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It is Time to Reinstitute a National Draft [1]

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Date: 2024-11-09  

I have always had a simple theory of Trumpism. Twenty-three years ago, a large terrorist attack brought America into the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, there was talk about how we are all in this together and there would be shared sacrifice. George W. Bush hit 90% approval ratings.

And then the wars started. And the people who were the victims of the attacks--by and large high net worth individuals working in the financial heartbeat of America, the World Trade Center, did not enlist in the military. Instead they received awards of up to $8.6 million from the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund. The "shared" sacrifice required to keep another America from happening was disproportionately born by working class communities.

I was a Congressional aide when these wars were at their zenith. I remember visiting military medical facilities and small towns with my then-boss. I remember seeing people who had limbs blown off or faces scorched so as to be unrecognizable by improvised explosive devices. I remember the pain on the faces of parents, who could no longer recognize their son or daughter's face. One particular memory--of a father who loved to play the guitar with his son, who had his arm blown off by an explosion--is seared into my memory.

When you got to know these families: some of whom were white, some of whom were Latino, some of whom were Native American, some of whom were Asian American, some of whom were Arab American, and some of whom were African American, you quickly found there was one common denominator: they were from communities where the path for upward mobility was extremely limited. The families didn't consider themselves poor, but were at a minimum on the lower end of middle class, what many today call working class. The only way for the veterans who had been injured to make it to college was to enlist and use the GI Bill. And for others, with employment prospects that had upward mobility potential in small towns or say inner City Philadelphia bleak, the military was the only viable career path.

And so they enlisted, hoping to learn coding skills or become a pilot or an aircraft mechanic or a tugboat operator or a truck driver, or whatever their dream of upward mobility was. And instead, they become cannon fodder. The initial anger at that is what gave rise to this site--Markos was a veteran and was mad at what he saw. And elected people like Jon Tester and Tim Walz in districts Democrats had no business winning in 2006.

Then 2008 happened and it became obvious that the Wall Street bankers who working class Americans from communities of color and rural towns alike were dying and being gravely injured in a war so Wall Street big shots, who screwed up the economy and caused people to lose their homes, could get $165 million in bonuses.

Barack Obama, who had opposed the Iraq War as a young State Senator, was elected in 2008 because of that opposition. Then he got into office and the troops didn't come home--even after bin Laden was killed, and the banks got off scott free. Obama valued Ivy League education and his administration was largely staffed by Ivy Leaguers. The perception became that he and the Democrats were elites and didn't care--because they didn't deliver on the two things working class America cared the most about: stopping the war and holding the banks accountable.

I was still a Congressional aide during the Obama administration. I remember going to parades in small towns every year. They would always honor (and still do) wounded veterans. Each year there would be more wounded veterans--people with artificial limbs, people in wheel chairs, etc.

Immense guilt among the troops who saw their buddies die or have limbs blown off but were unharmed physically because they had stepped five feet to the left, caused massive mental health challenges. Those mental health challenges sparked the opioid epidemic. Veterans being arrested for using drugs while big tech and Wall Street executives used the same drugs recreationally to enhance creativity sparked the movement to end the war on drugs. The result is open air drug use in urban communities of color and rural small towns; the result is addicts committing petty crimes to get the next high. And the result is people feeling less safe. While the large McMansions in the burbs or the Hamptons or wherever the moneyed elite live are fine.

The burden was not shared or equally distributed at all. Working class communities, both urban and rural, were told that their role was to sacrifice their limbs and lives to make America safe while wealthy tech and Wall Street bros got high dropped acid, took ketamine and found the power of anabolic steroids.

No wonder people got angry. The tea party rose. Then Trump. Biden finally withdrew the troops from Afghanistan, but he did so in a way where it made it even more obvious that at least for the ten years between the death of bin Laden and the withdrawal, that their sacrifices were not serving the original stated purpose. Anger rose again. And now we are here with Trump again.

My point is that we cannot have a democracy if the only people who serve in its military as enlisted soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen are poor and working class people. Our military must look like our country. And our sacrifices must be evenly distributed between communities for democracy is to endure.

In an era where everyone retreats to their phones and the spontaneous conversations of the 1990s that I remember so fondly don't really exist, we have less common experiences. Instituting a national draft and more evenly distributing the burdens of the military across socioeconomic groups would strengthen our shared experiences and our common bonds.

I sent my Representative a letter asking her to sponsor a bill reinstituting the national draft. She almost certainly won't. But perhaps one of you will be more successful with your representative. It won't pass this term. But if Democrats regain the Senate and the House, maybe it'll pass then. Of course Trump will veto it, but that's OK, it'll show the communities that he's been exploiting that he's not really on their side.

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