Leftists for a draft

Bob Herbert reconstructs one of the left’s favorite straw men to wrap up his NY Times column today:

If the war in Iraq is worth fighting - if it's a noble venture, as the hawks insist it is - then it's worth fighting with the children of the privileged classes. They should be added to the combat mix. If it's not worth their blood, then we should bring the other troops home.

If Mr. Bush's war in Iraq is worth dying for, then the children of the privileged should be doing some of the dying.

Ignoring the silliness that “classes” exist anywhere other than the fertile imaginations of class warriors (perhaps he should vacation in New Delhi this summer), what is it that Mr. Herbert is calling for here? We have an all-volunteer army. He’s calling for the “children of the privileged” to be sent into combat (I’m guessing that, for the purposes of this exercise, having an editorial page by-line in the world’s most powerful newspaper does not qualify as being “privileged”). Can this be anything other than his calling for a full military draft with no exemptions? If not, then the passage really doesn’t make any sense, does it?

Yeah, I know, the rest of the column makes no sense either, but gratuitous and fallacious Bush-bashing by the far left doesn’t even raise an eyebrow; however, the far left calling for an unconditional military draft gets my attention.