General David Petraeus sits in front of a Congressional committee testifying "candidly," a word he uses to tell lawmakers that some parts of the war in Iraq are not going well. Rows of gleaming medals and campaign ribbons adorn his tunic, reflecting the TV lights bearing down on him as he leans forward, hands clasped, head cocked like a golden retriever. He's a very sincere-looking man. Next to him, Ryan Crocker, our ambassador to Iraq, looks like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck. His bewildered expression symbolizes the predicament of his boss: W, the Chief Decider, who can't tell Australia from Austria, but who wants the Iraqi people to believe they're better off under his occupying troops than they were under Saddam Hussein.
To paraphrase Richard Nixon, whom Bush surpassed in the dirty tricks department before he even took office, one thing seems perfectly clear: our troops are coming home; not as fast as we'd like, and not all in one piece, but the number of American men and women in harm's way will go down, not up. Despite the illusion that W listened to the advice of his handpicked commander in the field, the simple fact is that there was no way the troops wouldn't start leaving.
Petraeus was adamant about having written his report with no review or interference from Congress, the Pentagon, or the president. What he didn't say is that a reduction in force was inevitable. Months before, he and his senior command had come out publicly against extending the tours of duty for those soldiers currently in Iraq. Already demoralized by a prior increase from 12 to 15 months, our combat forces were unable, let alone unwilling, to stay even longer. To put it bluntly, there was no one left to send over, and those who were there needed to start coming home.
This is a good thing, because we were closer to a reinstated draft than many people realized. I say "we" in the figurative sense, because I solved my own draft problem in the fall of 1969 after graduating from Columbia College and finding myself in a drafty (pun intended) auditorium one morning at an induction center in Brooklyn. They gave me a 4F, which meant that even if the Viet Cong invaded Coney Island, I couldn't be called up for duty. A few years earlier, Dick Cheney also avoided the draft, though his methods were probably more conventional than mine. I was a rock musician whose activities on any given day were, shall we say, antithetical to the military lifestyle, though apparently right in step with some of W's youthful habits.
On Feb. 14, 2006, Charles Rangel, Democrat from Harlem, announced he had "introduced new legislation to reinstate the military draft that will include draftees up to 42 years of age." Since then, we've had an election. Now, Rangel is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, a job that cuts into his free time. Though he conceded his bill stood little chance of passage, Rangel was quite serious about sending a message: the burden needed to be shared by more than "those men and women who with limited options chose military service." Translation? If you're going to go to war, send the children of the middle class to fight alongside those who have no other job opportunities.
It doesn't stop there. Technically, I'm unfit to serve, but given how quickly the military relaxed other standards to fill their recruitment quotas, it's conceivable they might have pursued diehards like me, dangling five-figure bonuses and a host of other perks to lure us in. If you're an unemployed baby boomer with no health benefits... well, you get the idea. The fact that Rangel's bill set the ceiling at age 42 reflected the reality of today's "volunteer" military. There has been a disproportionate number of casualties among soldiers over 50, one indication of just how desperate W's faltering war machine has become. While these older troops are often noncommissioned officers who chose to remain with their reserve units when they were sent overseas, the fact remains that they wouldn't have been there in the first place, had we not invaded Iraq.
A more insidious indicator is the increase in the number of criminals who have found their way into the military. In 2004, the Pentagon issued a Moral Waiver Study "to better define relationships between pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service success." This coded statement justified the relaxed recruiting practices that followed. Felonies that formerly meant rejection were routinely overlooked. In one case, a gang member under indictment for murder enlisted in the Marines while he was free on bond, escaping detection until he was just about to embark for Iraq. Last year, Steven Green of the 101st Airborne Divison was charged with rape and quadruple murder in Mahmudiyah, Iraq. The Army disclosed that he had an "anti-social personality disorder" that would have disqualified him from service under pre-existing standards.
It's clear this trend could not have continued. At some point, a reinstated draft would have been W's only option, and that would have been a political disaster. As a lame duck, he wouldn't have cared, but the lawmakers behind such a move would have been voted out of office. We're lucky to have dodged this phantom draft. They would have taken men and women this time, and we've already seen that this war is an equal-opportunity disaster.
The author is a graduate of the Columbia College class of 1969.