I feel like every time I open the Hoya, I find some article or piece which professes that Mark Lance "fails to understand the issues." I think it is important to look closely at this wave of responses to Lance's opinions. Most of them seek to entirely delegitimize him by pointing out some sort of deficiency (whether it be radicalism, idealism, failure to understand, lack of experience....) What does this suugest about Professor Lance's articles? To me, it means that students have a difficult time digesting anything that contradicts what we have been force fed throughout our lives. Rather than reacting to Lance's articles in a critical, thoughtful way, students react violently and harshly. People are not responding to his opinions so much as they are seeking to deligitimize him as a person and professor.

All in all, I am glad to see that his articles have people thinking and I'm glad students have the opportunity to take in some information which perhaps makes us a bit uncomfortable.

Brilliant piece George.

Fine work George.

Fine work George.

Marion is completely off base.

Professor Lance writes the way he does to encourage dialoggue with those he disagrees with. So, smart practical conservative students take the bait and engage in dialogue. To Marion this is threatening. Some of the dialogue is more helpful than others, to be sure. The article in question however was thoughtful and addressed the tenents of the argument, not to content of Lance's character.

But Marion's reflexive knee-jerk reaction against anyone taking issue with Lance's radical diatribes is really what works against the goal of University -- intelectual exchange.

AS to the topic at hand, many past and present statemen have suggested spreading the costs of war to make our government more risk averse. The argument itself has merit. The rationale of Lance does not for two reasons.

First because rather than making military policy risk averse, he wants to make it less effective once committed to action. Lance suggests as a positive benefit of a draft that draftees would be less likely to follow orders once actually engaged in battle. IN essense, he advocates mutiny of enlisted soldiers in dangerous situations. One prays that the hypotheicals he imagines remain hypothetical.

Second, because unlike the statesman I have in mind (for one Charles Wrangle), Lance seems to hold the modern American soldier (the one who chooses to put himself in peril) in disregard as either (a) crazy, (b) sane but misguided or (c) poor trash.

I have been blessed to know many American soldiers and many future soldiers. Of all I have known, none fit into any of the three categories.

Finally, since Lance is a self-professed socialist, he gives particular time to economic desperation that leads to military service as an employer of last resort. First off, the military is not statistically from poorer families as demonstrated by last week's posters. Second, enlisted soldiers are paid less than the market value of their services in civilian life (with enlisted wages beging technically below the poverty line without taking food or housing into account). Third, it stands to reason that if the military were an employer of last resort, than all poor people in need of such resort would join the military, which clearly is not true.

For all these reasons, people should engage in a discussion of ideas with Lance. Given Lance's misguided notion of the noble and selfless American serviceman, I an im awe of their restraint.

Regards,

Saxon Gillis

PS -- Great article.

George:

Great article, thanks for taking the time out your schedule to debunk Mark Lance’s ill-conceived article and his leftist ideas.

This is the kind of "professor" we don't need at any level of teaching polluting the minds of students anywhere. It appears that Lance's blatant idiotic ideas are formulated to actually hurt rather than enhance our country regardless of one's political leanings.

Luckily I've never had a class with the good professor and will never take one with him.

I encourage all of Gtown's students to boycott any classes professor Lance teaches.

Mike

It is a sad day when students at one of the top universities in the world decide they need to avoid taking a class because that class might challenge their opinions and ideas. If one class with Professor Lance can "pollute" your mind, you probably didn't have much to pollute in the first place.

It is the job of a professor, especially a philosophy one, to challenge everything a student thought he "knew." Only by defending your beliefs do you learn why you believe them.

His editorial actually had a pretty good idea. A mandatory draft would make people realize the costs of war, much more than a volunteer army. Americans would be much more hesitant to use force in this case.

George, I don't think you understood the prof's argument:

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Is it then fair to conclude from Professor Lance’s argument that he supports the imposition of a draft in order to “make it as hard as possible for anyone to be pushed into fighting?” If so, the draft, an institution tasked with literally forcing people into military service, seems to be an inherently contradictory means of achieving the goal of “mak[ing] it as hard as possible for anyone to be pushed into fighting.”
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It's not "inherently contradictory" at all. The draft will greatly reduce instances where the US needlessly intervenes in a war. Perhaps a better proposal would be: the US must vote on all wars the president wants to start; if over 50% agree, then a mandatory draft is implemented, and many individual citizens must then go fight the war.

The fact you think it is "inherently contradictory" signifies you missed the boat, not only on the argument, but also on the meaning of the words "inherent" and "contradictory."

