We’re once again embroiled in the thorny issue of providing sanctuary to American servicemen and women who don’t want to serve in the endless US war in Iraq.

The logic used by Citizenship and Immigration spokesperson Danielle Norris is that those seeking sanctuary now cannot be compared to the kids we took in during Vietnam. “Those coming to Canada now volunteered for military service.”

Yes, they are different but it’s a fragile distinction. During Vietnam the US government wasn’t able to deceive enough young people to fill its army with volunteers. Instead it had to rely on the draft, conscription. Young people were forced, often against their will, to serve and fight and die abroad.

Contrast that with Iraq. Here the US government was able to deceive enough young people to fill its army with volunteers. But it hasn’t been able to deceive enough young people to keep that scam going. It can’t find volunteers, and doesn’t have the courage to re institute the draft, so its cowardly way out is to resort to impressment of those who they snagged at the outset, including a lot of reservists, and transform them into a “Stop Loss” hostage army that keeps getting sent back to fight a war, 15-months at a stretch, for three or four or even five tours – and we’re still counting.

These poor buggers weren’t drafted in to the US armed forces but they’ve surely been drafted when their enlistments were up and they expected to be going home to their families and jobs. If you’re looking for distinctions, here’s the most important one. Today’s hostage soldiers are drafted forever, until America finally tires of losing in Iraq. Forty years ago, draftees were only required to fight for one year before being released.

So, the Harper government’s rationale is that these people were dumb enough to believe they were signing on for just a couple of years and got tricked and that’s their problem. As far as we’re concerned, they’re entitled to all the rights and freedoms of a Roman legionnaire which were pretty much to keep fighting until you were dead.

No, the Harper government hasn’t got the spine to do the right thing even if it has the approval of Parliament. After all we just signed up our own soldiers to carry on America’s mismanaged war in Afghanistan until 2011.