Currently, the United States stations military troops in more than 50 countries - from the war-torn hellholes (Iraq, Afghanistan) to destitute totalitarian regimes (Cuba) to wealthy democracies that can afford to protect themselves (Germany, South Korea, Japan).
As the government sends soldiers to all areas of the globe to pursue the noble, the irrelevant and, sometimes, the barbaric, many people worry that we cannot maintain our current status as the lone sheriff. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is one of those, and he has a wonderful plan that would solve these problems while ridding people of that oh-so-unpatriotic feeling that comes with endless wars and bloody occupations.
The solution: enslaving American kids.
Or more precisely, reviving the military draft. Last week, Sen. Hagel asked the Foreign Relations Committee, "Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" This sentiment is not new - last year, Democrat Charles Rangel said that conscription is desirable since there "would be more equitable representation of people making sacrifices." Fritz Holling and he presented a bill in the House that would reinstate mandatory enlistment to every able-bodied American between 18 and 26 years old.
There are many things wrong with reviving military conscription (e.g. military planners agree that it produces a poorly skilled army), but one is worth stressing: The draft is slavery. I do not declare this casually or for dramatic effect. Military conscription fits the exact definition of involuntary servitude.
Consider how the draft operates: A group of men that don't know you forcibly take you from your family, friends and livelihood and ship you off to kill civilians that you've never met, in order to fulfill a cause that you may not agree with. If you refuse, the government sends you to prison, and your career is over. If you assent, you face the possibility of death.
But the politicians won't tell you it's about slavery. They will present you with fallen martyrs such as Patrick Tillman, the professional football player who gave up his lucrative career to die in Afghanistan. War-hustlers like Hagel will gently explain that since "those who are serving today and dying today are the middle class and lower middle class," you too must go die in a barren desert. Since you have no concept of pain and suffering, Rangel and his nationalist smoothies tell you, you must suffer to appreciate your motherland.
All of this is really beside the point. Slavery means, in broad terms, that somebody else owns your body and mind. The hideous assumption behind the draft is that your life belongs to the government; that your life is expendable; that you must live and die for the state, not for yourself. And this is where the tragedy ends and the farce begins, for the very same politicians who wish to ship you off to the fields of death are the same ones proclaiming that they wish to protect freedom. But slavery is not a principle of a free society; rather, it better represents the venomous byproduct of communism or fascism. When the government can forcibly send you to die by legislative fiat, rhetoric of "freedom" and "liberty" produces the empty ring of hypocrisy.
Make no mistake about it: We should admire those who have fought and died for our great land. But serving with honor is a choice. It was the very same choice that our forefathers made when they won independence with a voluntary army. It's precisely the same choice that characterizes heroes like Tillman in Afghanistan. What a shameful way to cheapen this rare quality by indenturing free men. One cannot mass-manufacture patriotism.
In 1862, a Republican made free men of the slaves. Let us make sure that another Republican does not make slaves out of free men. Sura is a government, philosophy and computer sciences junior.
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