I went went to Mud Run at Camp Pendleton this weekend. I went to cheer on my friends, who, along with hundreds of other hardy runners, dashed and crawled through 6.2 miles of dirt and mud. The event was manned by Marines, who all wore fatigue pants and promotional T-shirts, their chisled torsos marking the cut-off between their separate lives. As we drove along the road, my friends and I saw row after row of Army helicopters and vehicles. Homemade “Welcome Back Dad!” posters dotted the fences. I remembered that Camp Pendleton is not just a race site some thirty minutes away. It is a military base, and it trains soldiers for war.
Many of those who live and train there are college-aged. They train for the ground war in Iraq, while we are amidst the ground war for votes. It’s not the same, as we are assaulted with fliers and registration forms, stickers and buttons, pleas and entreaties. No bullets, although there are verbal darts. No body armor, just steely determination. You’ve heard it all before. The elderly vote in droves, the young vote in drips. It may not be “vote or die,” but it does seem that way sometimes. UCSD, and especially Associated Students, has been commendably aggressive in getting the vote out on campus. Just look at the creepy patriotic mannequin in the corner of Geisel Library or any school computer desktop advertising “Rock the Vote!” for that matter.
Beyond the classroom banter about the presidential debates and the obvious leftist leanings of most of the faculty, a question that comes to mind is: What matters to us? What matters to this generation, the generation that is going to inherit the repercussions of today’s policies? Affording higher education matters. So do hot-button social issues, such as gay rights and abortion rights. Also important are the endeavors of those from Camp Pendleton in Afghanistan or Iraq.
There is no Vietnam-esque atmosphere. Many are vocal, but hardly en masse. The campus is slightly cold, sleepy even, in comparison to the passion of yesteryear. It’s not a bad thing per se — indeed, disaster precedes outrage. However, one reason for the sense of complacency, I’d say, is because Iraq is fought by a volunteer army. Say the word “draft,” however, and I will show you fire from ice. Students will be instantly mobilized. They’ll start paying close attention to issues, which suddenly concern them in a tangible way.
Many students are politically and civically engaged, and even more so right now. Yet, by and large, our age group remains a puzzle, if not a disappointment, at least according to the media and voting statistics. Optimistically speaking, students care in a very understated way.
Thus, I scowled when I heard the draft rumor. Don’t tell me that suddenly every collegian cares about politics just because they do not want to be drafted. And people would blindly believe this stuff? I overreacted, but the scary draft bill that was going to enslave us all to military service was, in fact, a bill written by a Democrat to illuminate the discrepancies of minority enlistees. It was defeated 402-2. Kerry and Bush, in a rare display of consensus, have declared that neither one of them will institute a draft.
Despite the exploitation of the issue by mass e-mails and obnoxious Web sites, a draft is clearly out of the question. Even so, it should be noted that the army isn’t a cornucopia of the willing and able either. In fact, as a Time article reported last week, 137,000 American soldiers are currently in Iraq, a 15,000 increase from the beginning of the year. Forty-three percent deployed are from the National Guard and reserves. The numbers get bleaker: Guard recruitment is down 12 percent, according to Newsweek, and the Army has only 18 percent of the required commitments to serve next year. As even the least-informed college student can see, the situation in Iraq is not getting any better.
Though there is no draft in sight, it is not an impossibility. No matter which side of the fence you lean on, our self-interest, our country and our mortality bond us all. The draft is such a touchy issue because it raises the idea of sacrifice — involuntary sacrifice. God forbid, we might give ourselves to the public good. We haven’t done anything to earn the right to vote, criticize our leaders or ignore everything. Yet we are free to do it all. We haven’t been asked to do much of anything, other than to cast a ballot. Will it take a draft to mobilize us? If you hide under the cover of ignorance, check out http://www.presidentmatch.com or http://www.cnn.com as a starting point to getting informed.
The question of sacrifice is not if, but when and what. Sacrificing time to care now can prevent having to pay the ultimate sacrifice later — by our Camp Pendleton peers, or yes, even us.
Find this rarely good, medium quality, or well done? E-mail
