To draft or not to draft

I keep running into conversations centering around ending the Iraq war by instituting a draft. Doesn't anyone remember Viet Nam? The kind of people who support wars without particular concern for the cause or effect also support obedience as a virtue. The draft creates the draft dodger and the draft dodger becomes an effective straw man to use against many forms of protest, disagreement or even rational discussion.

The sons of Senators will not be drawn into dubious battle, they will either find deferments or medical problems or will do supervised and fictionalized tours far from the fray, like George W. Bush. It will be your kid or mine or maybe you sent to Baghdad.

Certainly no amount of public protest and demonstration will soften the resolve of those who think in terms of hard and soft, tough and weak, since they admire George for ignoring the people who employ him. It doesn't seem all that long ago to me that we had countless people demonstrating against another brutal, pointless and probably illegal war: business leaders, veterans, clergymen and other pillars of the community, all of whom were nicely dismissed as hippie draft dodgers or "Peaceniks" simply because there was a draft.

This war won't end until we are rid of the Bush crime family and the old Nixonians and neocons they associate with. Until we learn not to jump to take up arms every time some dimwit beats the war drum; until we learn not to identify with the kind of people we customarily elect, we will be in the same position we are in now every few years as a new crop of patriotic fools arises. A draft won't change a thing.