The Quaker Draft

I am the only Quaker I know who talks about a return of the military draft in a positive way. In the same way that I am considered a heretical Christian for not accepting (or necessarily rejecting) the idea that Jesus was "born God," I am a heretical Quaker because I don't think the volunteer army was a victory that improved the condition of us or our country. I think it was, rather, a diabolical victory that serves the powers, not the kingdom.

The draft once provided an impetus for resistance to war. Facing the draft once developed the peace testimony among Friends as individuals and as a religious society--and showed that testimony to the world as an alternative response to a call for war. I don't often talk about this among Friends but when I do, by this point, I usually have to ask to be heard out.

Please, hear me out.

The all-voluntary military was not the product of enlightenment or the movement of Christ, it was not in any way "spiritual progress" for national policy. When the all-volunteer army was created the military was in disarray because of the unpopular war in Vietnam. Richard Nixon, as president, was brought to understand that the mutinies, the killing of officers by the troops in the field ("fragging"), desertions and even the peace movement within the military itself were a threat to the "reliability" of the armed forces, an especially ominous development in light of the political rebellion at home against the American policy in South East Asia.

After the spectacle of the National Guard shooting down students at Kent State University many wondered, right or wrong, whether, called upon to put down a rebellion at home driven by opposition to that war, the "real" military, with a core of draftees at its heart, would uphold "law and order" if it was called upon to do so.

This military, with a core of draftees at its heart, was certainly not "optimally" reliable in Southeast Asia.

Faced with being forced into harm's way in a war they didn't support, and watching flag draped coffins on television, a generation (or maybe even two) of young men, along with their parents, their wives and their girl friends became a formidable opposition to that war--an opposition that went into the streets and, increasingly, into the voting booth. Over time a consciousness began to develop among those involved in and sympathetic to the anti-war movement about the infrastructure of US policy, in general, and the interests that it served. Not just Vietnam, the whole political/economic system was under attack.

If you weren't there you might underestimate the flash point potential that was rolling around the campus and the ghetto between 1967 and 1972. If you were there you might over estimate it, too. But, as I say, people were afraid, regardless of how real the danger was of everything coming apart.

This opposition was effectively co-opted, and America made safe for "the party" in the midst of which we still live, by two measures. The first was the 18 year old vote, that laid to rest the "old enough to die but not old enough to vote" slogan that had great traction, at the time. ("you're old enough to kill, but not for votin'..." in the words of a prophet of the day).

The second was the all-volunteer army (which sapped the strength of another line, from the same song cited above, "...you don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'?").

These two, but especially the latter, put an end to the anti-war movement, at least as a mass movement, almost overnight. Safe from the possibility of going to war, most young men, their parents, wives and girl friends were no longer interested in marching, protesting or voting for people who ran on anti-war platforms.

No longer able to visualize themselves, or someone they loved, in one of those flag draped coffins the war in Vietnam just didn't seem to pressing an issue, anymore.

The now defunct "citizen army," was designed by the founders of this country as a check on the ability of the government to fight wars and to oppress its own citizens with military force. Their scruple against standing armies was based on experience and they held to the idea that a country could not engage in wars that the citizenry did not support--at least grudgingly--if the ranks were filled (as volunteers or conscripts) with people who had to lay down their lives, in both senses of that phrase, to fight them.

This was not entirely effective, but the difficulty of raising an army was a restraint on imperial ambitions. No, the draft did not prevent the Vietnam War, but it sure was without doubt, on its way to putting an end to it--until those who wanted to prolong that war (and the American imperialist party to which we are all invited, at birth) put an end to the draft.

You can look all this up, by the way. The Vietnam revisionists have been at work but mainstream history still tells the tale accurately enough.

Would we have gone to war in Iraq (either time) if, when Congress pondered the question, Senators and House Members knew they would have to go home and tell their constituents that they (or their children) had to suit up and go kill and be killed?

Would we still be at war in Iraq if, over the past eight years, high school class after high school class graduated substantial numbers of its members into camo--while parents of younger children saw their growing up as creeping ever closer to the age of conscription?

(Did you graduate from high school between 1964 and 1973 or so? Been a class reunion? That table off to the side that has pictures of classmates who have died...examine it carefully, next time.)

I wonder how many bright young conservative men who support(ed) war in the Middle East would do so if there was a chance they would have to go fight it? Would that at least slow down their enthusiasm, cause them the kind of soul searching it did in young men prior to the all volunteer army?

I wonder.

