With Congress back in session this week, New York Representative Charles Rangel is recruiting supporters for a bill to bring back the military draft. He says only three of his colleagues have sons or daughters in the military, and therefore Congress is woefully out of touch with the horror of war and ill-equipped to make informed decisions about a conflict with Iraq.
Bring back conscription, citizen soldiers, and a sense of shared sacrifice, Rangel argues, and Congress would be much more likely to give peace a chance. No one on the Hill gives this proposal a chance of passing, but it has set off a debate over the gap between the values and attitudes of those in uniform and those they are sworn to protect. Debating the draft, amid the winds of war.
Peter Feaver, director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies at Duke University and co-editor of "Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security"
David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization, at the University of Maryland.
