs in other ways for wars e.g. deficit.

"Professor"

There is so much wrong with your article I really don't want to waste too much of my time dissecting it. I stand by my "leftie hippie crap from the 60s" statement from the previous post because your article stinks of it.

Typical of liberal elite college professors you have no military experience yet feel qualified to stereotype categories of people who join our military.

I thank your father for his service to our nation in the military but unfortunately for you knowing "enough military people" doesn't quality you as an expert on the military or why people join the military.

We do agree through that going back to a draft would benefit the country but for different reasons. And trust me on this, with 23 years of service in our army, the members of our military want peace more than the public they serve. We or should I now say they are the ones who have to do the fighting. But they've stepped up to ensure people like you have the right to say and write an article like yours. Why don't you go live in Iran for a couple years and write and article and see what jail you end up in?

Please stick to the classroom and help use determine the answer to if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears or sees it fall did it really fall?

Mark Lance
Greg:
(A) I actually didn't blame the army. Politicians decided to do away with the draft. But I guess we mean something different by "reading."

(B) Shall we go down a list? Vietnam, Spanish American War, Mexican American War, various "Indian Wars", Philipines, interventions in every country, except Costa Rica, in Central and South America, Iraq, etc.

(C) Is this supposed to disagree with me? cf reading.

"Mike"
I stereotyped no one, cf reading.

But here's the one thing I will respond to. You did not step up to ensure that I have rights. Unless you are old enough to have fought in WWII, you have not fought in any war that had anything to do with defending me or my rights. You worked for multinational corporations, not for me or my rights, though I'm genuinely sorry if you were misinformed about that.

It is funny how the people who denounce dissent, defend the deflection of our economy toward militarism, and mock those working for a less violent society always think that it is their opponents who ought to go live in the authoritarian militaristic society. Your objective obviously isn't a rational conversation since you make no effort whatsoever to respond to the arguments I made, so I can only conclude that your goal is to somehow intimidate me into shutting up -- sort of the opposite of standing up for my rights. As I see it, I'm doing my best to make sure that people like Bush and Cheney don't turn this country into Iran. If you want to make fun of that, perhaps it is you who is in the wrong place.

Mark,

A bit disingenuous to state you never actually said the military was made up disproportionately of the poor when it was obviously assumed throughout your whole article, isn't it?

Especially given this quote: "The first group, A VERY SUBSTANTIAL PORTION of the enlisted men and women, is comprised of the economically disenfranchised who join out of economic necessity" (emphasis mine).

Also, since I'm mentioning specific parts of your article I take issue with (as you want me to) let's look at this quote about how the Iraq war is "easy to ignore because the dead are LARGELY from somewhere else" (emphasis mine).

Again, if you had actually read the study I mentioned in my first post, instead of childishly claiming I misread your central assumption, you would realize that statement is demonstrably false. The dead are "LARGELY" from middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods. The people that are mourning their sons and brothers and husbands are "LARGELY" indicative of mainstream America. I have at least 8 good friends, and many more acquaintances, who currently serve. Two of them are in warzones (Iraq and Afghanistan) and NONE of them "largely" come from "somewhere else." They come from MY hometown, MY family, MY classmates and MY peers. And as a wealthy, well-educated young man, I am CERTAINLY in the position to be one of "those respectable eyes that influence policy."

You say "A draft gives American families a concrete incentive to pay attention to military policy" but, as I've shown above, we already have that incentive. So, you know, there's another one of your points that's wrong.

And just to be clear, to claim that you were not assuming in your article that the military was made up disproportionately of the poor after you said:

a) the poor made up "a very substantial portion" of the military
b)"we, the relatively privileged...avoid that[military] service"
c)"it is fundamentally unfair to expect the poor to die in pursuit of America’s goals while the rest are free to stay at home"
d)"But for all that, a far wider, and richer, cross section of America would be in the military under a draft than under an AVM"
e)"the dead are largely from somewhere else"
f)"But we will have far more capacity to do all this if the make-up of the military reflects that of society at large." (you are assuming here that it doesn't)

is dishonest, disingenuous and pathetic. You sound like a politician, dancing around the very clear meaning in your words after you have been caught in a falsehood.

