By
Lydia Sprague
June 2, 2008
U.S. Representative Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) spoke Wednesday at the UW about reinstating the draft during declared war or national emergency.
He described House Resolution 393 as a national service bill. He co-sponsored the bill with fellow veteran Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY). It would require all citizens 18-42 to perform national service for two years. This requirement could be fulfilled through civilian volunteer work or through military service.
Students and community members gathered in the Social Work/Speech and Hearing Sciences Building to hear McDermott speak on behalf of the bill and answer questions.
Organizers of the event took a vote of people’s opinion regarding the bill before and after McDermott spoke. The vote before the talk was 26 “yes” votes and 32 “no” votes. The vote post-discussion was 17 “yes” votes and 23 “no” votes.
McDermott said he supports the idea of having a draft because if everybody is affected by the war, everybody will begin to care.
“Where is the outrage about this war?” he said, referring to the state of the UW campus during the Vietnam conflict. He also spoke of how the lower classes of society are overrepresented in the armed services.
“We are taking one part of society and using them and using them,” he said. “We have put our military through a meat grinder by moving occupations in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The president tells us our service in this war is to go to the mall. Spend your $600 you’re going to get back.”
McDermott said the draft would spread the burden of the war to everybody in society.
“If you look at the way this country works, most of what we’ve done has been done collectively,” he said.
We’re in danger of losing that if we don’t all participate in national service, he said.
He argued that without a draft, people would be willing to let the war continue for decades. McDermott compared John McCain’s retraction of his “100 more years in Iraq” comment to Richard Nixon’s behavior during Vietnam.
“Having a draft means everybody then cares,” he said. “If you believe in a democracy, you have to believe that the people will make the right choice.”
After McDermott left, Rachel Vaughn, associate director of the Carlson Center, and Jesse Hagopian, a middle school teacher and local anti-war activist, spoke against the bill.
“This bill that we see in front of us is not a national service bill; it’s a war service bill,” Hagopian said. “I think calling for no one to go to war instead of calling for everyone to go to war is what we should stand for.”
Students generally hadn’t heard about the bill prior to the event, but many spoke up to ask questions of McDermott and the other speakers. Brandon Quesada, a freshman who plans to major in elementary education, heard about the event because of an announcement written in chalk on a sidewalk on campus. He didn’t know anything about the bill, he said, but asked McDermott what his view on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is and how a person’s orientation might affect them during a draft.
While he got an answer — McDermott said the policy is stupid — Quesada said he felt like McDermott didn’t really answer his question.
“It felt like he was placating and using generalities to get around questions,” Quesada said.
He also said McDermott didn’t explain the full impact of the bill. “It seems like a sneaky way to reinstate the draft, not national service.”
Quesada said that, as a gay man, he feels being drafted would be especially difficult.
“People will see me, and say I’m trying to dodge the draft by saying I’m gay, but I shouldn’t have to sacrifice my values.”
12 Comments
#1 Numbers
on June 2, 2008 at 2:26 a.m.(Seattle, WA | Unverified Name)
"The vote before the talk was 26 “yes” votes and 32 “no” votes. The vote post-discussion was 17 “yes” votes and 23 “no” votes."
-- so 18 folks left during the course of the talk, and the proportion in support went from 45% down to 42.5%. Nice work, Jim!
#2 Peter Keating
on June 2, 2008 at 9:26 a.m.(Seattle, WA | Unverified Name)
Rep. McDermott makes a very valid point here, one which will certainly never make it through Congress nor be supported by the American people.
The reason why this country's elite are so often able to drag this nation into unnecessary and ill-advised military "projects" (see: Operation Iraqi Freedom for the most obvious example) is because most Americans know that it will not be their children fighting and dying. Past unfair draft policies like college deferment have historically allowed Americans to outsource our military duties to lower income citizens who see military service as an opportunity. Racial minorities are still disproportionately represented amongst soldiers overseas, as are Americans from lower income backgrouds. What does it tell us that 30% of those that died in Vietnam were African American at a time when blacks accounted for only 11% of the poplation?
