The Draft: Reflections & Opinions

...They may, even if in the risk group, be exempted by virtue of a test performance that purports to order "capacity," those of alleged higher capacity for University work being continued in their temporary exemption...

...Such acts create a revolutionary right, but they cannot be claimed under any notion of civil or constitutional rights within the system that is at war...

...And even were they assisting in saving the best till last, or for a little longer, they might well feel cast in a role analogous to the morally doubtful and agonizing one of the Judenrate in the period of "the final solution" in Germany...

...At the very least, I would like the matter to become a subject of widespread and sufficiently public debate...

...In other words...

...Or the right to refuse the draft may be claimed on the ground that those who are not actually engaged in immoral actions may release others to commit them...

...It seems to me that often those of us opposed to American foreign policy make far too much of the CIA, the military rightists, and the French-Algerian analogy...

...If the right to revolution were a civil right, the word revolution would have no meaning...

...Some among them may actually be described as pacifist...

...Those who do so conclude might comfort themselves by the thought that by collaboration they are helping to keep the "best" students out of the wicked enterprise...

...or justice...

...Yet, it should be noted that the sons of the politically articulate and effective classes are almost certain to become officers in large numbers and to be well integrated into the ideological and institutional military framework...

...on the contrary, they should admit that their motives are solidly materialistic and selfish—either that going to war would inconvenience them, maybe even expose them to danger, or that they cannot bear to inflict death on others...

...What is open to us—alone or together (those who reach similar conclusions...

...Or is it neither a problem of sufficient importance nor an indicator of where we are drifting for want of such debate...

...In discussions about Such attempts to disqualify the propeople who wish to refuse the draft, test as not idealistically motivated one frequently hears the argument: seem to me utterly irrelevant...

...But this recognition—even if valid—may merely act to paralyze action, since neither can anyone know everything nor do everything...

...This suggests a strange dialectic: we ought to oppose the draft and support military professionalization (now) in order to "heighten the contradictions...

...The reasonable man says: "Look here, I admit I am a coward to the extent that I will not be stampeded into saying I am a hero just to prove that I am no coward...

...I therefore earnestly solicit the opinion of my colleagues in the student bodies and on the faculties...

...Between obedience and revolution there are in fact a multitude of political possibilities which—obedience being (sometimes) immoral and revolution (for the foreseeable future) impossible— we are obliged to explore...

...Indeed, the very creation of a democratic army could be a cause championed by a radical right anxious to coerce dissident intellectual/student elites...

...John Seeley of the Brandeis Sociology Department discusses the problems faced by professors in grading students when lower grades may mean being sent to Vietnam...

...But it is not absurd to suggest, as Gordon Levin does, that the army which fights a war like that in Vietnam ought not to be democratic, ought indeed to be alienated from civil society, so that both it and its war can one day be repudiated by that same society...

...Moreover, why is it not more psychologically correct to assume that the death of one's son in battle is most likely to lead one to support the war effort for which that son gave his life...

...And are they willing (and able) to function professionally in a situation wherein they thus hold life-and-death-probability powers over the students...

...How can it be done—at least, the last...

...You may encourage mild draft-dodging...

...Or, incidentally, than students have similar rights to publish about professors...

...If their repugnance of service is really as strong as they now say it is, let them engage in civil disobedience and face a court...

...Why turn such a war into a democratic struggle...

...We have abandoned `Do good work or risk a whipping...

...Then the citizen must fight back, and often he may have to defend himself before a military court...

...So I am left with the conscience of each (after appropriate study and re flection) as the only cogent opinion...

...The right to advocate a different course of policy for the Government, even the right to advocate resistance, is guaranteed by the Constitution...

...Finally, the right to opt out may be claimed on the ground that war itself is the crime that is repugnant to individual conscience...

...To ask for a legal exemption from the draft on the ground that you ought to act as a defeatist, while simultaneously asking for admittance to some labor camp or medical chore is immoral...

...But perhaps I overestimate the reluctance of democratic citizens to kill and to die...

...By all means, provided the work entails risk, danger and discomfort comparable to combat conditions yet is not connected with the war effort...

...We are perhaps as proximate as whoever in Nazi Germany "objectively" determined the fraction of a man's ancestry that was "Jewish...

...you cannot be a rebel with the consent of the Government...

...Both their arguments serve to point up, as my piece on the draft perhaps did not, the extreme tensions under which American radicals now live, the difficult choices we face...

...It is also not clear to me entirely— though this is not central to my present concern—that Professors have any more right to "publish" grade data about students than they have to publish other things they learn about students in class or office hours or in "informal interaction...

