I hope Charlie Rangel (my congressman!) doesn't expect his fellow Democrats to thank him for proposing bringing back the military draft
>
Have you noticed a mounting public relations effort to persuade us that our all-volunteer military isn't, as widely imagined, the employer of last resort for people squeezed out of the full-steam-ahead Bush economy? It seems our fighting forces--presumably including the National Guard?--has never been so highly qualified or committed. It almost makes you wonder why so much of the "sensitive" work has been turned over to our modern-day mercenaries, the contractors. It's somehow reassuring to think that our men and women in uniform are fighting this grotesquely purposely war by choice, and are returning gladly for second and third tours because they just can't get enough of it.
There is notably little support for Congressman Rangel's idea that the Iraq adventure would never have been undertaken if it had put the children of the privileged in harm's way. This week, though, Doonesbury is giving us some snapshots of the view from mythical Walden College:
[Click on either strip to enlarge.]WEDNESDAY UPDATE
posted by KenInNY @ 10:03 AM
7 comments
|
Reddit
7 Comments:
I believe the point of the Doonesbury strip(s) is the same one Goofus Kerry was trying to make with his 'botched joke.' No Child Left Behind alright. No money for college? Sign up right over here...I smell a resolution to the 'illegal' immigrant problem too. Serve the Country and you can become a citizen.
The Republicans will call his bluff and they will do it with the help of left talk radio.
There should be no draft, no one should give these murderers anymore cannon fodder. No troops to manipulate.
I think most people are missing the point. Rangel knows he's not going to get the draft re-instated. He's trying to get a dialogue started about the use or should I say mis-use of our military by people who have no stake in the military. People who have neither served nor have family members serving but who are all too willing to throw our forces into the meatgrinder just to prove a point.
Some in the media have gotten it, some have not. I think it will be interesting to see which way the debate plays out. It the right wins the debate, all we will hear is Dems don't get national security. If the Dems prevail, which seems less likely since Pelosi doesn't seem to get it either, we will have a real discussion about the true state of our all volunteer force.
He may not get a draft, but I do not trust that he will not. With Iran on the table for this ship of fools, one cannot take that chance.
If the left supports a draft, then the right gets what they want with no risk.
When we are talking about lives, this sort of talk is making it look noble to require service no matter how foolish.
Now, you may be right about parents up in arms if a draft is instated, but I am not sure anyone will care. This administration and attending GOP has done the most irrational things one can think of already.
It will all play out and we will see what happens next.
Yes, I think that was the idea too.
There's a neat letter to the editor in today's NYT:
Representative Charles B. Rangel's proposal to reinstate the draft is not a military strategy. Rather, it is intended to get the college crowd off its iPods and into the streets to end this illegal and immoral war.
JERRY WALLINGFORD
San Diego
I thought the Rangel draft proposal was kind of a clever way to provoke some debate about the war(s) and who's serving in the volunteer army. But apparently it takes more than a nudge to get people to talk about stuff they don't wanna.
Ken
I can see that angle too Ken, but I have sons, and it worries me.
However, if it awakens the college kids, that is not a bad thing. We already know the GOP kids are not enlisting, they are fighting the culture war, whatever that is.
One thing I don't think I'll ever forget is the agony of that poor Michigan woman Michael Moore found in FAHRENHEIT 911 who had actually thought it would be a good idea for her son to enlist and ENCOURAGED him, thinking it could be a way out of the dead end he was trapped in. Well, it turned out to be a way out, all right.
Let's face it: The people at the bottom of the economic pile are going to get screwed in any system. I don't know that anyone has raised a lot of questions about the draft as it worked in World War II and Korea, but there's no question that when it came to Vietnam, it was a lousy system, which piled a wildly disproportionate burden of fighting on people who didn't have the savvy to "game" the draft.
At the same time, at least we were all SUBJECT to it, and even with student deferments most of us eventually had to FACE it. And then American parents were forced to ask themselves whether they really wanted to ship their sons off to die in that war.
I don't know that my family had strong feelings for or against the war, but they sure as heck didn't want ME going. I got out finally on a medical deferment, but that wasn't without a lot of agony and terror.
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cooked themselves up a war where, for the first time, we're not "all in on it." I still think back to watching FAHRENHEIT 911, and the moment--as the woman was telling her son's story--when I suddenly realized that he didn't come back from the war.
Of course the disconnect is only worsened by the creepy "vanishment" of our dead, maimed and wounded. The people who yammer endlessly about the need to "support our troops" seem to go deaf and blind when the body bags and coffins and the physically and emotionally crippled soldiers are sneaked back into the country.
I don't know whether reinstating the draft is a good idea or not. I do know that it terrifies me when we don't even talk about who is paying for this adventure with their bodies, minds and lives.
Ken
Post a Comment
<< Home