The Draft
 

Since the war in Iraq began I have mentioned that I told my 18-year-old son that I believed that there was a %20 chance that there would be a draft in the next six years, the time during which I think he would be eligible.

Considering recent developments, and comments from both Democrats and Republicans, I am now bumping that up to %25. The only unknown is the war in Iraq and the time and manpower required.

Of course the White House is trying to dodge the issue. I do not think that they authorized Sen. Hagel to float a trial balloon. The White House does not want to even have the discussion until Bush is reelected.


This of course assumes a consistent enlistment/reenlistment rate. With tours in Iraq being extended beyond the promised 12 months, and the understanding that signing up for military service probably means signing up for a year in Iraq, this might become an issue.

I was not happy the day my son got his selective service postcard.

If the draft is re-installed, the american public will wake up. They will realize that loved ones will start to die. Support for the war will evaporate overnight. The war will end in a matter of weeks.

The politicians currently running the country rely on polls more than any in recent memory. (Just look at the whole Rice 9/11 testimony issue. They stuck to their guns on that until they realized how unpopular their position was. Then they flip flopped and let her testify.) Bush will have nothing to lose, since he will be in his second and final term. But his handlers will have a lot to lose.

The draft is very unpopular. It is political suicide for the party that passes it.

(edited for clarity.)

Throughout this whole business since 9/11, Americans have not been asked to make any kind of sacrifice. (Unless you count going out and shopping as a sacrifice.)

The only pols really talking about the draft are people like Charlie Rangel who really only hopes to score points in his home district. The problem is that he's a moron.

The other day he complained that 25% of casualties in Iraq are black or hispanic, which shows how black and hispanics are overrepresented in the military. Unfortunately for Mr. Rangel blacks and hispanics represent 24% of the country's population so all he proved was what a moron he is.

The draft is not coming back.

It's been mentioned here before, but if there was a draft or some sort of mandatory service, the american public would have more of a stake in international politics. I think there would be less apathy. People would tend to participate in the democracy. Maybe they would even seek out news so they could make informed decisions.

A draft isn't all bad. There is a silver lining.

Bush was born on third base and thought he hit a triple
 

The war will not end in a matter of weeks. Like it or not we’re stuck there unless you want to create the very terrorist breeding ground that Bush claimed it was when this whole thing started. I would be interested to know how many people at the Clear Channel Hate Sessions smashing Dixie Chicks cd’s and pouring out French wine would feel if they knew then that little Chip may be sent off to war.

Remember a good Patriot is a Republican who blindly follows the will of the President no matter how stupid and inane he is.

Re: Bush was born on third base and thought he hit a triple
 

If you are replying to my thread where I said exactly that, you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I shouldn't have started a new paragraph with that sentence. The sentence should have said; "If the draft is re-installed, the war will end in a matter of weeks."

I agree with you that the way things are now, the war will not end in a matter of weeks.

(Edit: There. I went back and changed it. Hope it's clearer now.)

So where are they going to get all the soldiers they need? I admit I haven't been keeping score in detail, but it seems that they're already extending tours of duty for guard units and cutting back on rotation for the regular units already there. Assuming we're still there this time next year, isn't there going to be a real personnel shortage? (And I'm assuming that new enlistees in both the regular and reserves are down. But maybe I'm wrong about that.)

No, they didn't flip-flop. They "evolved in their position."

:)

They could extend out their age and other limits, increase the pay a bit, and probably get enough people in one day. The military is no longer interested in unwilling soldiers that require in-depth training, and so you will see nobody in the military advocating a draft.

Well, that's one idea. One other idea might be to allow them to tap their retirement savings early - TAX FREE! That oughtta pump up the morale and the enlistments!

Well, not before November anyway. I could see slavery er the draft coming back with some bull crap alternative service option so the lefty legislators can get their piece of the pie.

o/~ You can get anything you want, at <a href="http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/alices.shtml">Alice's Restaurant</a> o/~

It seems like a rather perverse take on the political system to consciously delay a draft until after being reelected. If people are as opposed to a draft as you lot suggest they will be, wouldn't there be enough of an outcry in opposition that, post-election or not, it wouldn't get very far?

