(Long Island, NY) Did you hear what Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, White House deputy national security adviser told NPR this week? While Lute was singing the praises of an all-volunteer force, he also said it “makes sense to consider” a military draft, and that “This has always been an option on the table.”
And some people say the Iraq/Vietnam comparisons are unfair!
It’s my personal belief (hope?) that there isn’t a republican or democrat in office inclined to make a serious go at reinstating a military draft. I sincerely hope we learned our lesson from Vietnam. The force of teenage conscripts we sent into that particular meat grinder certainly was no match for the dedicated, “fight-for-your-life” mentality of the North Vietnamese. Any time you force a teenage farm-boy or inner-city poor kid into battle against people who are not at all threatened by the loss of their own lives, you are at a serious disadvantage. Keep that in mind when you think about those suicide bombers in Iraq, too. Try as they might, even the volunteers can’t match the intensity of people who don’t mind putting a lit stick of dynamite up their own backsides.
My firm belief and equally fervent hopes about maintaining an all-volunteer force aside, I read disturbing reports about the impending “test” of the draft system, the US Selective Service.
CBS reports on a Selective Service test slated sometime in 2009. In that CBS report, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson talked out of both sides of his mouth by saying he isn’t promoting a return of the draft, then adding in a news conference that he feels America could benefit from the draft. Nicholson is reported to have retracted this later after some pressure from the White House. This constitutes Nicholson talking out of an unseen third side of his mouth, a curious physical anomaly shared by many in the current administration.
Is this malady catching? Bush clearly has the mysterious “third side of the mouth” as does Condi Rice, and Dick Cheney? This man’s enitre head is one gaping, many-sided mouth. In the movies, my American Indian ancestors (I hate the term “Native American” as it implies that we were more savage and primitive than some of the religious zealots whose started showing up round the time of Columbus) would have said Dick Cheney speaks with a forked tongue. I say that the man is ALL tongue, quivering and coated with an icky saliva slime.
But we’re getting way of the target here, aren’t we?
Folks, unless something completely insane happens, a military draft is not coming. It would take a level of craziness on the same par as invading a foreign country using half-baked intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that don’t actually exist, while the terrorists responsible for 9/11 escape into caves and hidey-holes in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Such insanity would naturally have to include a nation crazy enough to re-elect the man who got us into the mess in the first place even after such “evidence” was called into question, disputed, all but totally refuted.
No siree, there’s not going to be a draft anytime soon. Right? RIGHT?
Keep that General Lute and the Selective Service Nicholson guy in mind when you contemplate the voting booth, folks. Here’s to 2008, it’s gonna be a real laugh riot at the polls. I myself will never vote for anyone even slightly sympathetic to starting a draft. And let me tell you, the more of us who become vocal on that front, the better. We might actually be able to shame people out of speaking up for a draft, based on sheer numbers alone.
It’s worth a shot.
