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Citizen Soldiers
Charles Moskos would like to see Jenna and Barbara Bush join the Army.
If the president’s daughters were to put on a military uniform, that
would make other young people from the top of the social ladder follow
suit, he believes. He wouldn’t mind if Chelsea Clinton served as
a military role model, too.
Moskos favors a draft to get future leaders into the military, and he
would start with the educational elite. "You graduate from Northwestern,
you have the highest chance of being drafted. That’s the way it was
in the ’50s, when I was drafted."
What’s more, reinstating the draft would help boost military personnel
numbers up from the current level of about 1.4 million to an ideal target
of about 2 million. Additional numbers are needed, he says, "so people
won’t be deployed as often and so we can retain peacekeeping soldiers
in places like Bosnia and Kosovo indefinitely. If we get out of there,
we will lose a lot of influence in Europe."
In addition, "special forces/commando–type units will have to
be augmented dramatically."
Drafting these future leaders, Moskos adds, would make decision-makers
"more sensible" about deployment. "If these are your children,
you think seriously about sending them."
In addition, he says, "in case of a long-term war, our country will
not accept casualties unless the elite’s lives are on the line. Think
of the Kennedy brothers. All of the Kennedy brothers served."
Even without a full reinstatement of the draft, Moskos would tie federally
funded student loans to military service. "My line is: ‘We have
the GI Bill without the GI now.’ We pay kids to go to college and
not serve the country. And that’s what’s wrong."
To make military service more attractive, he has proposed a 15-month enlistment
option, an idea that has proved highly appealing to Northwestern students
in surveys Moskos has conducted. (The short-term enlistment idea turned
up in legislation introduced last fall by U.S. Sens. John McCain, an Arizona
Republican, and Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat.)
National service has become even more urgent a priority to Moskos after
the events of Sept. 11. "We’re in a new kind of war, and we
need a new kind of draft," he said last fall on NPR’s "Talk
of the Nation" call-in program.
Moskos has long advocated "national service," linked to education
benefits, for all citizens from 18 to 26, with military service as just
one option. Inductees, he says, could also fight terrorism at home as
airport security guards or sky marshals. Others could serve in the Peace
Corps, the Teach for America program or AmeriCorps. Whatever form it takes,
national service "will revive the concept of the citizen soldier
and at the same time expand the notion of the citizen server," he
said on NPR.
The professor further believes that some shared offering of time and effort
for the country is vital "as America gets more and more split up.
We self-segregate ourselves by education, by class. The only time we rub
shoulders with people of all races, class backgrounds and educational
levels is in some form of national service."
Without that, he adds, "I think the country will lose its identity.
‘E Pluribus Unum’ is our national motto: ‘Out of many,
one.’ I think it’s hard to make that a reality without national
service in this contemporary era."
— A.T.
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