I've been all over the place on re-instating the draft, mainly because I hate it.
However, I was listening to NPR yesterday, and one of the guests being interviewed (I tried later in to find the exact cite, but I can't find it in the programming, and I was in the car when I heard this) was a lady who heads up some sort of military families type of organization, and she started out by saying that military families make up about 2% of the population, and something to the effect that they "experience" the war differently from others, i.e. because of the direct losses and threats to their loved ones, the "sacrifices" they have made, etc. Then she said, somewhat bitterly I felt, that they were making these sacrifices while the rest of America "went shopping." She repeated this a couple of times to emplasize her point.
What struck me about this was not so much the fact that she was casting blame on other Americans, instead of on Bush and the Republican warmongers who started all this, but the fact that she spoke as a person representing, at least in her own mind, a distinct class of people: those in the military, and their families - And her efforts to positition this class of people in opposition to everyone else in the country, for whom she evidently feels a great deal of disdain.
Although I don't know how widespread this thinking is, I view it as a dangerous development, and likely the result of having an all volunteer military, as opposed to a military of citizen soldiers from all walks of life; and they are beginning to think of themselves as a seperate class of people who "know better than the rest of us" what is good for our country, because, in their own minds at least, they did the "right thing" by volunteering for military service, whereas, again in their own minds, the rest of us "went shopping." I do not think it would be difficult for a government run by conservative dictators like Bush, to turn such a military against the rest of us.
So, unless someone can tell me why I shouldn't support Rangel in his efforts to re-instate the draft, I would have to say this would be the only way to combat this sort of thing, and it is evident to me that it should be done sooner rather than later. I still hate the draft, but I don't see any other way.
The draftee army vs small specialist/highly technical army, but at this point, I now think Rangel has the only practical approach, at least in the short term, to break up this developing military clique. Of course, it would be also be helpful if we could get out of Iraq as soon as possible, but that looks like it's going to go on for quite a while. Bush didn't get the message in November. No surprise there, of course.
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