This is, after all, a democracy; the government isn't generally supposed to force people to go die in some foreign country against their will and against the majority of the country's desires.

Eh...don't forget that our fine president also did alternative service.

Rangel's original rationale for bringing up the draft (which was a year ago) was to get people to think about it and how it could affect the nation. He's not a complete moron.

Hagel is being a "patriotic American." Not a complete moron either.

Of course, neither of them would have to go...

I shared coffee with a man whose son was then a Captain in the 10th Mountain. His son was pissed, in part, because 10th Mountain did not after bin Laden, et al. He said that most every Captain would be joining him; leave at the end of their tour.

Just under one year later, we know he was correct. This government did not go after a 'smoking gun' enemy - bin Laden. Now that we did not deal with a real and justified war, about one-half of Afghanistan is no longer in friendly control. The Taliban is slowly gaining more assistance from the people who never got the major rebuilding promised by America.

Instead of first winnnig the real war, we abandoned victory to attack a mythical enemy. Eventually even the troops begin to see through the lie. Same as in Vietnam. It took almost a decade of lies before even US troops realized we were the enemy in Vietnam. "We have met the enemy and he is us".

Which is eactly what richlevy said: US Military has already said that the world's largest military now must to increase troop strength by 20% to meet current political demands. No doubt about that. There are 130,000 troops and 20,000 hired guns in Iraq. US generals still say they need 200,000 troops - as made evident by bridges now destroyed on major and necessary highways. Compare this to the 30,000 troops that Rumsfeld said would be required at this point. Even McNamara did not lie this much - when we had to reinstate the draft.

The Draft
 

QUOTE Originally posted by Undertoad

The draft is not coming back.

Oh no.Whats all this then.
www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=1710

$28 million? $28 M won't pay for the server to hold the website for the draft. :) Don't sweat the bureaucrats, they can do whatever they like but it doesn't mean there's a plot afoot until there are Senate subcommittees starting up.

But do you think the military has the decision in their hands? It appears in this administration the politicians are running the war, rather than the military.

There are more police serving the city of London ...( a peaceful city whose residents generally are too busy being ordinary to get into much trouble and where very few people own anything more lethal than a swiss army knife).... than there are soldiers serving in Iraq, a place where a significant portion of the population are unhappy with this situation and unlike the happy londoners are often armed in the region's usual fashion with ak's and rpgs.

In years to come when Hollywood are making teary eyes gritty films only just beginning to tackle the thorny problem of the viet...I do beg your pardon....the Iraqi war....(or should I say Wars) I hope we all remember what it was like at the time, right now. Bear witness to what is being done in our names. All the glorious rhetoric and the shining patriotism of the Right will not save this war from history's scrutiny.

I do wonder, rather sadly, if by the time many of these lads and lasses get to come home;scarred and injured by what they have seen and done;will the people who sent them be so heartsick and embarrassed at what their soldiers have done for them that they will deny their laurels?

Best to ask them how they feel about it, rather than to decide on their behalf.

What who feel about it? The Iraqis who are being occupied? The soldiers who are doing their job? or the millions of people who opposed this war? Or maybe the international community whose laws have been flounted?

Because those soldiers have their own ( very good I am sure) reasons for doing their job is no reason for the people in whose names they fight to stop questioning the motives of those who choose which war they fight.

Incidentally I have read and watched quite a few interviews with returning soldiers in the UK and they are a damn sight more robust than you seem to credit them as being. They are quite able to hold in their heads the two ideas that they were there to do a job and do it well .....and that there may be some argument to say they should never have been there in the first place.

During wars we are all supposed to shy away from suggesting the people at the top of the command chain may be making bad decisions which their soldiers then have to live ( or die) with for fear this in someway denigrates the soldiers themselves. ....Likewise I have had various people intimate that by suggesting that the world has been lied to by the people who wanted to invade Iraq I am somehow painting soldiers as somehow less capable of making a judgement call than the rest of us...Since when did armies choose their assignments?

