I think this is an idea worth considering; I wrote a similar article in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution a few years ago, emphasizing the need to create a “Disaster Assistance Corps” whose mission would be to go help folks (including overseas) struck by natural disasters: tsunami, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. (Remember how much our stock rose in the Muslim world after we sent the Navy to help after the Indonesian tsunami.) So the conscientious objector types could sign up for that (once drafted) and the folks who want to be in the (real) military whose mission is to “kill people and break things.”
And women can go into combat arms when they can do 40 pushups, run two miles in 14 minutes or less and hump an 85-pound rucksack–like we men had to do when I was in th 101st.
One last point: is it just me, or do folks throw the term “Fascist” around on here a lot? Was the draft “fascist” when FDR or JFK or LBJ used it? Somehow I doubt it.