Today, while the children of the politicians who craft our foriegn policy are busy enjoying college, planning their weddings, and penning memiors, other brave men and women are giving their lives for the freedoms we are enjoying.
REquired military service would give the architects of war pause before choosing to march into a conflict. It would make all Americans grapple with the realities of sacrifice rather than the theoretical or political debates of ideology.
We all enjoy the freedoms of this country, and - if we decide those freedoms need to be defended - we should all bear a burden in their defense.
#3 Mary
on June 2, 2008 at 11:09 a.m.(Portland, OR | Unverified Name)
Vote him out of office.
#4 Greg
on June 2, 2008 at 11:33 a.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
While I'm sure McDermott is right that the average American would be more cautious about war if the average American were actually asked to participate in it, I don't think reinstating the draft is the right way to go about creating that sense of accountability. Instead, perhaps we should be more realistic and open about the economic costs of the war on every American, or find some other means of impressing the burdens of war upon all Americans.
#5 Matthew
on June 2, 2008 at 12:39 p.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
With the Vietnam generation in power in Washington, I really don't see how a draft bill is going to be politically possible.
#6 Or...
on June 2, 2008 at 1:34 p.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
End the Iraq war, put the Bush administration on trial for war crimes, and collectively work to achieve global peace through equality and justice
"There has never been a good war or a bad peace."
--Benjamin Franklin
#7 Oscar
on June 2, 2008 at 2:03 p.m.(Bothell, WA | Unverified Name)
He is an idiot and needs to get a life
#8 Um...
on June 2, 2008 at 2:06 p.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
... he knows that a draft will never go through. He is from the Vietnam era. But this is the tactic he has chosen in an attempt to stop this war and future wars by making people think about what they might have to sacrifice. You can bet that if we had a draft in place, we would never have invaded Iraq. That is his point.
#9 S
on June 2, 2008 at 9:38 p.m.(Seattle, WA | Unverified Name)
In the words of our fathers:
Hell no, we won't go!
#10 Seriously?
on June 2, 2008 at 9:55 p.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
Nice sensationalist headline that misses the point of McDermott's actions: ending this pointless war.
I expect no less from our pathetic excuse for an independent university newspaper.
#11 Yeah, seriously
on June 2, 2008 at 10:35 p.m.(Redmond, WA | Unverified Name)
Is that his real motivation? Then he's a demagogue, and so are you.
#12 Beren for Congress
on June 3, 2008 at 12:52 p.m.(Bainbridge Island, WA | Unverified Name)
The following is excerpted from www.berenforcongress.com/rainier.html
On Saturday afternoon May 3, Congressman Jim McDermott gave a talk to about 25 people gathered at the Rainier Community Center in Seattle. Also in attendance were [Republican congressional candidate] Steve Beren and some campaign supporters....
The chairperson for the meeting, in introducing McDermott, apologized for the small turnout. In his talk, McDermott sought to explain the reasons for the low attendance. The American people, he claimed, were "anesthetized" to the war. "You have a country that has disengaged from the war," the congressman said.
McDermott said that "we're losing in Afghanistan," accused the President of planning to expand the war into Iran, and said "we're running a gulag – one over in Guantanamo, and several in Iraq." Yet, the congressman argued, "nobody cares" about the war because "as long as we can hire mercenaries to fight this war for us" the war would continue. McDermott said that the "mercenaries" were recruited from those who could not get jobs, or who could not get into school, or who were in jail due to having committed felonies.
"The American people are sitting asleep at the switch," McDermott said. McDermott noted that, in an effort to make the American people wake up, he was co-sponsoring a bill with Congressman Charles Rangel (D-New York) calling for a compulsory military draft.
Beren was the first person called on during the question-and-answer period. He said he disagreed with what he had heard Congressman McDermott say. "The American people are not asleep at the switch – they are patriotic, they support the troops, they want victory in the war. And the troops are not mercenaries – they are heroes."
....Referring to the war, McDermott said it was "the so-called war on terror, which turns out to be a war on civilians."
After the meeting, Beren approached McDermott and again objected to McDermott insulting our troops by calling them "mercenaries." McDermott responded, "But they are mercenaries – we're buying them now."
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