To the editor:

After suffering a long and painful war, a war that he helped lead, Benjamin Franklin wrote to his good friend, fellow scientist and enemy national Sir Joseph Banks, saying: “I hope : that Mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable Creatures, have Reason and Sense enough to settle their Differences without cutting Throats; for, in my opinion there never was a good War, or a bad Peace.” I don’t think Franklin meant the Revolution had, from the American perspective, been a mistake, but I do think he recognized it as evil.

Why does Congressman Charles Rangel advocate the draft? Not to support the war. But to bring it home to all of us. In World War II sons of both rich and poor died. The draft applied to all equally. In Vietnam, most of the sons of the “better off” went to college. I know; I was one of them. What Rep. Rangel knows is that a democracy that allows its wars to be fought for it by mercenaries, whether drawn from its own citizenry, or from foreign shores, will lose both its freedom and the war it fights.

The problem with the Vietnam draft, like the Internal Revenue Code, was the loopholes. If the sons of all Americans had been sent into the grinder, that war would have ended sooner. If Americans have the political will to fight a war in Iraq, they should express that will by sending a sampling of all of their children into “harm’s way.”

William Skepnek,

Lawrence