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August 11, 2005
Home Front, Continued
My friend Jerry adds this on the issue of the Quiet Home Front:
One of my history professors said that the modern age of the nation-state began with the institution of the levee en masse in August of 1793. With the institution of conscription, wars engaged entire nations, not just armies; thus, the major conflicts of the twentieth century owed much to a pattern developed in the eighteenth. If this is true, then one might say the nation-state passed into its post-modern phase in July of 1973, when the draft bill expired and the United States began transitioning to an all-volunteer force.While ending the draft was a politically brilliant move by Nixon, it also boded ill for the health of the democratic nation-state. When they didn't have to worry about being forced into the service themselves, many ordinary Americans stopped caring about what their military was being asked to do in their name.
This, then, is the post-modern world we are living in: as Andrew Bacevich writes, serving one's country has become "strictly a matter of personal choice," little more than a drab option in a dizzying array of bright potential careers. Given that fact, should it surprise anyone that there is such a rift between the civilian world and the military one? Or that the military is being stretched to the breaking point, whipped nearly to death by its civilian taskmasters with nary a protest from the public that is supposed to be overseeing everything?
His point is certainly backed up by my recent trip to Israel, where everyone is required to serve two years in the military (though women also have a national service option). While I don't yet support something like this in the United States, there is no doubt that it does help foster a "we're all in this together" attitude, where the citizenry is more willing to tolerate disruption in their lives as part of the ongoing struggle against Palestinians and Arab nations. Everyone in Israel has either served in the military or has friends or family currently serving in the military. I remember at one point on my trip I went into a supermarket with a soldier on a road outside Jerusalem. Before we entered, the soldier flashed his military ID card to a security gaurd. He told the gaurd that I was with him. As we were walking through the supermarket, I asked the soldier if you had to show ID to enter, and he said that if he hadn't they probably would have searched our bags. It was surprising to me that they'd be searching bags at what was essentially the equivelent of a suburban Kroger. When the soldier saw by the look on my face that I thought this was a bit odd, he matter-of-factly responded, "It's a store." It was no big deal to him. All part of going shopping. In NYC, they are doing random bag searches in the subway, an ideal terrorist target, and you have the ACLU hyperventilating.
But how much of this is a "chicken or egg" scenario? Is a society's willingness to sacrifice a condition that must be met for a government to impose something such as a draft? It's no coincidence that Nixon ended the draft during the unpopular Vietnam War. Israelis tolerate mandatory military service (and other disruptions to everyday life), because they know it is all a matter of their survival. They have their backs against the Mediterranean Sea, and are surrounded by enemies. Americans simply do not see the war against terrorism as one of survival.
Posted by Philip Klein at August 11, 2005 1:24 PM