Just A Thought After Watching Meet The Press This Morning:

[EV_Ares]

On Meet The Press this morning on the war, they said almost 200,000 brain injuries, almost 900 military suicides. This doesn't count the families destroyed from the loss of father, mother, brother or sister, the actual deaths from those killed. Will we ever, ever recover from this war? I still believe if we had not done away with the draft we would not have ever got into the Iraq/Afghanistan war. If all had been subject to the draft there would have been protests all over, how many anti-war demonstrations did you see on college campuses like during Vietnam. None. People watched this war on on TV like a show. Let someone else sacrifice, not me.

Just a thought.

[shraby]

1. How old are you? Do you remember Viet Nam? Do you up front

and personal remember the protests against Viet Nam? It wasn't pretty, and that's a fact. We watched over 58,000 of our brothers, dads, uncles get killed in the mis-begotten war before the powers that be said "enough". That doesn't include the maimed and soul-destroyed young men.
Even when it came out that General Westmoreland had been lying through his teeth to congress in order to keep it going, he wasn't actually punished, but "allowed" to retire.
The draft does nothing to make congress hedge on starting a war, it just gives them more warm bodies to send to a front..any front will do as far as they are concerned..BUT..it's not their family or children who go.

[daleanime]

6. Yes, the draft 'gives them more warm bodies'....

it also gives the protest 'more warm bodies', check the difference between current anti-war protest and the ones that help end the war in Viet Nam.

[EV_Ares]

7. I am certainly old enough to know about Vietnam. Do you know anything about WWI or II? I as others

and studies have shown, if everyone is in line for the draft, it does change the perception of the matter. How old are you, do you remember the demonstrations back then. There were many demonstrations on college campuses because of the war and the students who could be pulled in. There were demonstrations out in the streets because of the parents whose sons were or could be drafted. The resistance was strong and had an effect of the ending of the war.

[shraby]

9. I remember to some degree WWII. My father went and

I was 3 when he came home...I even remember the night he got home, too. My father and 2 of his brothers were old enough to go.
I remember Viet Nam, saw one of my brother's best friends come home without a leg, and his brother was killed..we lived in a town of 250 people. It took years of heavy protests to stop that war with presidential candidates promising to end it then sat on their thumbs.

The best and only solution, is to turn to diplomacy and sanctions to bring recalcitrant countries into the 21 century where war is not an option. Pressure from the global community does wonders in that scenario.

[arthritisR_US]

14. If you had a draft and, if it stipulated

that in any conflicts (wars) the first soldiers sent would be those of politicians, I think the conflicts entered would be nil.

[newfie11]

16. +111

The only way

[EV_Ares]

20. Shraby, that is true also. However, in the other wars, the entire country sacrificied and with

Last edited Sun Mar 18, 2012, 03:37 PM - Edit history (3)

these wars, there are only certain groups that are bearing the sacrifice. All of us need to have a say and we all need
to bear the sacrifice as well as we all need to have a share in the good too. Until then, these things will occur.
Also, Shraby, I respect your point of view and your taking the time to share it with me, by listening or reading other
points of view we learn, sometimes we change our minds as we see the other as a better alternative.

War is not good no matter what and I certainly am not advocating a different way to go to war but seeing the draft as an alternative to help stop wars.

[shraby]

27. In the 21st century, wars should be events of the past.

You can't convince me that a draft which usually only includes ordinary people and not politicians, the wealthy, and the well connected will be anything different than it always was post draft days.

I cannot and will not approve of reinstating the draft. It leads to poor peoples wars and rich people's profit, and rich draft dodgers.

[EV_Ares]

29. You say:

"I cannot and will not approve of reinstating the draft. It leads to poor peoples wars and rich people's profit, and rich draft dodgers."

LOL, in other words what you have "exactly" now.

You will not convince me otherwise since I have seen what we had before in comparison to what we have now which is the following: poor people fighting the wars for rich people to get all the profits and become even richer.

[shraby]

28. Does "shared sacrifice" make war Right? Nothing makes war

right. Let the upper 2% fight the wars for a change and leave the rest of us alone...that would be "shared sacrifice" in my mind. As it stands, the only thing they share in is all the profits that are made when there's a war.
The rest of us share losing family members and one less at the dinner table.

[EV_Ares]

30. No, shared sacrifice does not make any war right. Absolutely not. However, what shared

sacrifice does, is to prevent going to wars such as Vietnam, Iraq & Afghanistan. Yes, even with the draft already in place, we got into Vietnam but with the dradt in place, it took time but demonstrations all around, college campuses, in the streets by the people got us out a lot sooner than never.

[arthritisR_US]

11. +1000.....

and, I am old enough to remember the protests!

[HereSince1628]

17. As I remember it Johnson threw in the towel in spring 1968 before there were 58K dead and missing.

And in 1972, four years later, when I stepped into Davis Station at Saigon the US wasn't sending draftees to Vietnam anymore. The war was still plodding along without draftees. And the campaign promise of Nixon's secret method to get us out before the end of 1969 was pretty much forgotten.