This is at bottom a question of integrity. Joe Biden and Sarah Palin have children who have gone to war. But how many people who support (even passively) the war(s) would do so if their children were part of the pool? And if they would--then fine. They would be living their faith--instead of letting others live it for them, without paying the price of that faith, themselves.

Yes, the draft was corrupt in those days--the poor and people of color were drafted more often than the white and the affluent--and women never were. One thinks of George Bush and Dick Cheney who found comfortable, legal evasions that one cannot help but think were set up to benefit people of their race and class. But enough white, middle class kids found themselves unwillingly in uniform (and their friends and parents could find their names, later, inscribed on a wall with many friends of mine in Washington DC) to cause substantial opposition--opposition that (it seems hard to imagine this today) had the stability of this country teetering on a precipice.

What about Quakers and Mennonites and others who have a scruple against war?

How did we fare under the draft, and how have we fared since?

Sometimes when I talk to younger Friends about it there seems to be a superficiality to what they say, and I have seen some "cracks in the wall" in regard to the Middle Eastern wars among them, too. Not outright support but an uncertainty, an inability to articulate the basis of their faith in the face of pro-war ideology. It is not the durable conviction that is heard in Friends (and others) who spent World War II in the work camps, who had to do some thinking and soul searching to receive their CO status in the Sixties and the Seventies.

This is not their fault. They grew up in a situation in which they have not been required to contend seriously with this, in which their faith has not been tested (or even explored) by swimming against the cultural tide. They have not grown up required to prove/test themselves.

And such proving/testing was not only edifying to them.

Other young people looking at military service today are deprived of the example and the model of young Friends (and others) testifying to their faith through conscientious objection. Who is actively, seriously, obviously presenting the alternative of peace to main stream young people these days in the same graphic way that Friends, Mennonites and others did in the past?

Yes, we do work with our young people, and we do reach out to young people beyond our hedges whose conditioning has gone unchallenged all their lives, but not with the energy or the organization that we used to. And our young people are not as engaged or focused--they don't have to be--on their spiritual development around war (and how the tendrils of war branch out into our every day lives and all of our relationships).

Who can doubt that we have an out-of-control military, today, that is dictating policy to the President in a way that, in the days of McArthur, got Generals cashiered?

Who can doubt that it's easier to prolong wars when the people who make the decisions (even passively) do not have any chips of their own on the table?

Who can doubt that it's easier for us to all settle back into our own daily lives if the cost of the wars that keep our own personal consumption oriented oil guzzling party going don't touch us in obvious and direct ways?

Have we been "bought off," here? Can we--safe with our children from the storm--just "sit it out" and "mail it in" in regard to opposing the wars fought in our name (fought with our money? By the way, where is the Hyde Amendment for spending money on war against the moral conviction of ... I digress)?

Do we look to Friends like Chuck Fager and the others who work with young people caught up in the military to do that for us, instead of taking our turn to do it when it is our turn, or the turns of our children to face the possibility of fighting? Have we forgotten that when we did that kind of standing up for ourselves and our children we were also standing up for others who are not heard as clearly as we might be?

Because there was a time we were heard clearly on this. CO status was a hard-won recognition by the world that a scruple against war was legitimate and respectable and that recognition made it powerful in the eyes of people who, before, completely discounted pacifism as a means of engaging evil.

Do we think that it's no longer necessary to "hard win" that status is some kind of benchmark or the improved spiritual condition of us, our children or the world? Or do we face the truth that no longer needing to go through that just means we have bought off the system, accepting our own safety in return for letting the evil or war go on without much resistance from us?

Now a significant portion of Americans can outsource paying the price for the "American Way of Life" and no longer need to contend within their own heart about whether it's worth our own lives and the lives of our own children.

Have we outsourced our calling to testify and witness against war, deprived of the most urgent goading we could have to do so? Has our peculiarity (our fitness for a particular purpose) as a voice against war been neutralized?

If so, has this edified us or has it caused our condition to deteriorate when the world needs us (and others like us) as much as it ever has?

If someone thinks war is worth whatever "it" is (this time)? Then they should go fight it or send their children or their grandchildren.

Don't want to fight for it but think it the "purpose' of the war should be accomplished? Then they need to find and pursue a different way to accomplish it.

Don't want to fight for it and don't want to do anything else for it--then they should shut up. They don't have enough integrity to cover their nakedness. they are hypocrites. They should live with that or change it. Just have some integrity.

Nobody should die for what I enjoy (whether I say I want it or not) but that I won't die or sacrifice for.

Thank you, Friends, for hearing me out, on this.