Sending our children off to war

Last Sunday, my wife's younger son left his new wife to go off to training.  A few months training, followed by deployment in Iraq.

This by itself is not all that unusual, military families have been dealing with this for quite a while now.  My wife has too, has had to deal with this.  This will be his third tour.  He is not regular army, he is in the National Guard.  He continues to stay in the guard because they are helping pay his way through nursing school.

I wonder, would this still be going on, this perpetual state of war, if we had a draft?  If everyone's (and I mean the children of the rich and powerful, the children of our elected officials, everyone) children were exposed to a draft, could be taken from their lives and families and sent off to war, would it be so easy to tolerate?

Of course, men and women putting their lives at risk is not the only consequence of these wars we fight.  The combination of letting the rich pay less in taxes, encouraging US companies to export their jobs (and the accompanying payroll taxes) to other countries while spending money we did not have on our military is a big part of our ruined economy.  Of course those on the right choose to ignore that part focusing instead on the fact that Obama has not undone the damage of 8 years.

I was drafted, and did not find it a happy experience.  All in all, for me at least, there were no negative consequences.  Nobody shot at me and I got an education on the GI Bill when I got out.  But I am not saying that a draft is a good thing.  Quite the contrary.  But it is a bad thing that, if everyone experienced it, would provide the impetuous to keep us out of some of these really stupid mistakes presidents with a desire to enhance their image in the history books are prone to.

If the children of the senators and congressmen were subject to a draft, perhaps the vote on Iraq would have been a little more carefully considered.