By the time of Vietnam, there emerged organised opposition to the war and individuals refusal to join the draft. The opposition did not, as it hoped, bring the Vietnam War to its end - instead, President Richard Nixon brought an end to the draft, contending that a volunteer army would make for professionalism with its attendant improved training and, simultaneously, that would remove the impetus for large community wide anti-war demonstrations as stakes were lowered for families without serving children.
Nixon's manoeuvre proved more than successful by the time of the Iraq War when the people serving in the military represented less than 1 per cent of the eligible population. And the cohort that volunteered came from the poorer families, thus eliminating the college campuses as a source of active anti-war opposition, so prominent in the Vietnam days.
To make up for the shortfall in actual numbers needed, the Bush administration - whose creative economics had estimated the war's cost at US$50 billion to be paid out of Iraqi oil revenue (versus the actual cost of US$3 trillion paid by US taxpayers) - employed "contractors", a euphemism for mercenaries, their numbers exceeding at times those of the regular military deployed in Iraq.
As America's leaders have continued to pursue their military policies, they have sought to overcome real or imagined citizen opposition by taking away the responsibility for service from the great majority of Americans, insuring that neither debate on policy or its execution will be marred by the democratic process.
And as presidents increasingly assume the power of war-making without the constitutional requirement of congressional - hence representative - declaration, the wars bear little resemblance to democracy, more to absolute monarchy.
Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the drone programme.
For a while at least, President Barack Obama and a few unidentified advisers met and determined who would be the target of a Hellfire missile. Gradually, the drone programme has become a central component of America's long-range military tactics, allowing military operation with no risk to American personnel. By this means, citizens have little personal motivation to look at what is being done in their name.
This programme - in which arbitrary death may be meted out from the sky on people alleged to be enemies but with no formal legal process to establish guilt - is, by itself, too dangerous because of its effect on the democratic process.
The result of this weapon that can hover for hours over an area, and which has now been established to have killed innocent bystanders, women and children, is two-fold. Its use furthers the recruitment of enemies of the US and, more importantly, in creating terror for uninvolved civilian populations, the weapon is just that - terrorism. Like the poison gas of World War I, and biological weapons after it, it should be addressed through a worldwide convention to declare it outlawed for use as a weapon of war.
It would be a wise US President who made the move to such a declaration. Or a New Zealand Foreign Minister. After all, no invention, no weapon designed by man has remained exclusive to its inventor. Do we really want to live under a fearful sky?
Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