...I take it for granted that in a modern society we are all implicated in moral responsibility for what the state of which we are citizens does or doesn't do...

...It is patently undesirable, I think, that things should be quietly worked out by Selective Service and the University Presidents' and Deans' holding company, as at present...

...Surely we have no reason to oppose further experiments aimed at loosening the hold of the state over its citizens...

...They should be allowed to save their personal "conscience," but if their objection were truly political, they would seek a political, not a legal recourse...

...They have admitted the existence of rights where conservative theorists saw only the danger of social disorder and radical theorists only inevitable contradictions and ultimate revolution...

...For every Curtis Le May there is a Maxwell Taylor who is largely indistinguishable, in his restrained but unwavering support for the cold war, from his civilian counterparts in the Departments of State and Defense...

...I would like them to take counsel with each other and with me...

...We are thus now a much more intimate part of the selection system (if we con tinue to grade or otherwise rate and publish or permit publication by informing someone, such as a Registrar, who does publish...

...No matter how strongly they now feel that war is immoral, I think it immoral to defer the disclosure of such feelings until it helps in securing deferment...

...He argues that the modern democratic state offers only two alternatives to its citizens: obedi ence to the will of the majority (or to the will of any government legally authorized to speak and presumed actually to speak for that majority) or revolution...

...They also wish to establish that they are against war as such...

...but I am still inclined to believe that the most fruitful "contradiction" would be that which arose between a democratic army and a distant, gruelling, degrading and unpopular war...

...Likewise, unless he abandons citizenship, no one has a right to opt out of a national enterprise, and still less can the Government be forced—other than by revolution—to guarantee, let alone to organize such opting-out...

...Could they not volunteer for medical service, research, Peace Corps...

...I am sufficiently certain of the merit of my argument at this point to stand on it, though I am sure I must soon take a stand...

...I am disinclined to allow relevance in this question to the student's opinion, because even if he wants us to rate him for this purpose (either so as to get in or stay out) we each have still severally responsibility for our complicity in this use of us...

...if others want to join in, we'll keep the discussion going.—Ed...

...Yet another group of draftees consists of new converts...

...This, it seems to me, is the legitimate motive of every one who uses all the legal loop holes to avoid the draft...

...It is (so far as possible) an objective report of objective conditions that is intended to help the subject of the report to take appropriate action as he sees it...

...If this is really their feeling, then the worst thing they could do would be to remain silent...

...We shall see...

...To claim that there are and ought to be options short of this is, perhaps, to call into question the logic of state sovereignty, which Pachter defends so forcefully...

...But this is dubious, for "best" here means not morally or humanly best, but only best in terms of academic performance...

...Rather, it seems to me that a democratization of the draft would be most apt to further legitimize and strength...

...At present this loophole seems to me both too narrow and too wide...

...Or we might wash our hands, asking what is truth...

...Some people now discover that they have hated war all the time, and they seek exemption on the ground of their pacifist philosophy...

...But that logic is after all not so inexorable as he suggests...

...This is especially true in an ideologically uniformitarian society such as America, in which the vast majority of the people of all classes begin with a pre-disposition of support for anti-revolutionary police actions...

...N. Gordon Levin and Henry Pachter comment on a piece by Michael Walzer, "Democracy and the Conscript" (January-February 1 °66 DISSENT), and Michael lValzer replies...

...The Government does not recognize a citizen's right to undo its policies or to obstruct the implementation of its laws other than by testing their validity in court or by changing them through prescribed constitutional pro cedures...

...And it will surely have less and less as more and more Americans, from a wider and wider social spectrum, are called upon to fight it...

...For those who can conclude that the Vietnam war is a just war and/or otherwise morally permissible, there is a narrower problem, but still, I should think, a problem: are they willing to enter so intimately into a process whereby they in effect load the dice for and against the survival of their several students...

...In so doing we miss the crucial point that the main drift of America's cold war policies in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic have been firmly supported by leading civilian decision makers of both parties...

...It would seem to be a more logical radical task in America to attempt to heighten rather than to pacify the contradictions between social justice at home and the main drift of our foreign policy...

...Of "These demonstrators are chicken...

...It is just here, when it comes to the killing and the dying, that the cold war consensus is bound to be weakest...

...To all these arguments I answer that dissent from the present war or refusal to do any military service can only be conceived as an act of resistance, disobedience, defiance or defection...

...It amounts to freeing another man for military service and to asking the Government to allow some people legally to opt out of the war...

...We ought not to assume that democratic armies can in fact fight such wars, or that democratic societies can sustain them...

