Republican John McCain, who will receive his party’s nomination for president next week, appeared to endorse a military draft during a town hall meeting in New Mexico. A citizen ticked off several national security concerns and concluded:

“If we don’t re-enact the draft, I don’t think we’ll have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of Hell.”

McCain’s reply: “Ma’am, let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said.”

Did McCain really endorse a military draft? Or, to pose a more important question, is conscription an unavoidable corollary of McCain’s hawkish foreign policy views? Consider this from McCain’s campaign website:

“America faces a dedicated, focused, and intelligent foe in the war on terrorism. This enemy will probe to find America's weaknesses and strike against them. The United States cannot afford to be complacent about the threat, naive about terrorist intentions, unrealistic about their capabilities, or ignorant to our national vulnerabilities.”

Here’s what he said about radical Islam during a 2007 presidential debate:

“This is a transcendent struggle between good and evil. Everything we stand for is at stake here.”

Finally, there’s McCain’s view on the Russian invasion of Georgia, which he describes as “the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War.”

If all this is true, then our political leaders are asking remarkably little of their citizens. Nearly 70 years ago, an America with a population of 145 million raised a military of 10 million soldiers to defeat the Axis powers. Today, America maintains a military of 3 million and recently struggled to scrape up 20,000 additional troops to fund a surge in Iraq even as the military desperately sought to increase a force of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan.

It’s the product of a defense policy that resembles our fiscal policy. The same leaders who push for higher spending (pre-emptive war, new homeland security and intelligence bureaucracies, etc.) while promising tax cuts are the same ones who rattle sabers while reassuring voters that defending the shores can be a painless process for anyone who lacks the urge to participate.

Of course, McCain’s hawkish outlook could be wrong. It’s possible the threat of Islamic extremism is over-estimated and the impact of the Russia-Georgia conflict will barely reverberate beyond the Caucasus Mountains. But if McCain is right, there is a disconnect between the rhetoric of transcendent struggle and what’s asked of the civilian population. If everything we stand for is truly at stake, we need leaders who do more than simply question the patriotism of their opponents. We need leaders with the courage and patriotism to tell able-bodied citizens that a dangerous world demands their service -- whether they like it or not.