LONDON, 5 May 2004 — As US military operations in Iraq have turned sour and casualties have mounted, so the comparisons with the American entanglement in Vietnam have multiplied. And the parallels are there to be drawn: the political misjudgments, the ideological presumptions, the quick and limited intervention that became ever more deeply bogged down, the mistaken belief that the native population would share the occupiers’ view of themselves as liberators, however long they stayed and however hostile a face they showed.
In the past two weeks, however, two other words from that era have entered the increasingly fraught discussion of Iraq in the United States. They are words that those who still recall the humiliating US departure from Vietnam surely believed had been banished for good. Yet here they are, stuttering back into the prime-time political talk-shows, the C word and the D word: Conscription and the Draft, in the very country where you would least expect to hear them.
For decades now, the consensus has grown in the developed world that one hallmark of a civilized country is that its armed forces should be professional and paid as professionals. In Britain, conscription introduced for the World War II went out in 1960, not to return. The United States abolished conscription in 1973, in the wake of the Vietnam War. In Europe, most countries have now ended compulsory military service.
Among the arguments advanced by those in favor of abolishing conscription in recent years perhaps the strongest is that a volunteer system, allows officers to select the most promising soldiers, seamen or airmen for the new technological world. That their pay and conditions are closer with those accorded to professionals in civilian life is seen as another advantage in that it fosters commitment.
Time-serving, sullen recruits summoned to military duty by the (bad) luck of the draw or the arrival of the crucial birthday were supposed to be consigned to the past. It was hoped that standards of recruits, in terms of education and conduct, would be higher. In many countries, it should be said, Britain included, the desired objectives have mostly been achieved, even if the photographs of British soldiers humiliating Iraqi prisoners show that such disgraceful practices, whether real or staged, have not been eradicated.
In the United States, however, the effects of professionalization have been more mixed. While the return of the C and D words partly reflects the gathering perception that American forces are over-stretched and that, in the absence of allies, willing and able to help, new troops will have to be found closer to home, it is not the sole, or even the central, reason why the unmentionable is suddenly being mentioned. What bothers the trio of senators who first dared to broach the draft is not the practical, if improbable, risk that the US might run out of “men and women in uniform”, but principles such as national cohesion and social justice.
The longer the war in Iraq continues and the more costly it becomes, the more obvious become two uncomfortable facts. The first is that those who are being sent to fight look less and less like the powerful nation they are representing. The second, which flows from this, is that the human cost is being paid disproportionately by America’s ethnic minorities and its white, rural poor. The senior officers, the generals and spokesmen who present their case on television distort this picture. The majority are white and highly articulate in a way that displays their excellent education. But any roll call of the fallen - and some American current affairs presenters are now signing off their programs with a scrolling list of the latest casualties - will include a disproportionate number of names that are identifiably those of black or Hispanic Americans. And interviews with bereaved families show that, with very few exceptions, those who have made the “ultimate sacrifice” are America’s least privileged citizens.
The gap, in terms of wealth and social status, between those who are ordering young Americans into combat and those now doing the fighting has probably never been wider. Aside from retired General Colin Powell, who as secretary of state is President George Bush’s chief diplomat, there is almost no one in the top echelons of this administration, starting with the president, who has been to war.
Those from wealthy and well-connected families, of course, found it relatively easy to avoid the draft, if they were so inclined. The records of former President Bill Clinton’s tortuous dance with his draft board show how hard it was for the rest.
Even so, service in the armed forces was the norm for those conscripted through the Vietnam years and it is beyond doubt that the difficulty of avoiding the draft spread the suffering more widely, even as the varied social status of those who died was a factor in the strength of the anti-war movement and a reason why successive administrations found it more and more difficult to ignore.
Today, one of the most striking aspects of the United States is how stratified opinion seems to be about the war and its cost. The small, but growing, number of anti-war intellectuals watch the casualty lists scroll down the television screens and see the specter of Vietnam and their youth. Far more people in the American mainstream, though, do not. Most of the personal distress, the bereavements, the injuries, affect those “below stairs”. It is what shop assistants and chambermaids whisper about between themselves and the office cleaners in the evening, and they go largely unheard.
There are two peculiarities of the United States, however, which have led indirectly to the current, tentative talk about the draft. The first — for all America’s reputation as the land of opportunity — is the depth of poverty that exists in parts of the United States and lack of prospects that exist for those who are poor. The second is, or was, the growing perception among the poor of the armed forces as a safe escape route to earn the money or credit for a college education.
For more than 10 years, this illusion held. From the 1990-91 Gulf War, which was anyway short and successful, the US avoided calling up reservists or deploying detachments of the National Guard outside the US. Most full-time servicemen and women never experienced combat and grew used to the idea that they probably never would. Those so inclined served their time, saved their wages and went on to college. America got its troops and the poor earned an education. But the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 changed that.
