The cover of the Atlantic that just came in the mail pimps the lead story inside with a headline that shouts . . .
Fallows, a draft dodger during the Vietnam war who’s been thinking about that performance ever since, is a serious student of the American military, and, aside from the fact it’s not wildly original, I’ve got no problem with his actual thesis as framed by himself, not his headline writer. If he were writing a history of our times, he says:
In a sentimental sidebar to Fallows’s article, the essayist Joseph Epstein puts in a good word for the draft. “In a democracy,” he observes, “it somehow feels wrong for a small segment of the population to be charged with the responsibility of defending the country in foreign wars.” It might feel wrong to me too, but how do we engage everyone in the defense of the country when it’s being “defended” on the opposite side of the earth? A new draft, says Epstein, would give us a “truly American military” and guarantee a “majority of the country” stands behind the next war America fights. Does Epstein remember nothing of Vietnam?
