This is the sidebar essay accompanying the story above, “Homeland Security on an Island of Misfit Toys.” Both commentaries will also be published in “Phronesis in Pieces” at billschmitt.substack.com. Please consider subscribing to that publication.

Here is more “grist for the mill” of emotions discussed above, but it can also be food for thought about our warfare at home and abroad. This critical thinking may not lead to solutions, but it can “wake us up,” as Bari Weiss said, to good questions that drive us toward reliance on a wisdom that transcends our media-fed animus.

What about the sex/gender/personal issues in a military mobilization?

The Pentagon has admitted female service members into “combat positions.” Pending further Congressional debates, the Selective Service requires only that men aged 18-25 register for any future draft. (Israel is in a minority of nations that draft both men and women, according to World Population Review.)

Commentators have wondered how many US citizens would resist the draft. And on what basis? The post-modern notion of “conscience,” now tied to expressive individualism, has lost some of the faith-based idealism voiced by conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War.

Debates on racism, identity, LGBTQ equality, and DEI metrics also may loom ahead for today’s all-volunteer military if the US adopts a wartime footing.

As of 2023, the proportion of recruits who are white had fallen to 44 percent, down from 56.4 percent in 2018, according to a recent report in The Telegraph. Black and Hispanic recruits each constitute 24 percent of the total.

How should we determine who fights for us?

A Senate bill introduced last year sought to ease the current shortage of recruits by “widening a pathway for non-citizens to join the US military,” according to a Stars and Stripes report. Immigrants “who entered the country unlawfully as children” would lose the immunity from military service granted by DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Is this fairness or injustice?

Even if the US is able to avoid a draft, the country might need to selectively summon personnel in specific fields, such as doctors, nurses, and pilots. Will civilians object to limiting the services they enjoy?

What else would have to be rationed, given the unwieldy federal debt and the shrinkage of the country’s industrial base?

Perhaps virtual reality, cyber-warfare, and AI could help compensate for our thinner ranks of service members. We can expect that technologists would contribute amazing advances—but with an emphasis on victory-centric abilities rather than the “person-centered AI” which Pope Francis and others have continuously called for.

Meanwhile, George Will has invited concern about our high-tech resources in his Feb. 2 column. He quoted an Education Next article on the “national security crisis” taking shape in high schools and colleges. “The domestic supply of college graduates with advanced scientific skills … cannot begin to meet the nation’s need for economic vitality and military preparedness.”

Separately, Will worried that youths “bring to college a complacent sense of entitlement.” Citing a National Review piece, he said many students are “increasingly exempted from meaningful expectations of rigor.” Idleness on campus “breeds extremism and ‘performative rebellion.’’ How would graduates’ mantras of victimization and anti-oppression fit with military goals?

Consider also today’s decline in patriotism, with more people focusing on the negatives in American history and fewer believing the country’s aspirations are a source of pride worth fighting and dying for.

Everything is connected to everything else. Let’s not forget that an America at war would bear much suffering in terms of lives disrupted and lives lost. Many leaders enforced stringent rules during the Covid pandemic partly because we moderns are terrified by the risk of dying. What can a secular, atomized society do for its seniors or juniors who don’t want their screens to say, “Game Over”?

Let’s hope Somebody has the answers.

Image from ClipSafari, a collection of Creative Commons designs.