Unequal Sacrifice
In his first book, For Us, the Living, Robert Heinlein suggested a means of spreading the pain quite effectively. In the twenty-first-century America he imagined, a declaration of war was voted on not by Congress but by the people themselves. The ballot would not be secret, as anyone voting in favor of the war would be required to immediately report for active military service; should they be tapped out by the war, those who could have voted but didn't would then be recruited. His idea would probably need expansion and adjustment to work, and pacifists would likely be disappointed by the results (we'd probably have still gone to war with Afghanistan after 9/11), but the chickenhawk phenomenon would be dead and gone.
Michael Griffin
Pueblo, CO
2010-09-08 18:16