Nixon had been overwhelmed by the problem that a US "retreat" from Vietnam was politically intolerable.

This has to do with a phenomenon gambling psychologists call 'sunk costs.' When you're deeply invested it's hard to walk away and accept the loss. You're willing to ante up everything on the chance of a win.

The nation's leaders so fear the humiliation of looking defeated and the shame of having spent American lives and treasure for nothing
that you just keep slogging along hoping for an end.

Nixon and Kissinger figured out how to use The Big Lie to get us out of Vietnam under the cover of "peace with honor", the same tactic was available to the Shrub...declare victory and leave. But then, Cheney and the neocons couldn't work out how to distribute the profits of their nasty little war and the opportunity to get out under the cover of the big lie was lost.

The nation as a whole, and Obama in particular face the same pressures of trying to recoup something like a win to cover the "sunk costs." Just this last week McCain was crowing again for more commitment to "achieve victory" in Afghanistan, and our regional allies continued to press for continuing the expanded conflict from the Kenyan border to Pakistan.

Our troops, and our unmanned aerial assassination vehicles, will come home when we find a way to achieve "peace with honor." It will probably come the same way it did for Nixon...through a big lie.

[Owlet]

26. Well said.(eom)

[ellenfl]

22. but not everyone got drafted.

vn draftees were disproportionately the poor and disenfranchised. include every person of age in the draft and watch the 1% and their corporate and congressional buddies find another solution to war. don't you think mitt rmoney would have been front and center against iraq if his sons had to go?

too many in this country have no idea what war is, since we have never been a theatre of war, unlike the rest of the world.

ellen fl

[EV_Ares]

23. You are right. I don't know how many of our senators or congressmen, congresswomen served in the

military but it is now very, very few. That certain makes a difference on their feelings and knowledge of sending others to war. As for the draftees in the past, I know of many, many college graduates who got drafted. Yes, there are those who got out of it, for example, GWB who was jumped over those to get in a national guard unit. There I am sure were others but there was a heavy middle and upper middle class who were drafted. That makes a big difference.

[bahrbearian]

2. I agree it was the draft that made the war personal

It was for me, my number was 11.

[KharmaTrain]

3. You're Fighting The Last War...

As one who grew up during Vietnam and missed being part of the "fun" by a year there are some comparisons of the recent military adventures but they're limited in scope. Just like Vietnam, Afghanistan has become a quamire as the U.S. has injected itself into an ongoing civil war that can be prolonged by never overcome. Mission creep set in where the objectives became muddled with politics that is making a complete withdrawl difficult.

The draft was the rallying cry for Vietnam as almost any male over 18 could be sucked in whereas today's volunteer army has put this burden on a small portion of the population that have been redeployed far more times than anyone in Vietnam ever was. The wars are different as you have different terrain, weather and cultures that add to the fatigue over the long haul but has different effects. Today's military is far more lethal than in Vietnam...and so are their adversaries. Thus what American soldiers are experiencing and seeing on the ground is far more graphic and destructive than in any previous war. Their PTSD and other injuries are still being studied and diagnosed...and sadly I feel last week's massacre is a byproduct of a culture of death that's gone on too long and serves no real purpose.

You rarely see this dirty war on teevee. If you do see a report, its from someone standing on a hotel balcony...not like the "in the field" reporting of Vietnam. Also we have far more sources of information these days...in the 60s and 70s you had three networks and they showed their news at the same time. Everyone was tuned into the same information. Today many cherry pick what they want to see and hear. We are far less informed of this war than Vietnam and I think that's playing into people's reaction to this massacre.

The Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans will have their own set of problems that will require treatment for years and decades to come. The question will be if this generation will embrace those veterans and help them back into society or try to ignore them and the war they fought like I saw with far too many from the Vietnam generation.

[butterfly77]

4. Now,the media ie,republicons are rewriting history

on the teevee this morning they are trying to pretend that,George bush and the republicons had nothing to do with this war.

Now they think they are giving directives to Pres Obama about how he needs to sell the war to Americans.

They are acting like Republicons didn't say rah,rah,freedom fries,these colors don't run,STAY THE COURSE. It is all Pres Obama's fault like everything else.

Now,they keep telling us Osama bin laden wanted to kill Pres Obama to that I say and....

[gratuitous]

5. I think there are too few people bearing the brunt of our latest foreign policy forays

If the offspring of the Bushes, the Cheneys and the McCains were equally liable to going overseas to join in the action they all so fervently send others off to kill and die for, I think we'd see a far different conversation about our most excellent acts of aggression.

The reality is that since the end of the draft, the folks who join up do so out of a combination of many factors, but one of the dominant ones is financial. We've succeeded in impoverishing a large enough segment of our society that thousands of young people see no other future for themselves than enlisting in the military. We like to pretend that makes them volunteers, and we also like to pretend that it makes us safer and more secure. The horrible consequences are largely sequestered from the well-to-to in their gated communities, and the suffering families have been well trained not to be too public with their pain.

