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Via email, a note from a former student of Stanford history professor David Kennedy (background here):
Full disclosure: David Kennedy was a professor of mine my freshman year, and I enjoyed his History of Democracy class very much. Anyways, I think you may have the wrong idea about the Mercenary Army idea. You see, Kennedy asked me to join that army.I encourage readers to follow that link. I'll likely post additional commentary on this topic later. For those interested I also recommend this response to Kennedy's NY Times oped from a Minnesota National Guard member who's currently serving in Iraq.Kennedy was the chosen faculty speaker the day before graduation at Stanford this year, and he gave a very good speech, part of which contained everything in that Op-Ed. He may have reworked a few of the paragraphs, but the language looks very familiar. Live, though, there was much more. He challenged us, the graduating seniors, to see to it that the costs of American military action were not borne by only a tiny minority by choosing to serve, among other things. It's lost in the translation to the Op-Ed, but when the speech was given Kennedy more or less told us that we should join the army. He was more forceful about the distinctions between the army and Hessians too, going out of his way to praise men and women in uniform.
I wrote about the speech at the time, and you can still find my reaction at my blog
Update/correction: Originally mis-identified the author of the second link - corrected!