You gave me "homework" to do, re-read your article, which I did. Now here's YOUR homework, Mark: Take that above list of quotes from your article, print it off, and ask ANYONE if they would reasonably say those quotes indicate a belief that the military is made up disproportionately of poor people. ANYONE. Then we can decide if it was reasonable of me to infer that was a central assumption of you article (maybe not of your argument, as I said before, but of your article. See, I can admit when I'm wrong! Now let's see you try it!).

J.P. Medved, '09

Mark Lance
JP: Your attitude aside -- which is an enormous aside -- I"ll respond to the few real points you are now making.
The articles you cited did not say that the poor are largely from affluent neighborhoods. They use very carefully stated statistics to say that more come from one quintile than another, which is quite different. (And many other studies come up with different numbers.) Further, the comment about "largely" coming from somewhere else is taken utterly out of context. I said that the dead are out of the eyes of the sectors of society that have the most impact on government policy because the dead are largely from somewhere else. This is true. Nothing you told me to read disputes that. But I will acknowledge that this claim as I wrote it was a bit hyperbolic. Certainly there are neighborhoods in which lots of people pay attention to politics and in which there have been casualties. I didn't mean to deny this, but I see that you could take what I wrote that way. But note that this is a different objection from the ones you claim I've been avoiding. It is a new point you have made here for the first time. So this is pretty obviously irrelevant to your charges of evasion.

Now the quotes that you claim are relevant to your condescending and insulting accusations.
a) the poor made up "a very substantial portion" of the military

They do, and nothing you have sent along or quoted, or put in caps even denies this. A substantial portion does not mean a majority. It does not mean a disproportionate amount. It means substantial, as in not insubstantial, as in significant. Feel free to carry out your survey, or to consult a dictionary.
b)"we, the relatively privileged...avoid that[military] service"
I suppose it is possible to read this sentence, if you read it all by itself, as saying that every privileged person avoids service. That is if you ignore two of the three categories I discuss in the article -- those who sign up because they like violence, and those who sign up because they believe that military service is service to the country, you could think that is what this one sentence was saying. If you did read all that -- and the homework was to read the entire article, together, in context, and not to snatch individual sentences from it and ring them with invectives -- you know that it means the privileged who don't want to be in the military now have a free pass to avoid it.
c)"it is fundamentally unfair to expect the poor to die in pursuit of America’s goals while the rest are free to stay at home"
What is wrong with this? Again, does the wrongness of slavery require that the majority be slaves? Numbers have nothing to do with this point, as I've explained at least 4 times. Some of those who don't have to join, choose to. Let's just stipulate for the moment that the majority in the military are wealthy people who choose to be there. But the fact remains that some have a choice and others are forced by economic considerations to join. That's unfair.
d)"But for all that, a far wider, and richer, cross section of America would be in the military under a draft than under an AVM"
Again, I have never seen any study that denies this, including the ones you cite. And almost by definition the cross section would be wider.
e)"the dead are largely from somewhere else"
ALready responded to this.
f)"But we will have far more capacity to do all this if the make-up of the military reflects that of society at large." (you are assuming here that it doesn't)
Right. It doesn't. It doesn't include middle class people who don't believe in the causes the military is fighting for. The point is simple: some people have a choice and some don't. The ones who will do the most to provide checks on unjust military action are those who see it for what it is, oppose it, and are not under economic threat. Those who believe in the cause, obviously, won't.

And that's all I have to say to you JP.

"Professor"

It's been fun but this is my last post and you can have the last remarks; it is your article after all.

How left of liberal of you to state that my service in our army did nothing to defend you or your rights. Do you think only those who served in World War II like your father contributed to the defense of our nation and safe guarded our liberty?

