Thursday, November 01, 2007

The Proxy Debate on the War

Just speculating out loud ... will the coverage of Foreign Service Officers in essence "drafted" to go to Iraq become a proxy debate on the war itself? Conventional wisdom always maintained that the U.S. could handle "wars of choice" because the excuse of the "all-volunteer military" precluded the need for a draft.

Will some of the same arguments prevail here--FSOs know what they are getting into, no one forced them to join, they can go to Iraq or they can resign, etc. Or are the FSOs the equivalent of the upper-middle class draftees?

Comments:
Nik, Doug Feaver over at the Post is compiling some of the comments to Karen DeYoung's story and interesting to see how opinion is tracking:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/dot.comments/2007/11/duty_in_iraq.html?hpid=topnews
 
FSO are Officers of the United States - they have to go where they are ordered; they are not drafted by any stretch of imagination.


And if they don't want, they should resign.

Life is tough all over...
 
Can people in the U.S. military reserve opt out? I'm sure that there are those who, when they signed up, never dreamed of serving long stretches in Iraq while their businesses and personal relationships went south.
 
I gotta hand it to whoever wrote this, you've really kept me updated! Now, let's just hope that I can come across another blog just as interesting :)
 
Interesting post..here’s some additional related info.terrific work! Thanks for posting.
 
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