  Yesterday the Washington Post ran a column by former Nixon staffer and DOD bigwig Noel Koch advocating urlLink the reinstitution of the draft . He's a former speechwriter, so the article flows nicely and you can hear his argument gaining steam as you read, almost so much that you gloss over its fanciful delusion, glaring omission and fallacies.
I wouldn't spend my time picking at the article if it wasn't about such a grave subject. But since it is, here goes. Koch rhetorically challenges the reader to "try to find a draftee who regrets his service to America. " Perhaps he should head down to a VA hospital or homeless shelter. Or for that matter, perhaps he should visit Arlington Cemetary. He conveniently ignores the fact that urlLink more than half of the 58,000 soldiers who were killed in Vietnam were there because they were drafted . Isn't it kind of callous (dishonest? ) to advocate conscription without at least acknowledging the fact that it can get thousands of Americans unnecessarily killed?
But he's not done yet! Instead of merely glossing over the uglier aspects of the draft, Koch goes a step further and exaggerates its social benefits: "The draft shattered class distinctions. It mixed high school dropouts with college graduates, rich with middle class and poor. " Come again? How economically diverse were the Champagne Unit and similar outfits? What was the socioeconomic makeup of the deferment crowd? Maybe if he ommitted the word "rich" he would have something of a point here, but he didn't. This fallacy leads Koch to a fundamentally ignorant conclusion.
He closes by arguing that the draft will produce a group of political decision-makers and advisors who "bring with them a bone-deep appreciation of the true costs of conflict. Thus might we reduce the risks of counsel from those who have never had to learn the difference between a war and a cakewalk. " Anyone who's picked up a newspaper in the last year knows that the Vietnam draft spectacularly failed to produce such an outcome.
The dodgers, deferees, and privileged privates least familiar with the true costs of war in Vietnam were precisely the ones who led the charge to war in Iraq. Bush and Cheney and Perle and Wolfowitz (and Clinton, for that matter) prove that the people who hold sway over decisions of war and peace are the same people who are best equipped to avoid the draft by one means or another.
Mr. Koch, don't push for the draft by ignoring its human costs, overstating its power to build bridges across class and race, and saying it will produce political results that it abjectly failed to produce in its last incarnation. "Why We Need the Draft Back" is a work of fantasy, maybe even mendacity, and it attempts to advance the most fundamentally undemocratic policy in our country since slavery. I hope that the governing class doesn't swallow it. 
