Keep the Draft

As one of the last people subject to the draft during the Vietnam War. I am writing to support the continued existence of the Selective Service System in case we need a military draft sometime in the future.  I actually volunteered after being classified 1-A and passing the physical, rather than wait a month or two to be drafted. 

I am very disappointed that military service has become such a contemptible, dishonorable profession in the United States.  I came home from Vietnam to scorn for being a veteran.  Today, people praise veterans, but in my opinion, it is usually because the people heaping the praise are not willing to serve themselves.  They think, “If I tell this fool what a great job he is doing, then I won’t have to do it.”  When it comes to something more expensive than praise, like giving veterans jobs or health benefits, the country is less fulsome. 

The military likes having an all-volunteer force, but I think we need people who would not ordinarily serve in the military.  We need people from Harvard and Stanford who look at the world differently from the ordinary pool of recruits, who are mostly poor and less well educated.  Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan hated the military so much when she was dean of the Harvard Law School that she prohibited military recruiting there.  The military needs a diversity of personalities, perspectives and talents, just like any other large organization.  This lack of intellectual diversity has hampered the military ever since Vietnam, when despite the draft, rich, smart, well-educated people generally did not serve.  That may be one reason we lost the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  We sent our trailer-park trash to fight and we got trashy results. 

I realize that the proposal by Congressmen Coffman and Polis to abolish the draft is motivated by the recent call to include women in the draft.  I have no objection to including women in the draft, but I do oppose the recent decision to include women in all fighting units of the military, including the Army infantry and the Marines.  I think the problems with rape and other sex offenses in our universities illustrate the problems of putting young men and women with raging hormones together in situations where there are frequent romantic temptations.  I was in the artillery, where living conditions are better than in the infantry, but everyone slept together in one bunker, used the same latrine, etc.  Living conditions are probably manageable in rear echelon environments, where women could certainly serve, but I think forcing men and women to live together in combat situations is just asking for trouble in terms of sexual contact.  In any case, there are certainly military jobs for which America could draft women. 

I believe that the draft would strengthen the military by bringing in new blood, although the military leadership probably is not enthusiastic about the challenges to it that would emerge from a better quality of recruits. 

World War I Memorial

I was struck by the fact that the announcement of the new Washington memorial for World War I veterans, and the exposé of high administrative costs for the Wounded Warrior Project came out at almost the same time.  It’s interesting that the Vietnam War was the first American war in which veterans were widely reviled and hated, not counting the Civil War, which was a special case.  Other small wars were not widely supported, perhaps the Mexican War or the Spanish-American War, but there was not widespread contempt for the men who participated in them.  Teddy Roosevelt came out of the Spanish American War a hero, like John McCain came out a hero of the Vietnam War, unlike most of his fellow servicemen.  Similarly, there were some heroes of the Mexican-American War, like Zachery Taylor.  About the only heroes Vietnam produced were POWs.  General Westmoreland is usually considered a failure.  It was a case where the common soldiers won almost every battle, but the generals and the politicians lost the war.  So, in order to honor the common soldiers who died, the nation created a Vietnam Memorial to offset to some extent the general disrepute in which the soldiers were held. 

For previous wars there was no need to build a memorial, because those who fought were generally held in high regard.  There were many local memorials in small cities and towns, because everyone knew someone who had served.  Soldiers came from ordinary people’s homes, their relatives, their neighbors.  They often came from good families, and those who returned often went on to take leadership roles in their communities.  The reverse was true for Vietnam, people from good families refused to fight, and veterans who returned often found themselves treated like outcasts.  Homeless Vietnam veterans became a common sight in most cities. 

Now, people who grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam era have little idea what national service is like.  There was a burst of patriotism after 9/11, but it was squandered in a pointless war in Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11.  After an initial rush to join the military after 9/11, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan began to be ignored or disrespected like their Vietnam predecessors.  Nevertheless, people who don’t want to fight themselves want someone to fight for them.  So, they tell the veterans how much they love and respect them, when their actual attitude is, “I’m glad they went so that I didn’t have to.”  They tend to see veterans as people who can’t get a real job and have no choice but to join the military.  We have an all-volunteer military, but one that does not include many of the country’s best people. 

It’s the people who don’t remember when serving in the military was a well-respected calling who now want to build memorials.  The men who fought in World War I and II did not think that they needed memorials.  They thought that their service was their memorial, and that their sacrifices lived in the hearts and minds of their friends and relatives.  But that remembrance has died out, and average people today think World War I and II veterans were as worthless as the veterans of Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.  Today many people think they have to build memorials so that poor, stupid people like me will still go off to war when the country wants to fight a war.  It’s all about themselves, not about the veterans.  At least superficially, it is a better welcome home now than during Vietnam.  But is it reasonable that people today care more about the veterans who fought in World War I than America did 100 years ago?  And is it reasonable that people today care more about World War II veterans than their loved ones did fifty years ago?  No, if anything, the memorials are a penance for not caring.  

Dangers of Global Wealth Inequality

A Credit Swisse Report says that the top 0.7% of the world’s population, those with net wealth of $1 million or more, about 34 million people, own 45% of all global wealth.  It says there are 123,800 Ultra High Net Worth individuals worldwide who have a net worth of more than $50 million.  Fortune summarized the report. 

The Guardian says that there are 199,235 Ultra High Net Worth individuals, whose combined net worth is around $27.7 trillion, about 40% of the world’s GDP. 