There really isn't any argument I need to state. You know nothing about our military, its members or why people join. You're friends who knew someone who knew someone who was in the military does not give you any military expertise.

You did not provide any primary or secondary research associated with your article. You're too lazy to even go to DoD's website for some data to try to support your argument. It's all just your opinion from the fantasy world you live in as a professor. Completely out of touch with the real world and real people. Most importantly you're out of touch with the subject you wrote about. (Think 1960s liberal hippie crap but it's 2008.) However you think your standing as a "professor" shields your thoughts from criticism. As soon as you get criticism you start hiding behind "you're trying to suppress my free speech." Oh please, can you find a more tired argument?

I'm fine with you being anti-war. As I stated before, myself and most people who have to fight in wars are anti-war. The military goes where and does what our civilian governmental leaders ask it to do. You're assumptions about why the U.S. fights any war and who's doing the fighting is incorrect. Did you have a seat at the White House, Department of Defense or State Department that gave you inside information about why the U.S. has fought any conflict?

What, President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are trying to turn the U.S. into a theocracy? Where did that come from? Lets all hope you don't live in Iran or another country with similar views. Somehow if you did I think you'd be real happy to see a U.S. Soldier or Marine regardless of their socio-economic class.

You only need to spend some time in any U.S. military unit be it a brigade, battalion, company, platoon, squad, fire team, to know you're wrong.

Mark Lance
What is most distressing about rants like this is that they not only don't respond to the arguments I give, but don't even identify the claims that are supposed to be ignorant. "Mike" says that I malign the reasons people join teh military. I said there were three reasons: economic necessity, an enjoyment of violence and the other aspects of military life, or a genuine belief that one is serving one's country. I didn't get that from friends of friends of friends, I got it directly from soldiers, sailors, and marines who said that this is why they joined. I have spoken directly to people and read many sources and these are consistently the three reasons people give.

Mike either thinks that one of these categories doesn't exist -- so that the people who say this is the reason are lying -- or he thinks there is some other important one. Maybe there is. But he is so busy calling me names he can't even bother to say what it is.

Finally, it would be a long discussion to go through each of the many wars the US has fought, but the result of that would be that, yes, WWII was the only one in the 20th c that had anything to do with protecting the US. Only one where we were attacked. Only one where there was any real threat of attack. It is sad that so many people are conned into fighting and dying for reasons that are a lie.

The problem with this professor is he is a bit obnoxious. Some of the comments are as well, but he is also a bit condescending as well.

You most certainly do blame the army for being unfair. I will cite the paragraph:
-------
It should be uncontroversial that the first should not have to fight and die in the country’s wars so that we, the relatively privileged, can avoid that service. The AVM system, for these people, is a form of poverty draft, an employer of last resort for the desperate. Whether you see the U.S. military as a corporate enforcer or as the defender of democracy, it is fundamentally unfair to expect the poor to die in pursuit of America’s goals while the rest are free to stay at home.
-------

You blame the army for a 'poverty draft,' which is just weird since it's not mandatory and they can find other jobs. If the military did not exist, as you seem to want, what would there be? Dead people starving without a job? Surely that's worse than having them in the army?

As far as nearly all US wars being unjust, I think the revolutionary war, war of 1812, world war 1, world war 2, afghan war, gulf war, etc were all wonderful ideas.

And yes, my assertion that 'you don't need to go to war to realize its costs' most certainly does disagree with your assessment that Americans are out of touch with the costs of warfare. The war is overwhelmingly unpopular right now, and most people who oppose it never served. So, this sort of makes it seem like maybe -- just maybe -- people don't need to give up their jobs and go fight to realize a war is a bad idea.

Would the Iraq war have happened in the first place if there had been a draft? Quite possibly, since 70% of the people supported the war and it only needed a fraction of the troops we needed in Vietnam.

Mark Lance
Greg:
Nothing in the paragraph you quote blames the army for the AVM. As I said above, politicians put that in, not the army. How can you read a paragraph saying that it is unfair to force poor people into the military as somehow attributing that policy to the military? Believe me, I have no problem attributing problems to the military and will do so if I want to. This one I did not.