George,
Your attempt to obfuscate and refute an excellent column by Professor Lance is pitiable. What your column lacks in substance it makes up for in prolixity. And it is that verbose language that your refutation is cloaked in that leads the reader to a mirage of intelligence, one that is clearly not there.
I won't even waste more space giving your column any more clout. If you are a reflection of the greater Georgetown students, they ought to be ashamed.

Mark Lance
I'm afraid I didn't understand much of anything that was said in the initial letter. And as I've already written an enormous amount on the topic, I'm not going to try to sort most of it out. (I will say that the utterly bizarre part about the meaning of home was one of the strangest criticisms I've ever seen. I really thought for a while that it was meant as a parody of the people who write in to call me names. In any event, it is perfectly obvious that I meant defense of the US homeland, our borders, etc.)

I do want to respond to a couple things that Saxon repeats, since he has generally responded in this forum with an attempt to honestly engage with me, rather than the sort of name-calling that is too common here.

First, Marion clearly did not object to people disagreeing with me, but to dismissive name calling that ignores what I wrote and dismisses it out of hand. The post is perfectly clear on that score.

Second, on the issue of disobeying orders, what I obviously advocated was soldiers refusing illegal orders. This is completely clear in the article. I was not advocating random disobedience, and it is hard to imagine anyone seriously reading what I wrote thinking that I did. Yes, I take the uniform code of military conduct seriously, and think soldiers should refuse all illegal orders, including those to go to an illegal war.

Finally, the "crazy, misguided, or trash" line was really beneath you Saxon, pure rhetorical BS. I said that they either found satisfaction in the activities of war, believed in the justice of most projects the military is engaged in, or are entering because of perceived economic necessity. Nothing about being crazy, nothing about trash. (It's kind of an unresistable reflex for conservatives these days to claim that anyone on the left must have contempt for poor folks, but as someone who's family is from one county outside appalachia, I most certainly do not.) And yes, I do think that the belief that the US military is engaged in just causes around the world is misguided, but that is surely a substantive issue, not one that can be dismissed in this manner.

yeah , the whole paragraph about the "home" criticism made no sense. i guess you need to give some slack because an undergrad vs a PHD is going to be a intellectual mismatch but that paragraph is especially bad.

another weird one:

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Therefore, fighting will be the primary occupation of this nation’s military irrespective of the means by which it obtains its soldiers.
---
???

I don't see how that debunks the idea that a draft will make wars far less common in the first place.

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Professor Lance’s ideal draft would supply the military with “better-educated, more privileged, drafted soldiers” who are “less vulnerable and hence less obedient soldiers.” Professor Lance derives an inverse correlation between a soldier’s level of education and his corresponding willingness to follow orders, which is the fundamental obligation of a soldier. Furthermore, Professor Lance implicitly concludes that anyone who follows orders must either be uneducated or unprivileged.
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It appears that some people are have conflated two separate arguments from Dr. Lance's piece. Mr. Foulard and others seem to think that because Dr. Lance speaks about the demographics of enlisted men and women, he is therefore saying that demographic factors (like education and socio-economic background) determine vulnerability. In fact, these are separate issues. The demographic argument, as I understand it, is that it is unjust that SOME people join the armed forces out of economic necessity, while others have the option not to. In this sense, the draft would correct the injustice by taking away that option. There are better ways of solving injustice than taking away rights, of course. Lance addresses this particular injustice elsewhere through the principle of full employment, for example.

The second argument, that we need "less vulnerable" soldiers, is different and unrelated to the demographics of enlistment. Lance argues that a volunteer army is less equipped to question and defy illegal orders for the reason that the army is comprised of people who have a vested interest in not questioning their orders, whether because of economic, ideological, or other factors. This is the "vulnerability" Lance describes. What the draft would do, in his estimation, is introduce a more naturally skeptical element into the armed forces, that would be more inclined to challenge illegal orders.

I do not support the reinstitution of the draft, and I don't think that Lance's article expressed his ideas with particular clarity or eloquence. However, if we are going to debate the merits of his proposal, I think we ought to at least understand it. So far I have read little to suggest that anyone on these boards has given the theory sufficient thought to actually engage in a constructive conversation.

First, Marion is on point that the dialogue should rise above name-calling. I agree completelty. She is off base, because the article (upon which she was the first poster) didnt engage in name calling. The comment was akin to reading an otherwise race-nuetral discussion of affirmative action and the first response is "dont be a racist." The comment dismisses the argument on false grounds and unfairly colors the discussion. As such, she was off-base.

