Arizona Daily Sun: Re-consider DRAFT "now that election is over"

[Dems Will Win]

So we don't cut and run from Iraq.

I told you so. It's already starting...

Editorial: Fallujah not the decisive battle America must win

11/14/2004

-snip-

That means the debate that was postponed during the campaign -- how to supply more troops and how to pay for them -- needs to take place soon. The Rumsfeld doctrine of using less force but more speed to topple Saddam Hussein during the invasion clearly hasn't worked in securing the peace.

But can the Army afford to send more divisions to Iraq? <b>Do National Guard units that have already served one tour abroad deserve to be called back for a second? Can the Pentagon invoke "Stop Loss" clauses that call back "retired" military without hurting recruitment of new volunteer soldiers? Does that dread word, the "draft," need to be given a realistic hearing now that the election is over?
</b>

-snip-

Victory in Fallujah alone is not going to be decisive for democracy in Iraq and stability in the Middle East. The U.S. has a long, hard road ahead of it to reach that goal, and <b>it's time the White House started preparing the American people for it. </b>

http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cf...

[Ilsa]

1. Well, now that we have that pesky election done, we should talk about real

issues. Too bad we spent all of that time trying to scare the electorate how their neighbors' gay marriages were going to doom them and their children's hope for a happy life.

[d_b]

2. More Orwell.

Eliminate the "Draft" and replace it with the "Patriot List".

[joelogan]

16. And Bush's assertion of NO DRAFT goes in the Memory Hole

thanks to the supine media.

[acmavm]

3. And now for all the pathetic non-believers that bush* & Co. would

start ramping up the draft, here you go. The truth (the real truth) rears it's ugly head and will bite their frigging kids and neices and nephews, and hell, a few of their parents right in the ass.

They'd better not say they weren't warned. But hey, all their fucking jobs will be leaving the country now, so they won't have anything better to do anyhow.

[delete_bush]

4. In the event of a draft, would being

gay keep one out of the military? If so, there's going to be an extreme uptick in the percentage of gays in the US. How will the fundies ever reconcile this rampant homosexuality in Chimpy's 2nd term?

[AndyTiedye]

5. No So Much a Draft as a Hurricane

They've already talked about jacking the age limit up to 34
for an ever-expanding list of "special skills" (which they have
coincidentally been encouraging employers to outsource offshore).

When they call back a 67-year old reservist to send to Iraq,
as they have this year, I don't think anyone is safe.

They haven't got enough troops to subdue Iraq, and they don't want
the Crusade to get bogged down there, they need to invade more countries.

There is another reason they would favor a very broad draft.
It is the most effective avenue through which to deliver mandatory
political and religious indoctrination to the general population.
The military already does this to their recruits.
Many of us have been able to resist Fauxnews propaganda.
More coercive measures will be required.

[__Inanna__]

6. Dead ON

AndyT. As I was reading the article, I was wondering if this wasn't part of the plan all along, or if * and pals really believed any of the propaganda dished out on Fauxnews (well, that BushCo actually dispensed).

The propaganda worked to hypnotize 59MM to vote for him (supposedly). Maybe that's why they kept saying, just one more city, only X amount of troops. Did they know all along this would never work? I have 4 nephews, 2 of which are draft age. Their parents voted for *. I am still astounded at WTF they were thinking. Fortunately, I have no children.

[AndyTiedye]

7. The Were Quietly Cranking Up the Selective Service BEFORE The Election

Filling positions on draft boards, and following a directive to
be ready to start drafting people on a few months' notice.

[Tree Hugger]

8. Really?

Is there proof of that? That draft boards have been filling positions?

Cause that scares the crap out of me, considering I'm 23, healthy, and have an engineering degree.

[AndyTiedye]

10. They Need Lots of Cannon Fodder for their Crusades

> Is there proof of that? That draft boards have been filling positions?

They removed the notice once the press got wind of it, but it's
been cached:

http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/defendamerica-draftboa...

Naturally, they were quick to say it was all routine and didn't mean that
THE DRAFT IS COMING!!!
for that would have put them down so far in the polls that even Diebold
could not have bailed them out. But now that the election is over,
their real plans will come to light.

Here is more:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/13...
http://www.bigpath.net/politics/Draft/DraftStart.html

> Cause that scares the crap out of me, considering I'm 23, healthy, and have an engineering degree.

The cretins in power now would like nothing better than to enslave all us geeks.

When times were good a few years ago, we made some money and we DIDN'T turn Republican.
They never forgave us for that.

[drb]

14. But you have NO SKILLS! Remember that!

nt

[Just get along]

17. I don't think it is feasible

The military hates the draft.
I know, because I lived through the transition.
In the 70's the army made the tranistion from a draft army to a "all volunteer" army and us officers were convinced that was the end of the military as an effective organizational unit. We were used to having a steady stream of young men come in that we could intimidate and mold into the kind of soldier we wanted. Now we were expected to play nicey nice with guys we had to persuade to com on board.

Well times change. In a matter of a few years, we all the improvment. OK we didn't have the ability to intimidate that we once had, but on the other hand, it was pure joy working with guys who were actually motivated to be there. Sure there were exceptions, but on the whole, we got a much better group of men. And later on, I think the process gaurenteed that we go a much better group of women also.