...Lenin was in exile...

...Ultimately, it may well be true that it would be easier to create internal opposition to a police action conducted by an alienated "foreignlegion" type of professional army than to foster domestic dissent against such a limited war conducted by a truly representative democratic army...

...They want to show that their refusal to serve is not motivated by fear or convenience...

...They feel that the present war is imperialist or colonialist, that it is conducted in a fashion unbecoming to a great democracy, and that it may bring us close to atomic extinction...

...We might cease to grade at all (except privately for information for each student) or we might grade everyone equally high...

...I am inclined to dismiss all opinions as relevant except as matter for the informed and sensitive conscience of every professor in his aloneness...

...Two characteristics seem to lift out of the vague general class of the deplorable those things that call upon one for action: a. The moral magnitude of the atrocity involved—so that, regardless of one's proximity to the action, the duty of effective protest is urgent...

...In his "Democracy and the Conscript" [DISSENT, JanuaryFebruary 1966] Michael Walzer argues that democratization of the draft would be a path to increased political dissent in an America likely to continue for some time to fight limited wars in the undeveloped world...

...Resistance against the draft is often advocated on the ground that the citizen may get into such a conflict once he has been enrolled in the Army...

...Henry Pachter's comment makes Iife seem even darker...

...The law prescribes that you can claim this exemption only if you have previously given proof of your earnestness...

...But this is a very stark set of alternatives and one with which we ought to be dissatisfied...

...Would it not be more reasonable to let them do some useful work...

...Gordon Levin and Henry Pachter may be right...

...Whatever support the cold war has among the American people, this particular hot war has very little...

...It is this central concept—the notion that a truly universal draft would mean more internal dissent from cold war policies— that I find it difficult to accept...

...or appropriate professional conduct...

...but it also excludes people who have made enormous sacrifices for peace, yet whose cause happens not to qualify...

...The new situation roughly means that all students who fall into some portion of the lower tail are to be differential ly exposed to draft risk...

...Democratic states have recognized all sorts of limits on the legitimate coercion of individual citizens...

...In sum, the central problem for socialist advocacy of a democratic draft in contemporary America, is that a movement towards social justice in this particular area would have, I fear, the result of further strengthening the national cold war consensus...

...If we lived in a society whose wars we could reasonably hope would be defensive and nothing more, we would then be unequivocal advocates of a democratic army...

...Bertrand Russell and Ramsay Macdonald went to jail...

...Liebknecht was sent to the front...

...Moreover, it also seems to me chimerical to hope that a more democratic conscript army would be measurably less brutal or repressive abroad than a professional or volunteer army...

...b. Proximity to the atrocity—regardless of magnitude—so that a Chief of Police (or any policeman) bears peculiar responsibility for police brutality...

...The next question is, doubtless, whether or not the Vietnam war is an atrocity, and, if so, of what degree...

...Walzer argues that "A genuinely universal draft would almost certainly be a major restraint upon peacetime warmaking, if only because it would mean that the sons of politically articulate and effective classes would die in greater numbers...

...Maybe...

...Whether an individual citizen will avail himself of this moral right to revolution, will depend on the strength of his conviction, on the nature of the system and of the war, on the kind of command he is objecting to, maybe even on the nature of the enemy and, last not least, on the strength of the majority and the possibility that it may be right...

...But it also now is a signal to someone other than the subject as to the permissibility of an operation of a given sort upon him...

...But one thing you cannot do: you cannot practice civil disobedience with the aid of the law...

...You may engage in desperate acts of sabotage and disobedience...

...Otherwise they would merely be asking personally to be left out of the dirty part of it...

...Thus the butcher, baker or candle-stick maker may not lightly pass over his responsibility for concentration camps—or the lynchings of Negroes, or the use of cattle prods on men...

...The prior situation was very roughly such as to make University students generally exempt from military conscription as long as they were students in good standing...

...You must be a bona fide member of a religious group that rejects military service and you must have submitted to the discipline of such a group, have undertaken some rigorous and demanding task that tested your earnestness...

...Each writer speaks, of course, for himself...

...but the right to start such a fight is a moral, not a legal right...

...Perhaps only in countries such as Sweden and Switzerland—where the armed forces are designed for self-defense only—can a democratic draft be an unambiguous socialist demand...

...Even then instructors would be marginally implicated by moving persons into and out of that status...

...Thus, "You are doing C-work in Calculus" and "Dear Draft Board, you should investigate whether to call up this young man" are now functional equivalents...

...let them risk going to jail as proof of their sincerity...