Second, with regard to civil disobediance in military service, I agree that soldiers are bound to the UCMJ, but like all legal matters, the law's applicability to a situtaion is ambigious until adjudicated (and usually not clear even then). In clear cases, raising villages, raping women, etc, a volonteer is just as likely to object as a draftee. In ambigious cases, a draftee is more likely to object and frustrate the will of elected policy makers and endanger other soldiers in harms way. Such mutinee is as likely to occur in actual UCMJ violations as non-violations. This rationale for a draft is specifically to undermine military effectiveness and thus irresponsible.

With regard to my framing Lance's argument as categorizing enlistees as "either (a) crazy, (b) sane but misguided or (c) poor trash." My framing was hyperbolic to be sure, but not particularly misleading. In any other context, I'm sure Lance would not disagree that enjoying war is crazy; he herein admits that support of American foriegn policy is misgueded; and he doesnt mind calling enlistees poor, just doesnt like them called trash. Fair enough. Niether do I.

Regards,

Saxon Gillis

Mark Lance
Saxon: As you know the issue is not whether I "like" calling the poor 'trash' but whether I did. You said that I did, and you know that isn't true. And as I've pointed out about 25 times in these responses, the only enlistees that I called "poor" are the poor ones. As for whether I think liking war is "crazy," I try not to use completely ill-defined words like 'crazy'. There is something to be said for the claim that enjoying violence is a form of mental illness, but I certainly made no claims along these lines. What I said was that reasonable people would not want a military staffed by people with such a desire.

Finally, on the important issue of disobeying orders. First, the UCMJ does not say that you have to first wait until a case has been reviewed and then disobey. Faced with an illegal order, every soldier has to make their choice. And even in the narrow range of cases you mention -- let's just look at razing of villages -- this is something far more common that people like to admit. It certainly went on in Vietnam quite extensively. And though the military does everything it can to prevent gathering accurate information on such matters, there is good reason to think that draftees are much less likely to follow such orders.

You make several further completely unsubstantiated claims. You assume that disobedience will be as likely to occur in violations as non-violations, thereby assuming that the conscientious soldier's judgment is no better than a coin toss? Why? Have you reviewed the range of cases of disobedience from Vietnam, about which there is a substantial literature? You also assume that soldiers are utterly incapable of engaging in disobedience in a way that doesn't put others at risk. Take the most famous case of Hugh Thompson and his crew who stopped the mass murder at My Lai. Were they putting other troops at risk? In a sense, they were in that at one point he directed his helicopter's guns at Lt Calley. But not in the sense that you mean. Disobedience of this sort does not happen in the middle of a battle with a legitimate enemy.

But let's look at another important category of illegal order -- the order to go to a war that is patently illegal, such as Iraq or Vietnam. One of the most important forms of resistance is refusal at this stage, and I both advocate it and think it more likely to come from draftees.

the razing of villages in vietnam sort of undercuts your idea that draftees are less likely to follow illicit orders

Mark Lance
No, it would only undercut an argument that the inevitably will reject illicit orders. There are many very serious incentives to follow orders in any context. In Vietnam there was a great deal of soldier resistance. For a brief history and some citations, go to
http://www.counterpunch.org/grossman06282006.html

Professor Lance:

I fully acknowledge that you didnt call poor soldiers trash, my use of the term was hyperbolic. But while denigrating a person due to his economic sophistication is certainly below you, infantalizing the same is not. The essence of the "employer of last resort" argument is that there is a de facto draft of those who are completly unable to find sustainance in the civilian world. That if they could hunt squirrels or find enough discarded babies in garbage cans to fullfill their caloric intake then they would never join the American military.

It further assumes that the same recruit who is capable of excelling through the initital demands of bootcamp and the daily and ongoing demands of military life is completely unable to overcome the barriers to entry to become a fireman, policeman, postal worker, paralegal, lawyer, nurse, nurse technician, factory worker or any other civilian profession.

Professor Lance did not call anyone trash, but his argument assumes much worse with much less basis in fact.

Regards,

Saxon Gillis

Oh please. The military takes anyone who can fulfill its requirements. Few other employers do, especially in this economy. This is why you see recruiters targeting low income, low education neighborhoods all the time. Denying that is just bizarre.

Professor - I need to look at your link a bit more carefully to comment anymore about this, but my understanding is that there was less compliance with illicit orders in Iraq than there has been in Vietnam. Maybe a drafted army is less disciplined and more brutal.