I am a fortunate son

Much as I like to congratulate myself on my habits of critical thought, my superhuman ability to resist fads, my wholly unique and original turn of mind, I know I'm a product of my time and place in the universe, an artificial and accidental construct of genes, family background, local culture, personal experience, and a blind acceptance of all kinds of prevailing currents in fashion, intellectual trends, and brainwashing by friends, colleagues, and pop cultural influences.

In short I'm possessed by the geist of my particular zeit.

We all are.  Some of us to greater degrees than others.  But all of us are products of our times and unfortunately our time is limited.  Usually we become us in our late teens and early 20s and then we become stuck in time and stuck with who we are.  The times change, but we don't.

Not much we can do about this.  And some pretty dumb ideas become woven into the tapestry of who we are and even when the dumb ideas can be identified and traced through the design they are hard to pluck out.

Here's a list of some ideas and notions I reflexively accepted as true because of when I was a young adult but which led to nothing but heartache and confusion and which times subsequent have shown to be the sort of ridiculous and wholly meritricious sort of thinking that only a 20 year old would have considered plausible for more than half a second.

1.  There's a flannel shirt for every occasion.

2.  A haircut that leaves any percentage of your ears showing is conservative and will cause people to mistake you for a banker, especially if you're wearing a sportcoat and one of your grandfather's ties.  (You probably shouldn't go with the Nikes though if you want the disguise to work.)

3.  Actually getting a job in a bank would be a betrayal of all that is good and noble and beautiful in life, but...

4.  Greed is good.

5.  Real men don't eat quiche...unless it's the only dish the girl they want to sleep with knows how to make, then it's delicious.

6. It's morning in America.

7.  It's hip to be square.

8.  Video killed the radio star.

9.  Government is the problem.

10.  Find that G spot and never let it go.

11. No pain, no gain.

12.  Meryl Streep can play anybody.

13.  I'm ok, you're ok.

14.  Carbs!  Carbs!  Carbs!

15.  Enlisting in the military is something other people do.

The Heretik, Amanda Marcotte, and Shakespeare's Sister have recently written passionately about the evil unfairness of "Fortunate Son" George Bush sending all these children of the poor and the working class off to die for his ego while his own daughters party, party, party.  Atrios has reported on the anger and frustration of Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who wants to be president of the United States and who, being a Republican and knowing that he'll only get to the White House if he pleases the Republican Right Wing, has to be a gung ho supporter of the War in Iraq.  Romney was asked if he was encouraging his own sons to join the military and go fight.   Apparently, he found the question in poor taste.

It's amusing to watch Bush and other Republican hypocrites squirm, but has anybody asked the same question of Hillary Clinton?

She voted for the war, she has yet to come out strongly against it, and in fact she seems to be hoping that her hawkishness (relative hawkishness in comparison to some other Democrats) will help her chances of becoming president.  Meanwhile, Chelsea Clinton is 25.  Is she going to enlist?

I ain't no millionaire's son, but I was still fortunate.  When I was a young man there was no draft and no war.  There were no economic pressures on me to enlist and certainly no cultural ones. In fact cultural pressure went the other way.  None of my friends joined up.   My father had been in the Air Force, but he served only his required two year hitch and was never tempted to re-up.  He made it clear to my siblings and me that he'd only joined to avoid the draft and earn money for college and that neither circumstance applied to us.  He wasn't opposed to any of us enlisting and I think he'd have been proud if one of us had, but he wanted to make sure that none of us felt we had to.  So none of us did.

And probably none of our children will enlist either.

The disaster in Iraq is George Bush's doing.  But not solely.  And it is not his fault that most of the young lives he has available to him to throw away belong to the children of the poor and working class.

Liberals and Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans like the idea of an all-volunteer military.

And while Iraq has been an unconscionable waste of lives, Iraqi and American, of any and every class, the question I have to ask myself is what would be a conscionable way to spend those lives?  More specifically, when is it ok for me to ask other people to send their children to do a dirty and dangerous job I wouldn't send my own kids to do?

I think most Democrats believe that President Clinton did the right thing in the former Yugoslavia.  Many who don't think so criticize him for how he was too careful with American lives.

And it's probably safe to say that most of us wish he had sent troops to Rwanda.

But in both cases the fact is that Liberals and Democrats were willing to ask the children of the poor and the working class to risk their lives to fight for our ideals and goals, and our being right, our being on the side of goodness and truth, doesn't change the fact that our fortunate sons and daughters weren't very likely going to be asked to place themselves in harm's way.

I guess what I'm saying is that I think that the idea of an all-volunteer military is unfair and possibly morally untenable, especially in a Democracy.

For it not to be, there has to be an agreement that those who sign up in peacetime are only the first line of defense in wartime and that as soon as possible the rest of the country comes to fight at their sides.

I can only see two ways of making sure this happens.

Well, three.  We can hope we never fight another war.

But realistically there are only two ways that I see.

A draft.

Or we all, Democrats as well as Republicans, Blue Staters as well as Red Staters, do a much better job of raising our kids not to think of military service as something other people do.
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Related:  Tom Watson writes on the continuing, and worsening, awfulness in Iraq and reminds us that as vile and despicable as our playacting President is, George Bush doesn't bear sole responsibility for the War:

the toothless, political cowardice of the Democrats must not slip away into the night of history. Particularly in this Congress, lockstep support for national security in the "time of war" has given the Administration the social checkbook it needs to write the bills for this war. Far too many Democrats went along for the ride, bought too easily into the argument that everything is different after 9-11.

Comments

[Kevin Wolf]

Good for you (and good for us), Lance, that you ask the tough questions.

I'm all for an across the board draft in times of war - real war, like we get invaded - and I think most people would agree and sign up to help in whatever capacity they can.