As for dying in the street, I advocate full employment, but that's another matter and clearly not relevant to this debate.

On US wars: The revolution was a just cause, but probably could have been won without war. War of 1812 was purely a land grab from Canada. WWI was a fight over control of resource rich areas, and there was no justification for US involvement. The Gulf war was utterly unnecessary. Iraq had agreed to leave without conditions, and the US refused to even consider the offer. Bush wanted a war. The afghan war was arguably just, though here too serious police action could have accomplished more without all the destruction. But even if all the wars you site had been just, they would remain a small minority of US wars.

Finally, I already acknowledged that people think the war is wrong. This is not in question. What is noteworthy is that the vast majority know it is wrong, but don't feel it urgently enough to do anything serious about it. That is the difference with Vietnam.

As for Iraq, the war might have started with the draft, but that is not clear. (And the 70% number was after it started. Before the war the majority opposed it.) If people knew they were likely to have their kids drafted more of them might have joined us in protesting it.

Hm...The more I think about this idea the more I think it sounds reasonable. A couple things:

A) I don't buy the argument that it's dangerous to have volunteers. I think you can use your draft proposal and still allow for volunteers.

B) I understand you didn't mean to call the army 'unfair,' or insult soldiers by calling the military 'harmful.' But I would suggest in the future you should rethink this claim. The US miliary has done great things in its history, and I don't see why you want to get bogged down by challenging this: it's not really relevant to the draft argument.

C)I do think those other guys are right that you insinuate that the poor are overrepresented in the military. I looked it up and it surprised me too: it's more lower middle class individuals, and quite a few are college-educated.

So minus some of the potentially touchy comments/insinuations/slightly condescending tone the fundamental idea seems like it makes sense. It is too bad the comments got a bit out of hand in terms of personal attacks though.

+ I just realized John Conyers is also pro-draft. and I promised I'd never agree with that bastard on anything

Mark Lance
Thanks Greg. And you are probably right about the rhetoric. The funny thing is that this issue cuts across lots of traditional political lines. It doesn't line up in the usual ways at all.

Mark,

Your snide condescension aside --which is an enormous aside-- you still fail to see the point:

"A substantial portion does not mean a majority. It does not mean a disproportionate amount."

True, but you said "VERY substantial" which, as anyone who understands English will tell you, is different from simply "substantial." In fact, it implies something markedly larger than just substantial. Why would you have said "very substantial" if all you meant to say was substantial? You are either a poor writer, or a poor logician, though I suspect both.

"If you did read all that -- and the homework was to read the entire article, together, in context, and not to snatch individual sentences from it and ring them with invectives -- you know that it means the privileged who don't want to be in the military now have a free pass to avoid it."

And if you actually understood my point that the object of providing such a quotation was not to show that you think there are NO privileged people in the military, but that you think there are not enough, and thus, by inference that you think there are a disproportionate amount of poor people in the military, I wouldn't have to repeat myself.

""it is fundamentally unfair to expect the poor to die in pursuit of America’s goals while the rest are free to stay at home"
What is wrong with this? Again, does the wrongness of slavery require that the majority be slaves? Numbers have nothing to do with this point, as I've explained at least 4 times."

Look, I know this is hard for you, but I specifically stated I wasn't attacking your argument with the quotations I picked, but rather your assumption, in the article, that the poor are disproportionately represented in the military. Your argument that the poor are somehow forced into the military is a completely different bag of worms and, if it were true, completely valid. Thus, the key part of that quotation is, "the rest." That wording makes it seem you think the poor fight the wars, and "the rest," presumably a large number of privileged people, don't. Implicit in this is an assumption that the poor make up a disproportionate amount of those who "die in pursuit of America’s goals."

"d)"But for all that, a far wider, and richer, cross section of America would be in the military under a draft than under an AVM"
Again, I have never seen any study that denies this, including the ones you cite. And almost by definition the cross section would be wider."

