It becomes thoroughly obvious that whatever else they teach at
our major universities, history and logic are not among the lessons.
This is a pity, for students often believe--or certainly act as if
they believed--that they are somehow more entitled to political
opinions, and to unorthodox actions in support of those opinions, than
the general public.  This is an ancient assumption, and may at one
time have been true;  but its truth rests upon the prior assumption
that students are better qualified by reason of their superior
knowledge.  Nothing I have seen in the BBoard debates on the draft
encourages me in that opinion;  indeed, some of the historical
nonsense seriously put forth in that is appalling, and known to be
false to anyone of average intelligence who was alive in 1938.  Sigh.
It is all very well not to know ancient history; but not to know what
was known to readers of newspapers only a few years ago?  This is
hardly extraordinary qualificaton.
	The matter is of course serious, and affects those of draft
age directly; in that sense of course there is a special weight to be
given their opinions.  Conscription in the Roman or Swiss sense will
never work in the United States;  we are a society which lives by
persuasion, not coercion.  That has happened within my lifetime
largely, although the seeds of the persuasive society were there when
I was younger;  it remains true today that in the face of massive
resistance by the young people of military age we will not have
conscription.  The result of this is probably more serious than they
know.
	For we will require a military force.  We will not pay for a
truly voluntary force (nor should we; a rational army WOULD run away;
pure hirelings are not worth their pay); we will thus have to build
legions.  This is a fairly simple task.  We were mildly involved in it
in the Regular Army in Korean days.  Take young street fighters (some
illiterate, but generally more intelligent than most think); the
policeman will be as important in gaining them for the barracks than
will be the recruiting sergeant.  Shame them, demonstrate they have no
manhood compared to their tormentor; offer them a chance to be a part
of an elite which need have no concern at all with what the peasants
think of them; and soon you will have legionaires, able to use modern
weapons (they are not stupid, and can be taught to read).  Of course
they will obey their officers and you have entrusted your republic to
the officer corps;  but surely that is not too high a price to pay to
avoid military service?  Surely conscription and the military are far
too great an imposition on one's young life; anything is preferable;
thus allow us to build the legions.
	For we will have either citizen soldiers or legions.
	Since the legions will obey those of my political persuasion,
why am I concerned?  I should rejoice.  Yet I do wonder:  why is it
that those who most espouse causes unlikely to be popular with the
officer class are the first to wish to hand over a monopoly of the
means of organized violence to military officers and the police?  The
Roman plebian was smarter:  he went on strike for the privilege of
serving in the army, knowing that when the army and the citizen body
were the same, the army could not be used to oppress the citizens.
Fortunately that insight does not seem to have been handed down to the
modern generation.
	It is probably as well to dispell a few of the misconceptions
which seem to have crept into the bboard discussion in the draft.
	1.  Despite the silly TV series which was designed to prove
that the Soviet Union won WW II all by itself, the fact is that had
the Germans been able to put their full weight on the eastern front as
late as 1943, the Soviets could not have held.  Even with Hitler's
particularly stupid reliance on Goering's assurances of air supply for
6th Army, and the insane division of the Wehrmacht into three striking
forces (by having three objectives, Moscow, Leningrad, and the
Caucuses oil fields Hitler cleverly insured against gaining any one of
them), a very large part of the Soviet army which had been victorious
at Stalingrad was destroyed in Mannstein's Kharkov counter offensive;
and the initiative passed again to the Germans.  Citadel threw it
away, but it threw it against a Soviet force supplied with US
materiel.
	Stalin insisted on the "second front" precisely because he
knew he could not hold alone.  Three million Russians (actually
Ukrainians) fought in the German army against Russia.  More might have
gone over had the Germans the force to spare in the East.
	Britain in 1940 was reduced to night bombing of wide areas (an
official study showed that no more than 10% of bomber command dropped
their bombs within FIVE MILES of the designated target) because there
was nothing else to do.  And the battle of the Atlantic was decided by
US warships, eventually, and was a near run thing.
	If National Socialism was to be defeated, it could only be
defeated by the US entry into the war.  If that war was worth
fighting, then we are not talking about pacifism and moral objection
to killing;  we are only talking about objections to killing in
defense of Asians as opposed to Europeans.  It may well be that gooks
are not worth American lives while Frenchmen and Britons are; but if
that is what is meant, people ought to say so.  I do not think an
Afghani peasant choking to death in a cloud of VX nerve gas suffers
much less than did a Polish Jew choking in cyanide fumes; nor do I
think Cambodian children feel hunger pangs any less readily than do
children of any other race or culture.
