Forgive me while I drift, will you?

I feel for your friends and I’m angry about the injustice of the Vietnam War, and I’m happy you didn’t have to go. I’m sure your students are happy too.

I’m too young to have risked the draft for Vietnam or for any war, since it’s the last war we used conscription for.

I made my own choices volunteering for the military during peacetime, but I went in eyes open, knowing I wasn’t risking my life. Especially not for a pointless war in Southeast Asia we had no business taking part in.

The military I joined post conscription is thought to have become more professional. In many ways I’m sure it has. No professional officer or military historian I know about wants to go back to the draft.

But I wonder sometimes about the lack of protest, the lack of outrage about foreign misadventures that we still send soldiers to get slaughtered in.

Would the streets be more full of outrage if we were still choosing our cannon fodder by lottery? I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing the answer is yes.

Sure, many privileged kids found ways to get out of the Vietnam draft, but not all of them and it wasn’t easy. I think partly that’s why the war became so hot button. People understood in their bones what the stakes were. That they might go over there and die for nothing.

As much as I opposed the draft then and still oppose it today, I’m wondering what levels of commitment we’ve lost by getting rid of it.

And I’m wondering how we can get that personal stake back without conscripting 18 year olds again.