[EV_Ares]

8. Absolutely, the logic alone makes what you say true.

As you said: "the reality is that since the end of the draft, the folks who join up do so out of a combination of many factors, but one of the dominant ones is financial. We've succeeded in impoverishing a large enough segment of our society that thousands of young people see no other future for themselves than enlisting in the military. We like to pretend that makes them volunteers, and we also like to pretend that it makes us safer and more secure. The horrible consequences are largely sequestered from the well-to-to in their gated communities, and the suffering families have been well trained not to be too public with their pain."

[lunatica]

10. I beg to differ on the number of protest marches over both wars

I was in all of them, and they were huge. The anti-war marches all over the world before the Iraq war were probably the biggest ever seen and done in history.

When someone asked Bush about them he dismissed them outright saying he didn't make decisions based on "focus groups".

The media didn't cover the protests. They were already the propaganda arm of the Bush Administration. The Fourth Branch of the US government.

[TheMastersNemesis]

12. Economic Draft

We have a draft. It is an economic draft. A young person even with a degree will make more money as a private E-3 than they can as a civilian right now. I know why the GOP wants to end the minimum wage and health care. Just about every young person in the country will have to go into the military just to be able to eat. And they get the chance for a multiple vacation tour in the war zone of the military's pick.

A lousy job market is good for recruitment. I worked at DOL for 24 years. Based on what I see with our broken labor market and it is structurally broken because of GOP policies, the younger generation is royally screwed unless we restore the social contract between employer and employee. It is gone.

Also I spent Nov 67 to Nov 68 with the 1st Cavalry Airmobile Division. Had I not got lucky and got a clerk job lord knows what I would have been like with a year in the field and survived. I was with 1st Brigade 1st of the 5th Cavalry. And I saw an interview on national TV a year or two ago of soldiers who were 1st Cav 1st of the 5th my old unit in Iraq.

[grantcart]

13. Your point about the draft and the media is good but I was astonished at the number.

I found that others were using the same number but it is an incredibly huge number and isn't consistent with the vast number of people I have talked to who went to Iraq/Afghanistan without injury of any kind. It seemed incredible to me that there were 200,000 brain injuries.

I think I have found how this number evolved.

There was a Rand study that interviewed 200,000 and they found that

The RAND study, based on interviews with just under 200,000 service members, found that of those troops reporting a probable traumatic brain injury, 57 percent had not been evaluated by a physician for the condition. The troops cited fear that treatment would not be kept confidential and would hurt military-career advancement, according to the report.

We don't know the number of people who reported a TBI.

Also a traumatic brain injury includes all injuries to the brain, including a mild concussion, the kind that you can get from a hard hit at a football game.

Obviously the number of head injuries and suicides is great but it seems that the number of 200,000 is not based on actual combat figures but on a misinterpretation of the Rand study.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/03/14/afghanistan-usa-brain-idINDEE82D00M20120314

[LeFleur1]

15. Never Advocate a Draft

The draft killed 58,000 of our good young people in Viet Nam...for what?
I don't understand the mindset that wishes to make more young people eligible for killing. They are viewed as fodder. That's the only difference a draft would make. More fodder. Anyone who thinks rich kids would go to war is dreaming. They never go. They didn't go in WWI or WWII or to Viet Nam, unless they wanted to, and they will never go to war unless they want to. It's the nice young people who obey the call for the country who go. Check out Dick Cheney. Five deferments and he'd have received fifty if necessary. He is a perfect example of how fair the draft is. Check out Cassius Clay..Mohammed Ali. Check out George Bush.
Without sentencing our young to the draft we, the people, need to accept our responsibility and stop these asinine wars with elections, with protests, with demands. We could have cleaned out al qaeda's training grounds without tearing up the countries and imposing on the citizens in such a devastating manner.
When our country is in danger the citizens will respond if it is a legitimate reason not some trumped up garbage to get control of oil or whatever the hell the real reason for getting into this mess was.

[excuse not to write]

18. I support a Draft

But only for the children of neocons.

[earthside]

19. War is a sucker's game.

'War is a Racket.'

The military for poor, working and middle class people is a 'patriotic' con job.

Draft or no draft, conservative Presidents and liberal Presidents, weapons manufacturers and greedy corporations will find a way to send young people into the meat grinder.

Until the 'soldiers' say 'no more'.

[Arugula Latte]

21. There were many, many protests involving hundreds of thousands of people across the country

but the media ignored them. If they did cover them they'd focus the cameras on the one anarchist "nut" in the crowd.

The corporate media has learned a lot about controlling the message since the days of Vietnam.

[gulliver]

24. An all-volunteer force worked fine under Clinton and works under Obama

I see your point, but we should not need to reinstate the draft just to counter Republican idiocy. Republicans started the unnecessary war in Iraq. And Republicans let Afghanistan go to hell while we fought the unnecessary war in Iraq. If an all-volunteer force is incompatible with Republican national security idiocy, we should just stop electing Republicans.

[madokie]

25. Don't let anyone tell you that nixon ended the VietNam war

Who won that peace were the people out in the streets protesting. Its to those I give all credit too.