- There's a sign on the horizon, no bigger than a man's
hand, that there's a military draft in the works. The Defense Department
has announced that Selective Service is making preparations for another
draft, "in case one is needed." The New York Times in an inane
editorial pleads with the president to articulate a goal for the war that
if it "was clear and comprehensive and people understood how to reach
it, then Mr. Bush could ... even bolster the desperately straitened
military
with a draft if Americans understood the need to sacrifice."
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- If the editorial writers of the New York Times are
talking
about a new draft that would send young men and women to die in the deserts
of Iraq fighting crazy religious fanatics, then the idea is certainly being
whispered about in the upper echelons of American society. A draft would
not be proposed before the election -- if it were, Bush would be wiped
out in a landslide. But a wise person would not bet against the draft being
proposed next January.
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- What in the world is the Times talking about? Why should
Americans sacrifice for the Iraq War? Not by the wildest stretch of the
imagination can one seriously argue that the war in Iraq is to defend vital
American interests. We found that there were no weapons of mass destruction
there and no connection with al-Qaida or the Sept. 11 attack. The only
issue seems to be whether we can impose democracy on Iraqis who don't seem
seriously to want it or to prevent a civil war that will happen anyway
as soon as our army leaves. Americans are supposed to accept the need to
sacrifice their unwilling sons and daughters to fight for such absurd
goals?
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- There are many authoritarian liberals who have a kind
of illicit romance with the draft. Young people owe their a country a part
of their lives, even their lives itself (not their own sons and daughters'
lives, of course). Military service is good for you, some veterans insist.
It will make a man out of a drifting late adolescent. What it will do for
a young woman remains to be seen -- probably teach her how to live in a
world where rape is commonplace.
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- Building up the army with a draft will serve only the
needs of the Bush administration to "win" a war. Gen. Eric
Shinseki,
then-chief of staff of the Army, said that 200,000 would be needed to
pacify
Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld made fun of him in public. Now the Defense Department
seems to be engaged in remote planning for a draft army that will be much
larger.
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- How many men and women, it must be asked, will be
required
to pacify Iraq and to turn it into a freedom-loving democracy? How long
will it take, how many lives must be sacrificed to protect the honor and
the legacy of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld and their
crowd of imperialists?
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- Doubtless it will be argued in favor of a draft that
we all must make sacrifices for a war on terrorism. It might be better
if one sent men and women in their 40s to fight in a foolish, unjust,
immoral,
criminal war. It would be good for them. They'd have to lose weight and
get back in physical condition.
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- Bush has made "the war on terrorism" a mantra
to cover everything his administration has done. But the Iraq war has
nothing
to do with the war on terrorism, as we now know. It was a plan of Cheney
and Rumsfeld and their coterie of "neo-conservative"
intellectuals
(like Paul Wolfowitz) long before they came to power. It was supposed to
make the United States a major power in the Middle East; to provide a
democratic
alternative to the typical Arab autocracy; to give the United States
control
of major oil fields; to take pressure off Israel, and to establish that
the United States was a superpower that could go anywhere in the world
and do anything it wanted. The "war on terror" was only a pretext
to implement this plan, as accounts of the early White House reaction to
the Sept. 11 attack seem to indicate.
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- Does one have to say that none of these goals have been
achieved or can be achieved?
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- I wonder why Sen. John Kerry sounds so much like Hubert
Humphrey in his support of the continuation of the war. I hope at least
he makes opposition to a new draft a major issue in the election.
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- Copyright 2004, Digital Chicago Inc.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel23.html
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