...Thus remediable urban blight, the neglect of retarded children, the exiguous nature of our foreign aid, the errors and insanities of the cold war all lie as matters of guilt to be shared at everyone's door...

...And it takes a lot of courage to follow reason when everybody expects you to act like a hero...

...Thus, "Your vision is 10/20" and "You are doing C-work in Calculus" are functional equivalents...

...We now have "Do good work or risk a killing—of or by you...

...I think these two conditions follow from the assumption that a principle is involved for these persons...

...One fights for specific civil rights, such as the right to vote, to live where one pleases etc., but disobedience itself is no civil right, even if the law in question is immoral...

...The usual answer is: Why send them to jail...

...I also find it difficult to share Walzer's concern that military adventurism on the part of professional soldiers is a real problem in America...

...Even, if it were unanimous, I do not think it would have a proper effect to bind or loose conscience...

...We might act to secure changes in the rules or their application...

...And even if revolution were a possibility, we might choose some other form of opposition, for it is simply not true that the "only way to proclaim that a particular war is wrong [is] by declaring that the government is wrong, that its laws are wrong and that its system is wrong...

...And revolutionaries, he rightly insists, should not expect to be patted on the head...

...To be sure, draftees are unlikely to torture in the direct and personal style of foreign legion types, but the recent performances of American draftees in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic suggest they will shoot at and drop napalm on whomever they are told...

...Traditional socialist goals are perhaps irrelevant to contemporary America— irrelevant or worse, since their achievement at home might well increase support for unjust wars abroad...

...For those who can conclude the Vietnam war is an unjust war and/or otherwise morally impermissible, I should think there would be further problems...

...There is only one way to proclaim that a particular war is wrong, and that is by declaring that the government is wrong, that its laws are wrong and that its system is wrong...

...Besides, he has ways to get in, and perhaps, to stay out, without us...

...these objectors feel that it is their duty to reserve judgment in each individual case and, if they find their government in the wrong, to agitate against the war...

...The upshot is that an academic grade comes to function, like a medical report or rating, in two ways instead of one...

...en the already nearly impregnable American cold war consensus...

...Where both magnitude and proximity are involved, action is not to be evaded except at the price of demoralization...

...Friedrich Adler killed Prime Minister Stiirckh...

...I know of no historical example where a government protected its enemies from the consequences of its policies...

...course the person who objects to being drafted does so because he values his life more than any values he is being called on to defend...

...In certain cases an officer of the Government may give a citizen the order to commit deeds that are repugnant to his moral instincts or to recognized standards of human conduct...

...The new "selective service" deal adds, I believe, to the element of proximity for professors...

...Among the loopholes available to draftees, there is one which some wish they had thought of earlier: religious objection to military service...

...He does not claim to be a hero, but to follow reason...

...The opinion of such aggregates as "the nation," "the University," "the professorate" is, I think, non-existent except as a name for a Gallup Poll (dubiously meaningful) average...

...If I argue here that they have compounded the difficulties, I don't do so with any great confidence...

...There is another group of objectors who claim that they may not be strictly pacifist and would defend their country in case of attack, but who fail to see the present war in such a light...

...their abhorrence of warlike pursuits emerged only when the board of their neighbors was breathing down their necks...

...Where can the question be raised by whom in what way so that its urgency for us comes clear...

...But a prior question might be whether the relevant opinion is that of each professor for himself, the professorial consensus or preponderance of opinion of all professors for each of them, or the opinion of each student involved—or some other opinion, e.g., "the University's" or "the nation's...

...The determination of civil disobedience, or the hardship one is ready to take upon oneself, obviously will vary with the strength of one's feelings about war in general and with one's evaluation of this particular war...

...The fight against an immoral law may require revolutionary action, civil disobedience or even violence...

...I should think that on both counts there might be wellgrounded and deep qualms...

...It permits people to claim religious exemption on the sole ground of membership, though they may never have shown any real concern for the works of peace...

...But there is no civil right to disobey a law of which one disapproves...

...But that will take time, and meanwhile we are embroiled...

...I shall note in passing, though it is not the main thrust of my argument, what this does to the teaching relationship...

...Only if such experiments were to prove impossible would it be necessary to confront Pachter's dilemma...

...but if they had not felt strongly enough to engage in pacifist activities earlier, they can hardly claim to be legally excused from serving...

...The draft objectors need not claim that their protest is disinterested...

...The only way to opt out politically is to disobey: that is, to defy the majority and the law...

...We might refuse to be professors under such an invasion or misuse of our role...

...Gramsci was on the Lipari Islands...