| Depends on what you define as "significant". The number of body bags per week that is acceptable to the American people, in pursuit of imperial ambitions, changes over time. I see an encouraging decrease, in the willingness of Americans to die in obscure Asian deserts and jungles, compared to the 1960s, or 1890s. Progress, I call this. A volunteer army makes our sensitivity to casualties much more acute. I don't see any possibility of re-instating the draft. Any attempt to do that, and we'd see civil disobediance on a massive scale. If I had a draft-age son, I would have been willing to send him to Afghanistan, but not to Iraq, Iran, Syria, N. Korea. Not unless I'm given a reason a whole lot better than anything the NeoCons have come up with so far. As a rough guess, I'd say, if U.S. soldiers are dying in Iraq, at a rate of 1-2/day, in 2004, Bush is going to be vulnerable at election-time. And, if any Democrat is elected, even one whose criticism of U.S. imperialism is timid, he'll find a way to withdraw from Iraq. Probably some variety of "Iraqization" (remember "Vietnamization"?). |