I think this reflects the evolution of warfare. In Wellington's time, all you had to do was to line up a group of men and have them point their rifles in the general direction of the enemy. As Bernard Cornwell as the fictional character Richard Sharpe describe the situation:

And they march toward our thin line, kettle drums hammering like hell, and a golden eagle blazing overhead. They march slowly, and it takes them a long time to reach you. And you can't see them in smoke, but you can hear the drums. They march out of the smoke, and you fire a volley. And the front rank of the column falls. And the next rank steps over them, with drums hammering. And the column smashes your line like a hammer breaking glass. And Napolean has won another battle. But if you don't run...if you stand until you can smell the garlic, and fire volley after volley, three rounds a minute, then they slow down...they stop...and then they run away. All you have to do is stand and fire three rounds a minute. Now you and I know you can fire three rounds a minute. But can you stand?

So in Wellingtons time, it was easy to draft a man who could 2 things: Shoot and stand. And really, he didn't even have to shoot all that accurately.

Things are more complicated now. The soldier who stands in one place and shoots is a dead soldier. In fact, to a great degree the soldier who has not been throughly trained in all the aspects and startegies of today's complex battlefield is a dead soldier. One of the modern officers greatest responsibilities in today's military is to train his people. I simply don't want to have to train someone who doesn't want to be there in the first place.

In another way, the draft reflects old obsolete ways of thinking. It used to be that the general with the most bodies to throw at his opponent was the winner. That isn't true anymore. It is the army with the smartest soldiers and smartest weapons that wins.

So don't worry about the draft. The military just isn't going to let it happen.

[phantom power]

18. But what about occupation?

smarter soldiers and smarter weapons may win in an outright battle, and we've certainly seen that in Iraq.

We can always win the battles. But this is a war of occupation, not battles.

[LoneDriver]

21. It's feasible under certain situations

Like support troops or medical cadres if not for line troops. Where a combat draft would fail is when conscripts start coming home in boxes. This country is so close to evenly split that it would not take that many people being alienated from the current leadership and it's policies to collapse the whole war effort. At least with volunteers they can rationalize that they knew what they were getting into.

[bemildred]

9. More evident contempt for democracy. nt

[DuaneBidoux]

11. In a perverse way however, the draft is exactly what America needs.

It is so much easier to fight wars of profit and convenience when one has a system of "volunteers" and reservists. When anyone's kids might go it's amazing how much more serious (not to mention real) the threat will have to be before people go along with their leaders dragging them into wars.

I say this having a ten year old son and knowing the long term direction threatens my only child. But I am somewhat fortunate in that I have a foreign wife and we have a refuge to protect my son. I would fight and die to truly protect my country, and I would tell my son to do the same. But wars of empire never.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

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[bemildred]

13. Good points.

But what are we going to do then?

We need more bodies, and without a draft they will have to be
motivated, how is that to be done? In peacetime I don't
think it would be such an issue, but if you know you are
going to Iraq, you may well think flipping burgers doesn't
look so bad after all. And the fellows that are eager to go
to Iraq may not be the ones you want.

I'm not pushing any agenda, I just think there is kind of a
dilemma here, and the political types we have now are not subtle
thinkers, so I do worry about a draft even though what you say
is very true.

[winston61]

15. Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now

Did any hear Noam Chomsky discussing his views on the draft yesterday on Democracy Now. Here it is:

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think it's extremely unlikely. I should tell you this as a word of personal background. I was very much involved in the resistance movement in the 1960's. In fact, I was just barely -- the only reason I missed a long jail sentence is because the Tet Offensive came along and the trials were called off. So I was very much involved in the resistance, but I was never against the draft. I disagreed with a lot of my friends and associates on that, for a very good reason, I think at least as nobody seems to agree. In my view, if there's going to be an army, I think it ought to be a citizen's army. Now, here I do agree with some people, the top brass, they don't want a citizen's army. They want a mercenary army, what we call a volunteer army. A mercenary army of the disadvantaged. And in fact, in the Vietnam War, the U.S. military realized, they had made a very bad mistake. I mean, for the first time I think ever in the history of European imperialism, including us, they had used a citizen's army to fight a vicious, brutal, colonial war, and civilians just cannot do that kind of a thing. For that, you need the French foreign legion, the Gurkhas or something like that. Every predecessor has used mercenaries, often drawn from the country that they're attacking like England ran India with Indian mercenaries. You take them from one place and send them to kill people in the other place. That's the standard way to run imperial wars. They're just too brutal and violent and murderous. Civilians are not going to be able to do it for very long. What happened was, the army started falling apart. One of the reasons that the army was withdrawn was because the top military wanted it out of there. They were afraid they were not going to have an army anymore. Soldiers were fragging officer. The whole thing was falling apart. They were on drugs. And that’s why I think that they're not going to have a draft. That's why I’m in favor of it. If there's going to be an army that will fight brutal, colonial wars, and that's the only likely kind of war, I’m not talking about the militarization of space and that kind of thing, I mean ground wars, it ought to be a citizen's army so that the attitudes of the society are reflected in the military.


This is a tragic conclusion, but a draft may be the way to break the back of Bush and the neocons.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

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[Technowitch]

20. Figures.

That's about all I can say.