I'm not good with numbers. I figure, however, that if you were to come up with an equation to predict a nation's willingness to go to war, a proportion would be involved that would go something like this: The more the sacrifice entailed by war is spread out among a nation's populace, the less willing to go to war a nation's people will be.
Right now, the United States' war-willingness equation should have the military -- not to mention the civilian populations -- of Syria, Iran and North Korea shaking in their boots.
In America, the sacrifice of war is limited to a very small group of people, making it likely that Americans will agree to go to war for causes in which they may not strongly believe. Wars waged for the wrong reasons may be the result. Preventing such a situation requires dispersing the sacrifices posed by war -- or at least the potential for sacrifice -- among the population. It requires reinstituting the draft.
Even before the statues of Saddam Hussein began to come down in Baghdad last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush were making rumblings that American armed conflict in the Middle East won't stop with Iraq. Rumsfeld gave a press briefing in early April in which he warned Iran and Syria that any "hostile acts" they committed on Iraq's behalf would result in grave consequences. He had just raised the possibility of a broader confrontation in the Middle East, and President Bush reportedly agrees that an extension of the campaign is a good idea ("Viewing the war as a lesson to the world," The New York Times, April 5).
If Bush and Rumsfeld decide to carry the fight further, to the other points in the "axis of evil," it's likely Americans will agree. Or, more accurately, it's likely that Americans will shrug their shoulders and heave a collective sigh of "Yeah. Sure. Whatever."
That's because, for most Americans, war is incredibly cheap. The question of whether to go to war currently is an abstract rather than a personal one. It's a question of whether the country, not we ourselves, should go to war -- of whether we are willing to send other people and other people's children to fight it. Americans aren't forced to ask the question they should be asking themselves when the administration poses the possibility of war: Do I believe in the aims of this war so strongly that I would be willing to fight for it myself, or send my children to fight for it?
To prevent wars waged for the wrong reasons, we should reinstitute the draft and transform the question of whether the country should go to war from an abstract question to a personal one. A draft is a good way to make people a little bit worried about whether they'll have to be the ones doing the fighting and sacrificing. It will ensure that when we decide to enter into armed conflict, it will really be after citizens have considered the worthiness of the cause. A draft will make it more likely that we will not go to war before having exhausted all other options.
Two sets of numbers may illustrate the way the possibility of personal sacrifice may move people to deeply consider the aims of war and whether those aims are worth dying for. The first set of numbers comes from a Washington Post poll released last week, in which respondents were asked if they supported or opposed the United States having gone to war with Iraq. Seventy-seven percent of people supported, while 16 percent opposed and 7 percent were of no opinion. The numbers become interesting, however, when looking at the extent to which support for the war differed among certain groups. No big surprise: At 99 percent, conservative Republicans were the group most generally supportive of the war. The surprise lay in the gap in support between whites and blacks. Eighty-one percent of whites support war, whereas only 49 percent of African-Americans do. Of all the groups, African-Americans favored war the least.
The gap between the races cannot be explained by the fact that African-Americans are predominantly Democratic, because even Democrats' war support was fairly high, with nearly two-thirds of Democrats -- 65 percent -- supporting war.
Which brings us to the second set of numbers: the number of African-Americans currently in active duty in the military. According to Army demographics for the year 2000, African-Americans only comprise 14.4 percent of the general population but they represent 26.4 percent of people on active duty in the army. Including Hispanics and those who classify themselves in the "other" racial category, a full 41.6 percent of the army is classified as "minority."
It is plausible that the reason African-Americans are less supportive of the war is because they know they'll be, in disproportionate numbers, the ones fighting it. That kind of knowledge prompts careful consideration of the value of a war's purported aims.
War is cheap for most Americans, because there isn't even a chance that they'll be the ones fighting it. And with the Bush administration's eye roving beyond Iraq, Americans' willingness to enter into war becomes very important -- to our nation as well as to the rest of the world. Reinstituting the draft is a vital way to make the question of whether the country should go to war a personal rather than abstract one. And, most importantly, it's a way to make it a question that the average American will actually take the time to consider.
(Laura Sahramaa's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at lsahramaa@cavalierdaily.com.)
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