"(Don’t) Forget The Draft"
By Eliot Kristan

Do you know someone in Iraq?

I can’t say that I do, and maybe you don’t either. A friend of a friend? Yeah, but no o­ne I can visualize or worry about specifically. I wish that I did. I wish I did know someone in Iraq because if I did I could actualize my fear that the U.S. Government is wasting the time and life of my generation – of my people, of our people.

Bring back the draft!

The draft will mend the disconnect between what is going o­n in Iraq and how we feel about it here. When the U.S. Government sends the brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters to war from affluent society, a broader range of Americans will be infuriated about this godforsaken war. And whether this newly amassed voice expresses itself through mail, protests, electronic disobedience, or its votes, people will listen. They will listen because blood will stain the entire spectrum, liberals and conservatives; the rich and poor alike.

Two winters ago, I watched live video broadcasts from my apartment in the Fenway as U.S. Troops first rolled through burning oil fields and sand storms. Cornered by BU, Northeastern, Berkeley, Simmons, and Emanuel, I was tucked comfortably in the womb of institutional education. I would raise o­ne fist against the blasted war that we weren’t able to stop with our incessant, incestuous, preemptive demonstrating while the other was held by my lover; or was gripping a phone connected to a friend or a family member, themselves tucked comfortably in their respective wombs.

But every other day I tutored at Lewis Middle School in Roxbury. And every other day, during those first weeks of the war, I saw tears from the teachers whose children were stationed with those troops. And I saw fistfights manifested from fears for brothers, sisters or cousins stationed with those troops.

“Those who love this country have a patriotic obligation to defend this country. For those who say the poor fight better, I say give the rich a chance,” Democratic representative Charles Rangel said, twisting JFK’s lines, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Rangel spoke these lost words during January of last year when he and Democratic senator Fritz Hollins proposed the Universal National Service Act.


Pending legislation, the twin bills S 89 and HR 163 will reinstate the draft as early as June 15, 2005. And this time, neither college nor Canada will help us escape the draft. Shortly after 9-11, the Canadian and the U.S. Governments created the Smart Border Declaration, an agreement that, under the guise of national security, could thwart draft-dodgers from crossing over into the hands of our neighbors to the north. Under the bills, college students are simply not exempt from service. And neither are conscientious objectors; however, the bills consider them and their appropriate placement in non-combat fields.

The anti-war movement has been fractious and uncertain thus far; we’ve set ourselves up for failure since the get-go. If we reestablish our drive o­n the same footing, and realize that we are all subject to the army’s grasp and that we all have the same potential to shed blood, the opposition will activate in unison.

Under the guidance of A.N.S.W.E.R., we argued against this war with recitations of oil, revenge, neocolonialism and sometimes blood. We even made moot acknowledgments of generally twisted U.S. policies in the Middle East and cited the Palestinian case. The privileged few, myself included, traveled many miles and spent many hours preaching to the choir during large demonstrations in D.C., London and San Francisco. But there wasn’t a focus. We never came to the collective understanding that everyone can relate to the blood, and in the end, the blood is the o­nly thing that matters.

Other articles by Eliot Kristan.

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