This increasing concentration of wealth may have implications for financial liquidity.  To be liquid, markets need buyers and sellers, and this means there needs to be some diversity.  You need people who are looking for different things from their investments.  As you narrow the group making investments, you narrow their interests.  At some point you might end up with a small group of people who all want to sell.  The people who would in the past have been  buyers, now would not have enough resources to buy the huge amounts the superrich want to sell.  The result might be a violent dive in the price of the assests in disfavor, whether they are stocks, bonds, or real estate.  The same would be true if all the superrich wanted to buy some particular asset.  The result would be at best increasing volatility, and at worst market crashes.  These crashes might have less effect on the superrich than on ordinary people, because the superrich would probably be diversified.  For example, a big loss in their real estate investments would be cushioned by their investments in the stock and bond markets, or the art market, etc.  However, for ordinary people a big loss in the value of their home might be devastating, because they would not have other big, valuable assets to cushion the loss of their home value. 

This is more or less what happened in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. 

The other side of that crisis was what happened to the banks.  A few banks then and now were humongous, dominating the market for complicated financial instruments, like bonds made up of home mortgages.  Having only a few huge banks is like having a small group of superrich people, the chances of some event affecting all of the players becomes larger as the group of players becomes smaller.  Dodd-Frank and the Volker Rule were supposed to help remedy this, but so appears to have done little, despite (or because of) the loud protests of the big banks against any restrictions. 

Obama's State of the Union

I think Obama has done a good job as President compared to many of his predecessors, especially George W. Bush, one of the worst Presidents in modern history.  Bush and Cheney slept while New York City and Washington were attacked.  Then they retaliated against the wrong country.  They created Guantanamo, America’s version of the Soviet gulags, located in another country, because it was such a horrible thing that we didn’t want it in the continental US, just as Hitler did not want Auschwitz within the borders of Germany.  Under Bush and Cheney, America descended into a moral abyss.  It fell to the level of the terrorists who attacked it.  Obama has not done anything nearly as bad as that. 

ObamaCare was not a complete success.  Single-payer Medicare would have been preferable to the messy, hybrid, expensive system we got from the process, but it is better than nothing, which is what we had before.  He has not gotten rid of Guantanamo, but at least he says he wants to and will try to do so before the end of his term. 

His supposed admission that his one big failure was not restoring a civil dialogue between the Republicans and Democrats, is not really an acknowledgement of failure, it is just a nice sounding, back-handed way of saying, “I still can’t get along with those Republicans; they are just as nasty as ever.”  It was more an insult than an admission of failure. 

On the plus side, however, he tried to get us out of failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He did not entirely succeed in this, in large part because he inherited a horribly flawed situation from the previous administration.   Bush started the destabilization of the Middle East, but Obama may have abetted it by his encouragement of the Arab Spring’s desire to throw out all the old leadership of the Middle East.  Bush removed the foundation of Middle East stability, and Obama pushed over the unstable structure Bush left behind. 

I believe that Obama has done the right thing regarding Syria by not getting us deeper into that civil war.  The Syrian destruction of most of its chemical weapons was a plus for the conflict.  We would probably be hearing many more gruesome stories about chemical attacks, surpassing the stories of starvation and mutilation resulting from more conventional warfare.  Syria only presents a multitude of bad choices for the US, from want to do about Assad, to what rebel groups to support.  There is no one who can replace Assad and end the war, and there is no rebel group who will be able to put an end to the civil war militarily, without massive help and massive casualties on the side of whoever helps them.  The Republicans are anxious to see Americans die in Syria; I am not. 

On the economy, Obama has so far been pretty much a success.  He has restored employment, and under him the economy and the stock market have soared, compared with the great recession that Bush left for him.  He still has a year left for the economy to crater, but the gains under his Presidency have been so enormous, that even a moderate drop would still leave his administration with a very positive result.  He has been more willing to take on entrenched business and financial interests, but under his Presidency, consolidation of big business and banks has continued, and although he talks a good game against income inequality, it has increased on his watch.  Nevertheless, things are much better than under Bush, and what he has done is vastly superior to what the nay-saying Republicans have advocated. 

On foreign policy, the Republicans chafe at his unwillingness to kill everybody in sight, calling that weakness.  But I believe that it shows strength.  People may be more willing to challenge the US because they do not fear that Obama will nuke them for a small provocation, but they also see him as someone with whom they can negotiate.  His Iran nuclear deal is far superior to a war with Iran.  He showed strength in resisting Republican and Israeli screams for Iranian blood, based on some sort of extreme racial, religious and ethnic hatred.  In the long run, Obama’s approach is more likely to prevent a nuclear arms race or war in the Middle East  than a military attack. 

Reestablishing relations with Cuba was another positive step.  One reason I retired and left the Foreign Service was because of the Helms-Burton sanctions on Cuba.  An Italian complained to me that his daughter could not get a visa to visit Disneyworld because he worked for the Italian phone company and they had some kind a connection to Cuba.  It was too much like the German refusal to issue a visa to a Jewish child in order to prevent its mother from leaving Italy in one of the “Winds of War” books.  I don’t approve of punishing children for the sins of their parents.  The US bitterness and retaliation against Cuba has gone on too long.  It was time to end it; it was time years ago, but Obama finally did it. 

I am not a fan of free immigration.  I issued visas for a tour in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and felt bad every time I denied a visa, knowing that a Mexican could just walk across the border if he or she were denied a visa, but that it was not so easy for a Brazilian to do so.  Everyone looked the other way at illegal immigration for years.  Business benefitted because it kept salaries low, and liberals looked the other way because they wanted to see poor foreigners help themselves by coming to America.  Our immigration laws have been like Prohibition – strict laws on the books that are ignored in everyday life.  The law should be changed so that it can and will be enforced, whatever it turns our to be, strict or liberal.  Meanwhile, I don’t think there is much of a problem denying anyone who is a foreigner a visa for any reason; non-citizen, non-residents outside the US have no Constitutional protections, and keeping out anyone that poses even the least risk to the country is legal; we only need to decide what level that “least risk” should be.