From time to time, we hear brief, frustrated comments from politicians, pundits, and ordinary citizens along the lines of, “If we had a draft in this country, you can bet the Iraq War would be over in 30 days.” But the comments are always made in a resigned, despairing tone of voice — much like Rodney King’s question, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?” as a solution for race riots and police brutality. Nobody really expects that the draft will be reinstated; indeed, most people — me included — have no memory whatsoever of when such legislation was last proposed, or who proposed it. I had to look it up with Google’s assistance; it was Representative Charles Rangel (who may belong to that much-despised class of people known as “politicians,” but who also happens to be a veteran of the Korean War, where he won a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star), in November 2006 (see “Rangel Will Push To Bring Back The Draft“).

In the absence of a draft, we’ve got a “volunteer” army. But it would really be more appropriate, I think, to call it a mercenary army. Many of us have heard vague rumors about large bonuses for soldiers who agree to reenlist, but we tend to ignore it because it’s not part of our day-to-day lives (but Google can find that information for you, too; see Army Re-Enlistment Bonus Charts). And we tend not to think very much at all about the enlistment bonuses for new soldiers who sign up in the first place … because, again, it’s just not part of our day-to-day lives.

I got a vivid reminder of that fact this afternoon, when I took a slightly different route to a neighborhood gym where I exercise two or three times a week. The gym is located on the north side of 72nd Street, between Broadway and Columbus, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan; I generally take the subway from my home to the 72nd Street station, and then walk along 72nd street to the gym. I’ve been doing this for about three years now, and I’ve been completely oblivious of the fact that, each time I walk to the gym, I walk right past a U.S. Army Recruiting Center, which is located in a nondescript building halfway down the block. The reason I’ve never noticed it is simple: it’s located on the 2nd floor of the building, and there are no blinking lights or garish billboard notices at street level that would draw my attention to it.

However, I had a slight change of plans today: I wanted to do a little Christmas shopping in a store that’s located on the south side of 72nd Street, also between Broadway and Columbus. As I strolled along, I happened to glance across to the north side of the street, and couldn’t help but notice a very large billboard up there on the second floor of the building:

Huh. So there it is. I have no idea how long it’s been there, or how many potential soldiers stop in to chat with the recruiters about the $50,000 bonus. And I should point out that I’m not surprised that it would take $50,000 to entice a rational human being to risk his or her life to fight in a far-away place where we don’t speak the language, we don’t know the culture, we don’t really know who’s a friend and who’s an enemy, and we’re surrounded by a citizenry that clearly doesn’t want us there. Heck, it would take a lot more than that to convince me to do so; so I don’t begrudge the young soldiers who are willing to gamble their lives for a jump-start on financing their future, in return for a potentially deadly game of Russian roulette.

But it strikes me as an embarrassing sign of the times that we hide all of this away on the second floor of a building, so that we can walk right past it without even noticing — while we fix our stare instead on the gaudy fashion shops, the electronics stores with the latest iPods and cell phones, and the neighborhood bakery shops selling five-dollar muffins.

This is something I don’t recall having heard discussed in any of the Democratic or Republican debates so far — and I think it would be interesting to see what kind of position the candidates would take. So far, with just a little Google sleuthing, I’ve found only this one quote attributed to Barack Obama (see “Charlie Rangel: Bring Back the Draft?“) “I would not support a proposal for the draft at this point. I think we had [sic] a wonderful volunteer army in place.” On the other hand, Obama wants to bring the troops home from Iraq relatively quickly, so perhaps we wouldn’t need $50,000 signup bonuses if we had soldiers protecting our own country instead of … well, whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing in Iraq. As for the various other candidates … who knows?

The reality, of course, is that it’s not going to change. As David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland and director of the Center for Research on Military Organization, said in a recent article (see “The War’s Hot, but Draft Talk Chills,” December 4, 2007), “Short of an invasion of the United States by a credible enemy, which probably means China or Russia, I can’t imagine the American people tolerating a return to conscription. And I can’t imagine anyone in Congress risking their careers by supporting it.”

So that Army Recruiting Center will probably continue doing business up there on the second floor, discreetly hidden from the vacant stares of street-level consumers. But I think I’ll start walking on the south side of the street to get to the gym, from now on, just to remind myself on a daily basis that it’s there… and that I’m part of a country that’s too fat, lazy, shallow, and greedy to even acknowledge its existence, let alone talk about it.