"Lions led by donkeys" was how the massive losses of Paschendale and the Somme were summed up.

We have been lied to by something rather more sinister than donkeys. The fact that so many soldiers have and had such noble intent in Iraq is testament to the scale and pervasiveness of that lie.

Oh and you want the clear picture of a fight dont ask the combatants they are *not* objective

Boo!

Glad to see someone recognises the truth about Iraq.

1. Is it not surprising that the rise of extreme fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. leadership, has lead to an exact equal and opposite reaction, of a rise in extreme fundamentalist Muslims in other parts of the world?
I'm not anti-Christian .. far from it .. but I detest those fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. leadership, who lead the U.S. into a ''righteous war" .. based on lies and media manipulation (where are the WMD's?).
A war started on low moral grounds, is a poor starting area, to try and impress anti-Christian forces.

The latest outcry about pictures of military coffins is a classic piece of media manipulation. The woman took pics to show relatives, the care taken with them .. the U.S. leadership doesn't want pics of coffins because it needs to manipulate public opinion. The U.S. leadership is just plain deceitful .. every day of their public lives.

2. The U.S leadership assumes that the war in Iraq is going to be a classic standard war .. but it is anything but that .. it is a classic guerrilla war .. which the U.S. is always poorly set up to fight.
The U.S. military almost always uses a sledgehammer to crack a nut .. with the resultant damage to innocent civilians and generally poor PR with the locals.
The insurgents fight dirty with the lowest tactics known .. and the military can't cope with that. They need standard war tactics to operate.

3. The U.S. leadership assumes .. wrongly .. that the Iraqi people will meekly accept a Western Democracy style of Govt as soon as their current dictator is removed.
There is a poor understanding in the U.S. leadership of how these people operate. This is a tribal religious culture with their religion paramount.
They will all stop killing members of the other sects for the few minutes it takes to say their compulsory prayers .. and then get back into the killing .. just because the other sect has a slightly different, but reputedly highly blasphemous view, that cannot be tolerated.

As soon as the U.S. pulls out of Iraq, the Iraqis will go back to bludgeoning each other until a new dictator appears to brutalise all but one sect .. his .. and then a type of stability will re-appear .. and the U.S. Govt will applaude the stability and offer financial assistance to the new dictator ..

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4016

The sad part to me, is that 600+ American soldiers have been sacrificed in a bid for personal glory .. without one iota of identifiable gain, to the U.S. or coalition countries.

As someone has said .. if it were not for American political and corporate greed, Iraq could be left to dissolve into the obscurity it deserves.

And if you don't think I know what I'm talking about .. I can assure you, as a Aussie front line participant in a previously badly instigated, badly run, and unnecessary war .. by poor quality U.S. leaders .. I do. I still wear the scars.

It's way too early to figure out the level of gain or loss.

Let stuff play itself out.

Well at 1/4 trillion dollars and 700 lives, I'd say we're certainly adding to the 'loss' column. Even if the violence subsides, the US has no credibility with Iraqis, most of the Middle East, most of Europe, and about half of it's own citizens when it comes to the Iraq war and reconstruction.

Phrases like 'crusade' and 'bring it on' from our commander-in-chief didn't go a long way towards convincing anyone of our dispassionate deliberations in deciding to invade Iraq.

You continued with same claim when even American advanced physics labs were said the aluminum tubes were not appropriate for centrifuges - for making WMD. Despite fact after fact that suggested this administration was lying, you continued to say facts would eventally prove you right - even citing a standard finish on those tubes as proof those advanced physics labs were wrong. At what point do we destroy America before you say, "Maybe it was a mistake"?