Look, if the military is made up disproportionately of the wealthy, and a draft aims to match the makeup of the military to the socioeconomic makeup of society, BY DEFINITION, such a draft would in fact make the military LESS full of rich people, proportionally (i.e. as a percent). If the poor are underrepresented, and a draft aims to make them represented, there will be MORE poor in the military, both as a percent and as an actual number. So yes, "almost by definition the cross section would be wider" but wider in the opposite direction of what you want, wider to include more poor people, not more rich people, as they are already overrepresented.

Anyway, at the risk of this turning into a pedantic argument I will close with this: you assumed throughout your entire article that the poor were overrepresented in the military, this is clear from the many quotes I've showed you, you denied this was the case when confronted with evidence that such an assumption was not based on fact. Since the actual numbers of poor in the military, as you've said, has no bearing on validity of your argument (except as an emotional appeal to "injustice" happening on a large or smaller scale) it seems confusing that you would go to such great lengths to claim you never assumed the members of the military were disproportionately from poor backgrounds. In fact, the only reason I can think of for defending such a visibly false claim is you didn't want to be seen as proved wrong by a student whose opinions you abhor and whose attitude you find distasteful.

How is that working out for you?

Clearly Prof. Lance has touched a nerve with a provocative proposal. This sounds like fodder for a face to face debate. I'm not sure if I speak for "the rest of us," whoever we are, but I for one would rather see this issue hashed out in person than on a long chain of replies filled with invective!

"a long chain of replies filled with invective"

Professor Lance's columns are little more than pseudo-intellectual ruminations that demonstrate his bias.

"a long chain of replies filled with invective"

Professor Lance's columns are little more than pseudo-intellectual ruminations that demonstrate his bias.

Mark Lance
I'm happy to debate any of the issues I write on here. Just set it up. And thanks for a productive suggestion

I am struck by how quickly and thoroughly this conversation has descended to childish name-calling. I would have thought (or hoped, rather) that a discussion between a professor of philosophy and two Georgetown seniors would be civil if not enlightened. On the contrary, Misters Medved and Pilosio demonstrate that all they learned from their time at the helm of "The Federalist" was how to take quotes out of context, give themselves the appearance of authority by referencing statistics gleaned from friendly sources, and - in the case of Mr. Pilosio - aggressively ignore the rules of standard written English.

I cannot even begin to respond to the poster who, citing 23 years of military service (for which we thank and honor him), argues that academics have no place studying, assessing, criticizing or otherwise engaging with the armed forces or US military policy. I do not feel the need to point out how this attitude contravenes American ideals.

Finally, as regards Dr. Lance, I admit to being disappointed. As a professor of philosophy at one of our nation's finest universities, you have disregarded a principal responsibility: to inform and elevate the discussion. Students and other critics will inevitably respond to theories they disagree with or do not understand in immature ways. In book one of The Republic, when Thrasymachus criticizes Socrates and calls him various names, how does the philosopher respond? I agree with you that JP and Jared have failed to offer cogent arguments against you, and that they have resorted in large part to parroting conservative sound bites, but that does not excuse you from your role as teacher. Forgive them the passion of youth, and rather than bicker with them at their own level, engage them in a productive conversation - a conversation that they might walk away from with fuller understanding and broader minds. Remember, professor, that Jared and JP's parents are paying you to educate their children, not fight with them. And if these two refuse to be taught, then do what any adult would do to children in a tantrum: ignore them. They just want the attention.

Mark Lance
Patrick: You are correct. It is sometimes hard not to scold when students, or anyone else as this is an open forum, engages in this sort of rhetoric. (At least it is hard for me.) But I should not do so. Better to simply cut off the conversation, as I eventually did with JP. It would have been better had I done so sooner.

All these white people should just "shut the f#ck up," huh Mark?

We all know that's how you feel, so let's stop hiding your hatred of your audience behind your contrived argument.