For 17 years now, Bob Herbert?s columns in The New York Times have been exposing and challenging the injustices that so many among us endure in their lives. He has long been a favorite of mine, so when he was named to deliver the annual Robert W. Kastenmeier lecture sponsored recently by the UW-Madison?s Law School, I was first in line to get a ticket.
Herbert is, after all, one of the few national political columnists who regularly writes about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the terrible toll they are taking on the small slice of American society that has been sent to fight them. Unfortunately, the wars are flying under most Americans? radars. He used his lecture to encourage the overflow crowd at the Law School to wake up to what?s happening to our nation because of the wars.
….Herbert agrees with what I?ve said in this column over the years — if we returned to a military draft, we could solve many problems. First, if war becomes necessary, everyone would share the burden, not sweep it under a rug while others do the dirty work. But more importantly, if most of America stands to be affected, there would be more restraint on our leaders in starting a war in the first place. And ending it would become a much higher priority.