They asked George Jr the same type of question in his news conference. Could he cite one point where he made a mistake? After a long and painful minute, he decided he could not even cite one. After how many lies; undermining American science; the outting of a CIA agent; the lies about missing W on keyboards; the destruction of the Oslo Accords (as a Norwegian foreign minister even predicted); the destruction of good relations with virtually every nation in the world; a stagnant econony only aggrevated by mythical tax cuts, more complicated tax laws, and excessive and still not reported spending (you have not even seen how big the Iraq bill is going to be); ignoring outright warning of an attack (at least three separate warnings with no presidential response) that became 11 September; and even letting bin Laden run free: George Jr cannot think of one mistake!!!!

I can understand George Jr not being able to admit he was wrong. George Jr is driven by politically inspired rhetoric and dogma - an agenda attributed to the vulcans. "Screw the facts. We already have an agenda."

Last time I looked, UT was not a vulcan. IOW UT, at some point you are going to have to admit the war was wrong from the very beginning. It was even created on lies. And then the most glaring missing part - no smoking gun. So where are the mythical WMD, the rape rooms, threats to our regional friends, and mythical alunimun tubes for nuclear weapons. Where pray tell are reasons to justify a Pearl Harbor type attack on another sovereign nation?

After one year of leaving the people who know how to make Iraq work completely unemployeed and recruited by insurgents - because doctors, engineers, bureaucrats, soldiers, and police had to be member of the Baath party - suddenly even Paul Bremmer today is willing to admit he has made a major mistake (the resulting mess obvious). And still UT, you say, "Don't worry. Be happy. It will all work out"? Did the aluminum tubes, mythical uranium from Niger, and the missing Ws on White House keyboards not yet teach you something about this administration? How bad does something have to get before you say, "maybe we have a problem"?

Say what? They didn't know we were coming? When you get rolling with a good logical argument, then throw in something like that, it undermines your credibility.;)

Bringing up the rape rooms is a tactical mistake by you, tw, because in your scenario the rape rooms are necessary to control and subjugate the population.

And didn't you see the rape rooms? I did. Did you see the other torture videos? Did you see the guy getting his tongue cut out with pliers and diagonal cutters? Maybe your sources aren't really paying attention.

As for the tubes, I recall an exchange where you angrily claimed that other purchased tubes wouldn't be used to create longer missiles... longer missiles which were found, tipped with chemical warheads. And not found by the UN inspectors. And which constitute a threat to our regional friends.

The war will be the wrong decision if the country does not become a successful and (fairly) Democratic nation. That is my main criterion. Although I'm not a Vulcan, I can easily see the benefit of resetting the middle east and why, if it works, it is the solution that spills the least blood. That's why we have to wait to see how it all plays out.

At any cost to us, right?

It's a good point, but what's the cost of cleaning up a major city after a suitcase nuke detonation?

What's the cost of what the public will be willing to do after the next terrorist act? How threatened will they feel, and what sort of reaction will they demand?

For all the WMDs not found in Iraq, there's Libya. Libya was on the Pakistani nukes client list and DID have those aluminum tubes, so you have to consider this a 2-for-1 deal in any case.

(Please, the notion that Libya would have gone this direction anyway is silly. Khadafi SAID it was due to the US approach to Iraq, and any salesman understands that you need a closer to finish off any deal.)

Now truly we have abandoned all semblance of international law.

By that logic there are many countries we should be marching into. The Sudan? Zimabwe? .......Nobody seemed to have this much of a problem when the Hutus were slaughtering a million Tutsis...Not mention Israel's legally sanctioned and openly spoken of policy of systematic torture of suspects in custody.

Would you be kurdish(sp) in Turkey? How bout poor or female in Saudi Arabia? Have you even noticed what is being done to ordinary people in Kashmir? Even in Britain we hold people in a very dubious prison, indefinately and without charge. Everybody here knows the police conduct fishing expeditions amongst moslem population.....arresting and detaining hundreds of men in a storm of media interest , most of whom are then released quietly to go about their ordinary busniess. They had no leads to those men. Only a wide lead to that mosque, or that town. If I were a moslem man in Britain today I would feel the glare of the authorities regardless of my innocence or lack of invovement in anything other than ordinariness.