	2.  If one objects to killing others, there does remain the
classical alternative of voluntary service in the medical corps.  Now
true, this implies support of the war effort, and if one simply
objects to all forms of war on principle then one has a powerful
position; but see the paragraph above.  I am not certain that all
those who say hell no I won't go are genuinely pacifist.  I know of
some who are willing apparently to dynamite graduate students and
computer centers as a demonstration of their pacifist ideals; and
others who say "I'd fight the Nazi's, but--"
	And of course it requires considerable courage--more than I
have--to be on a battlefield and remain deliberately unarmed.
	3.  It is no good hoping that the Soviets will "find their
Viet Nam in Afghanistan".  That would imply that they would exercise
the restraints which we imposed on ourselves; while we already know
that they have been using VX.  Nor is China much of a threat to the
Soviets, since it would require only one or two wings of modern
nuclear-armed aircraft to put China effectively in the stone age;  and
I do not think that a nation which has already created artificial
famine in provinces of their own internal empire would long hesitate
on moral grounds to use any weapon required.  True, so long as there
is a nuclear standoff the Soviets are unlikely to nuke the Chinks;
but that is through fear of runaway escalation, not from moral
restraint.  The Chinese do hold Soviet Asia hostage to Chinese
restraint--but the Chinese also know that using their pitifully small
nuclear arsenal against Soviet Asia must be the very last resort,
since the Soviets will lose their Pacific empire, but the Chinese will
lose their industrial civilization.
	As to Soviet restraint, they did after all invite the US to
join them in strikes against the Chinese uranium refineries...and
several times made noises to the effect that the "US would have to
understand" if they were required to strike at China.  Fortunately our
political leaders of the time did not respond.
	4.  The US with its MAD doctrine (Mutual Assured Deterrence)
has entered into a unilateral homiciode-suicide pact which the Soviets
would like to avoid.  Whatever MAD can accomplish, it cannot credibly
threaten initiation of nuclear hostilities for any provocation short
of actual strikes against the US (and possibly, just possibly,
against our very closest European allies;  even that extension of the
umbrella is doubtful.)  Thus, the continued "freedom" of Europe and
much of the Middle East rests on:
		Soviet good intentions and self restraint
		The possibility that someone will be able to oppose
			them without using nuclear weapons
	Is there another alternative?  For I simply do not believe the
US would initiate first-strike war against the Soviets in defense of
Iran or Pakistan.
	Economic warfare sounds intriguing, but in fact does not seem
as likely to be effective as some would like to think. In a
confrontation with the West under conditions in which the West has no
strong conventional military to oppose Soviet operations, economic
warfare might well cause the Soviets simply to take what they need...
	5.  We have no effective conventional army.  The quality of
recruit the "voluntary" system has produced has been low; too low to
operate highly sophisticated technological equipment...  Even those
with high school diplomas turn out often to be unable to read.  Now
true, we can make a good soldier out of poor material;  but not if we
treat him as a voluntary citizen in arms, as we do at present.  When
the strongest threat a company commander can make is a day's pay
docked, when courts martial are required simply to make an order
stick, you will not get today's soldier turned into much of a fighting
man (or woman).  You may use the techniques of persuasion and reason
on well-educated recruits (conscript or volunteer); you may use the
time-honored techniques of the legions on another kind of recruit; but
you will not make much of a soldier out of today's volunteers with
today's techniques.
	6.  Conscription is an assault on personal liberty, but it
most certainly is not undemocratic.  Most democracies have resorted to
conscription; it is only the aristocracies and monarchies which have
not.  Britain is probably the best example; Britain remained an
aristocracy until WW I and only in WWI when democracy had triumphed
(with the essential destruction of the political power of the Lords in
1911) that Britain dared conscription.  Most democracies have had
conscription, usually without any provision for conscientous
objectors;  until recently (and perhaps still, I have not looked
lately) the Swiss simply conducted conscientious objectors to the
border and gave them a passport valid for any country except
Switzerland, on the theory that if you were not willing to bear arms
for the confederacy you had no right to live there.
	7.  Unfortunately, the US cannot go in for universal military
training and universal conscription.  We simply could not afford it,
nor would we know what to do with everyone.  Some kind of lottery is
still required.  The old idea of selective service was that "a board
consisting of your friends and neighbors" actually did select on the
basis of the needs of the local community.  This was certainly subject
to abuse and was abused, but it was not a hopeless idea.  It is
probably impossible now, which means in all probability a lottery.
Actually, given a free choice, military officers would prefer
conscripts from exactly the categories which used to be exempt:
students, married men-- The army has no wish to conduct not merely
bonehead English, but basic skills...
	Enough for tonight.βββ