When we aren't at (real) war, we should have no standing army and a helluva lot less bombs, Pentagon bureacracy, defense contractors, no bid contracts, etc, etc - the military-industrial complex we were warned about but which is here and out of control. (And costs far more than it should for the help it actually gives to our unarmored troops.)

The disconnect today: Those who can afford not to serve don't because we engage is misguided military adventures - not wars. Bush is not a wartime President - not with 50% or more now opposed to what he's trying to do. Not to say that our troops aren't facing death - but I wonder if this can truly be called "war."

BTW, love the list of "truisms."

[mac macgillicuddy]

"7. It's hip to be square."

I still subscribe to this and am convinced it's true.

Meanwhile, regarding the draft -- I'm not saying I'm for it, but -- if there were a draft, with no deferrments for ANYBODY, similar to the drafts they hold in other countries, we would, I am certain, get in a whole lot less (fewer) military misadventures.

[Linkmeister]

You might have added one of those insta-polls to this post, with the questions "have you served in the military?" and "do you count among your friends people who have served?"

I can answer yes to both.

I agree that there is an (I think) unhealthy separation between the military and the civilian population in this country, even in places where military work (like Portsmouth Naval Shipyard) is done. To many in places like Portsmouth the military equals jobs for the community, but I wonder how many active-duty personnel the average machinist there ever sees.

[Exiled in NJ]

US52 808404, Sept 66-68 and never left Ft Jaxson SC. To be educated and drafted meant you had buzzard's luck, knew no one with an 'in' with the Reserves or Guard, and weren't familiar with I87, the road to Montreal. If we ever go down that path again, a better way must be found.

The rubric went 'all Uncle Sam wants is two years of your time.' Volunteers [RA was the prefix to their serial number] were thought to be crazy. Sam stuck a gun in their back and asked for two, so to make sure he did not get violent, these guys gave him three years.

We'd gather round the television every Sunday night and watch Tom & Dickie Smothers and a bunch of other anarchists say all sorts of anti-authoritarian things, and cheer them on and then go out the next day and bitch at the Reserves on 6-months active duty, positively hating them for their term was too short to be levied to Nam. Next on the hatred list was the Army, LBJ, MacNamara and their fellow honchoes. In the Number One slot for contempt were the Lifers, the effing lifers. Like H.G Wells in France, many of us feared to drive on base lest the temptation to run one over seized us.

Ask anyone who drafted in that period what the phrase 'FTA' meant. Graffiti would pop up on walls, to be erased by lifers leading trainees that same day, but it would be back.

As I said, you don't want to go down that path, but had our fearless TANG officer asked for a draft after 9-11 in order to find bin Laden, I think it would have been a splendid idea, but would have been corrupted when the adventure turned to Iraq.

[The Heretik]

If Meryl Streep had been in Lost in Translation, maybe the big thing that that movie bit would have been less big, but with very studied accent.

It is mourning in America. The next generation will get around to being hip to being square. When That's hot is not kewl.

[Shakespeare's Sister]

Romney was asked if he was encouraging his own sons to join the military and go fight. Apparently, he found the question in poor taste.

For the record, I don't think the question is in poor taste, but I think it's kind of stupid. War-supporters' kids aren't necessarily war-supporters themselves, and for those of us who argue that Cindy Sheehan has a right to do what she's doing even if (a big if) her son wouldn't have wanted her to, it's hypocritical to suggest that conservative parents and their children are somehow not equally autonomous. (And frankly, I don't give a rat's patoot if the Bush twins party until their heads fall off; I'm more concerned about the partying their dad did when it was his turn to serve.)

You're totally spot-on, though, that Dems need to get asked tough questions, too. Perhaps a better question for Hillary would be: "Senator Clinton, is your continued refusal to firmly condemn the current administration for involving the nation in a war of choice based on manipulated intelligence an indication that you yourself will be just as likely to misuse our military and mislead the American people?"

Sure it doesn't have quite the zing of "Will you encourage Chelsea to enlist?" but then again, I'd love the hear her try to answer it without either making herself look like an arse, or without defending the Bush administration. Good luck.

[KathyF]

re: Iraq: Let's blame Tony Blair too. It's just so much fun!

[Mugde]

I support a draft. Aside from a mechanism to provide troops (war or not), it is a focussing mechanism. It provides leveling. I am not going to write a treatise, but the prospect of military service was one of the ways an 18 year old came to grips with the future. It establishes equality (theoretically). It does not allow a president to blithely go to war. It puts grandchildren of Senators in the military, giving them a good reason to object to folly. As long as Rumsfeld and Bush have their private Army of the (is it non-..or unfortunate?) no one with power will have personal reasons to intercede.

Would Hilary Clinton have been so uncritical if Chelsea had been in the military or subject to it? I think not.

[Anne Laurie]

Heck, I think a mandatory 18 months or 2 years of "National Service" for all 17/18/19-year-olds would be an excellent thing! Now more than ever, too many kids of all incomes and political persuasions are growing up in hermetically sealed boxes... whether they're home-schooled suburban darlings (paging Rick Santorum!) or inner-city survivors. The 'advantaged' haven't been exposed to even the most elementary manual labor, like finding out where hot meals & clean laundry come from; the 'disadvantaged' have as little idea of what an 18-year-old might actually be able to achieve, given some basic assistance & a little careful planning. Throwing everyone together & making them all contribute one or another variety of labor, in return for basic support & college or other training assistance, would have all sorts of benefits for the teenagers as well as society as a whole. Set the stint for military service as one year instead of two, and military experience would be a whole lot more evenly spread across the socioeconomic ranges. And, yes, if ANYONE's kid were liable to end up on the wrong end of an IED, then EVERY politician would be a lot less ready to "experiment" with grand nation-building theories that put American soldiers in harm's way...