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Mark Shields is a nationally known columnist and commentator.

Mark Shields: Two cheers for Charlie Rangel


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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- This story begins on Lenox Avenue in Harlem a half century ago.

An 18-year-old high-school dropout, staring at a draft call from his draft board, joined the United States Army, which after thoughtful reflection, assigned him eventually to its 2nd Infantry Division in Korea, where the young soldier grew up in a hurry.

In fierce combat, he earned the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, and became a staff sergeant, before returning to Harlem to earn his high-school diploma in one year, his bachelor's degree from NYU four years later and his law degree three years after that from St. John's University -- all on the GI Bill.

In the history of Harlem's congressional district, there have been only two representatives: the legendary Adam Clayton Powell Jr. served from 1944 until he was defeated in the 1970 Democratic primary by that former high-school dropout named Charlie Rangel.

Rangel now publicly argues that "if we are going to send our children to war," the American tradition of "shared sacrifice" demands the nation "resume the military draft." He has just made a lot of Republicans and Democrats -- who devoutly want to avoid a vote on reinstituting the draft -- quite nervous, by promising to introduce legislation to do exactly that this coming week.

In spite of glowing pronouncements from defense officials, the all-volunteer military (which today has 2.1 million fewer uniformed members than during the Vietnam War) was undermanned even before September 11.

Despite an unsubstantiated press hype, there never was any post-attack surge in enlistments. Desperate to meet its quota, the Army has been forced to accept hundreds of members with felony arrests. More than one out of three new volunteers fails to complete his enlistment. During the draft, between 1940 and 1973, just one out of 10 failed to do so.

To meet just its current missions, not even considering the "non-crisis" with North Korea, the United States military almost surely needs at least a half million more men under arms. The status quo is unacceptable.

Northwestern University's Charlie Moskos, the country's pre-eminent military sociologist and, himself, an ex-GI out of Princeton, rightly calls the prevailing approach "patriotism-lite." You know the drill: the bigger the SUV, the bigger the Old Glory decal, the flag pin on the lapel and the lobbying for more and bigger tax-cuts by and for those who need them least of all.

"War," writes the conservative scholar Michael Barone, "demands equality of sacrifice." The military today defending our nation is increasingly integrated by race and increasingly segregated by class.

What made the draft work so well and for so long (really until Vietnam), according to Charlie Moskos, is that "America was drafting from the top of the social ladder. For the draft to work in the future, the elite youth will have to serve, too."

FDR's four sons all answered the call during Word War II. Let it be noted that four Harvard graduates with political interests named Kennedy -- Joe, Jack, Bob and Ted -- all served as well.

It makes good sense that the nation's leaders have some personal understanding of the strengths, the weaknesses and the distinctive culture of the military. Charlie Moskos, voted Northwestern's most popular professor, frankly tells his students that the draft he favors would call first the graduates of the nation's best universities, such as Northwestern, and Harvard, and Stanford, and Duke, and Yale.

Yes, there is an element of mischief in Rangel's advocacy of a new draft. He knows, as do his critics, that a major debate over who ought to fight America's war in Iraq will re-open debate over the war itself.

Charlie Rangel knows that the draft, in addition to restoring a sense of collective duty and common sacrifice, would guarantee that the nation's national interests will be more openly seriously, and vigorously, debated.

No more think tank commandos and Capitol Hill "heroes" free to urge a policy of military escalation with no personal, or familial, participation. It might even spare us some of the swaggering tough-guy talk about "cake walks" in Iraq from those who, themselves, used every quasi-legal loophole and doctor's excuse imaginable to avoid putting their own necks in harm's way.

Charlie Rangel is doing his best to make the rest of us, including President George W. Bush, realize that war is not and cannot be a spectator sport, where the nation's advantaged elites and their children, at a safe remove, look on, while fellow citizens they do not know -- and will never meet -- do the fighting ad the dying.


Click here for more from Creators Syndicate.


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