Oh....and pictures can be misleading as can testimony. Like the young lady who testified to the world of Saddam's soldiers tossing babies out of incubators with glee....An ordinary nurse she purported to be, but the world then learned she was the daughter of a prominent member of the Kuwaiti royal family. In the middle ages people told stories of Jewish kabbalas crucifying a little Christian boy. Later in the first world war we get stories ranging from bayonetting babies to the crucifiction of a wounded soldier. Most of these stories turn out to be a lot less factual than one might expect.

Nonetheless I do believe much of what has been reported regarding the excesses of Saddam and his sons against a proportion of the Iraqi population. Their's was a particularly distasteful brand of power and cruelty. But the majority of the people in Iraq did not want us to rescue them. Really they just wanted us to stop starving them out of any ability to oppose and maybe who knows, not sell him weapons when our politcal landscape swung back around that way.

We talk so much in the west about how awful it must be for women in some Islamic countries where they are in wesern eyes degraded and humiliated by enforced domesticity and the covering of themselves in public....Iraq was a secular moslem state. For the much of the population, life in Iraq was stable, predictable and secular. Lets remind ourselves that the Baath (sp) party were a communist , socialist organisation. They werent always saddam's plaything. Saddam himself was a secularist. Under Saddam Hussein women worked and engaged fully in the economy. ....Now they are taking up the veil in droves. For many its an expression of their disdain for the invasion which has so offended their sense of nationhood....for others its a form of security.

So.....we have had a dictator in Iraq who made life impossibly miserable for some but made a liberated life possible for others....and now we have an occupation force who make life impossibly miserable for many and send the liberated women scattering for cover.

The leader of the most powerful nation that has ever existed and he cant think on his feet?

I must admit I am bemused. In Europe we anticpate our politicians will be the best and most able of our people not the ones we'd feel most comfortable drinking with in a bar......Of course we're often disappointed in this.....But really any politician that claimed he wasnt a fast enough thinker to answer a question off the cuff would not be considered valid material for high office in most European countries.

As I said, pictures can be misleading as in they can be used to mislead. I didnt say they lied.

Yeeeeahhh... I guess in my world, what a dictator actually does is part of the equation, and how deeply you respect his sovereignty as a result is part of the equation, and the nature of the people and their desires, all part of the equation. To throw all those considerations out seems inhuman.

Actually, it's an almost useless statement. The implication is that there were no mistakes serious enough to be remarkable. It's like a car salesman saying "I'm sure theres some tiny flaw in there somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can find one."

He is either the stupidest man in office, or a much better politician and liar than I have given him credit for.

I understand that point of view Undertoad. To a degree I agree with you. But.....The world is and always has been full of dictators of various levels of brutality. If we went marching into every country whose people were being brutalised by oppressive regimes we would never have had time to even look at Iraq because there are soo many more deserving candidates for regime change.

Our natural outrage at the crimes committed by Saddam Hussein's regime has been used to manipulate us into approving action which breaks out of the bonds of international law and leaves those bonds frayed.

Instead of making the world a safer place for the loss of one of its great dictators, we have made the world infinately more dangerous in the precedent we have set .....So you may trust your government's motives in this....can you be sure of the motives of tomorrow's government? When the invasion of a soveriegn nation requires no first strike or percievable danger to the agressor we have strayed into very very dangerous waters.

If he had made that statement before taking office. What would "most European countries" do if he had?

Precedent: well it's certainly the first time a UN resolution was actually enforced.

*chuckles* forgive my innapropriate generalisation. I am just so constantly amazed at the apparent stupidity and lack of any mental alacrity displayed by the man who sits at the head of the most powerful nation on earth.

I have seen politicians say stupid things in the UK. Stupidity is no guarantee of failure in our political system either....But I really do believe an admission of slowness of thinking would be the end of any British politician's career.

Tell that to your president who just helped Israel flip the bird at all the UN resolutions regarding their illegal occupation and brutalisation of the Palestinian people

Besides, the UN resolution didnt allow for an invasion without further recourse to the UN.....we just marched in regardless.

No, unless this was the reason for the invasion. It was not, just an additional benefit.

