Politics

Maybe ending the draft wasn’t such a hot idea after all…

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Thursday 20th March 2008

Maybe ending the draft wasn't such a hot idea after all... I came of age for military induction during an intense period of the Vietnam War – 1969/70. Even though I was attending college, an academic deferment wasn’t a certainty, and it was only through the lucky coincidence of receiving a barely-high-enough number in the draft lottery that I avoided service.

A lot of other guys got scooped up by the draft; the ones that didn’t give their lives often served long tours in combat, and are now everywhere in american communities, working, raising families, living the lives of responsible citizens who did their duty. After I dropped out of college for good in the early 70’s, I met a lot of men who’d done tours in Southeast Asia and who were making the adjustment back to civilian life. As I emerged from my sheltered academic cocoon, I discovered we were all just folks.

As inequitable as the Vietnam-era draft was – the vast majority of military conscripts were from impoverished backgrounds – the armed forces did represent a citizen’s army, in the way the U.S. Constitution meant it to be.

For much of the twentieth century, Americans co-existed with the country’s armed forces in a way we don’t anymore. In the 1940’s and ’50s, millions of Americans served in the fight against imperial Japan and Hitler’s Germany, as well as Kim Il Sung’s North Korea and its Chinese Allies; in the sixties, millions of boomers wore the uniform in the jungles of Vietnam or on large bases in Europe, Asia, and in the States. Service, or the possibility of service, was a way of life.

After the draft was abolished in the 1970’s the military increasingly became an institution apart from the society at large, a process that was hastened by the “peace dividend” that allowed the end of the cold war, which allowed for the significant downsizing of the armed forces. While those who served continued to pass along the tradition to subsequent generations, those who didn’t hardly gave the armed services a second thought. It was an arrangement that seemed to work well for both groups as long as peace prevailed.

Excerpted from “Blogging the Long War”, an article by Paul McLeary in this month’s Columbia Journalism Review.

I add that quote above because it serves as a great lead-in to the focus of this post: the fact that a military intended to defend the United States and it’s constitution was supposed to be made up of citizens, treating each other with respect for their different backgrounds but fighting for the same end.

No more.

In a well researched, eloquently written piece of reporting, David Antoon, a career officer and combat veteran of the US Air Force, writes about the takeover of the armed forces by the religious right. It’s a takeover that’s practically complete, aided and abetted by the Republican Party.

Antoon writes:

In April of 2004, my son, after receiving a coveted appointment to the United States Air Force Academy, asked me to accompany him to the orientation for new appointees. This 24-hour visceral event changed my life forever, and crushed my son’s lifelong dream of following in my footsteps.

The orientation began with a one-hour “warrior” rant to appointees and parents by the commandant of cadets, Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida. The fact that the word warrior had replaced leadership was a signal of what was to follow. I later learned that cadets, to determine when a new record was established, had created a game in which warrior was counted in each speech Weida gave.

My son and I then made our way to the modernist aluminum chapel, where I expected to hear a welcome from one or two Air Force chaplains offering counsel, support and an open-door policy for any spiritual or pastoral needs of these future cadets. In 1966, the academy had six gray-haired chaplains: three mainline Protestants, two priests and one rabbi. Any cadet, regardless of religious affiliation, was welcome to see any one of these chaplains, who were reminiscent of Father Francis Mulcahy of “MASH” fame.

Instead, my son’s orientation became an opportunity for the academy to aggressively proselytize this next crop of cadets. Maj. Warren Watties led a group of 10 young, exclusively evangelical chaplains who stood shoulder to shoulder. He proudly stated that half of the cadets attended Bible studies on Monday nights in the dormitories and he hoped to increase this number from those in his audience who were about to join their ranks. This “invitation” was followed with hallelujahs and amens by the evangelical clergy. I later learned from Air Force Academy chaplain MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran who was forced to observe from the choir loft, that no priest, rabbi or mainline Protestant had been permitted to participate.

I would venture to say that after reading the entire article, you might agree with the idea that the United States has moved a lot closer to fascism than is even immediately evident in all the scandals now being revealed as the rocks of the Bush Administration are turned over. It’s also fairly easy to see where the Crusade mentality makes kidnapping and torturing brown-skinned heathens a religious act that guarantees a seat at God’s right hand.

For instance, watch this propagandising video about evangelicals at the Air Force Academy, sponsored by the Campus Crusade For Christ.

Now, there has been some small movement against this overt tainting of the armed forces, but it hasn’t really taken hold. Here Lou Dobbs, one of the morons on CNN, and some hyperventilating babe in windowpane specs report on various military evangelical adventures, wrapping up with a predictable bit of patriotic babble.