Bush has just got to hope that Sharon doesn't stretch his leash even further and decide to kill Arafat. I cannot think of any case in which the current adminsitration has publicly severely rebuked Israel for any action. Sharon might be willing to gamble that by killing Arafat, Bush would be enough in campaign mode not to sever ties, thus drawing him firmly in Israel's camp.

Very short term, this would be good for Israel. Long term, it would mean the loss of the most powerful broker for Mideast peace.

Of course, if hostilities do break out, maybe the US can spare another 50K troops to support the Israelis. If nothing else, direct involvement of the US in defending the JLZ (Jesus Landing Zone) in Jerusalem will get Bush points with God.

Those alumilium tubes had little or nothing to do with manufacture of a nuclear weapon. I don't remember the finding of armed missiles either, only ancient decaying artillery shell.

After further manipulation by your media and (god forbid if bush is still in office) bullied into the whims of the administration of the day, probably even more stupid than after the first. It's going from badly planned to boneheaded to plain old stupid. I'm hoping falluja is the turning point, if they'd gone into falluja even the British most likely would have pulled out of Iraq.

Year after year we've seen the hamfisted stomping around of a wounded elephant trying to stamp on bees, the net result so far is to only give it's enemies yet more ammunition and help recruit a new generation and a new country of angered fellows into the fold. I hate to think what the US would do after another attack, but however stupid it may be you can bet it won't solve the problem.

Lets face it, this isn't about Al-Queda anymore, all you hear about now are 10,000 little groups of angry people purported 'linked to Al-Queda', it's a meme and thanks to the US, it's growing fast.

.umm.....remind me again what the actual reasons were? Weapons of Mass destruction which could conceivably fall into the hands of Terrorist organisations such as Al Quaeda?

Given that that reason has now been discredited at an international level I notice people falling back on the rationale that at least we rid the world of Saddam's dictatorship....as if that justifies attacking another soveriegn nation

The only thing I feel fairly certain of now is that we had no business being in Iraq at all

Well put.

1- Saddam embarrassed Bush Sr.
2- Iraq was a threat to Israel.
3- Iraq was a threat to our God given right to oil.
"That reason" was only one of the reasons, but as I said a year ago, Saddam knew he could not beat us. His only chance was pressure by other countries to convince Bush to back off. If he used WMD's against us, that chance would vaporize. So he had no choice but hide/destroy/export them, before the shit hit the fan. He certainly had plenty of time to do that. I'm not sure they existed in the first place, but I'm not surprised they haven't been found.
But we do. Lots of "business". Big "business".
;)

......Cant fault ya.

My person feeling on the WMD thing is that Saddam was tricked by his own advisers, so caught up in his own power structure and surrounded by people who always said yes to save their own heads that there probably wasn't any WMDs after the first war.

Well......what a distasteful little site that is. Just anti moslem sentiment .....Across the centuries we've had pogroms in the west against the Jews....Now we seem to be replacing them with Moslems as the face of our disdain.

This one particularly irks me.

They make little or no cultural contribution to the world. Few seek out their poetry, their writing, their movies or music. The most famous Muslim writer of fiction in the world is under a fatwa death sentence now and lives in exile in Europe.

As far as sentences one and two--bullshit.

As far as sentence three--a fatwa cannot be repealed, but the one against Rushdie has been all but repealed. He can live in relative normalcy now.

I found the claim america is secular amusing. It demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of one of the fundamental tenants of the whole Islamic extremeist movement, crusades.

What an amazing lump of generalisations, unsubstantiated statements, misinterpretations.

Someone should ask this moron if he wants to protest and do his taxes in Roman numerals. If it weren't for 'arabic' numbers and the invention of the zero, we would still be inventing letters for every decimal place and half decimal.

MMIV

The point this out, along with a few other minor bits and pieces and miss a pile more (law for example, I find the US inviting the cradle of the rule of law both ironic and prophetic). They claim this is of course, irrelevant.

Friends, please. I'm sure that Mr. denBeste is referring to the last half-century.