Draft I say, hear.... Let thar be a draft...
Posted on 01/27/2003 2:55:22 PM PST by kattracks
WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - As the United States prepared for a possible war against Iraq, an influential senator added his voice on Monday to calls to reinstate the military draft, a step the Bush administration says is unnecessary and unwise.
South Carolina Democrat Ernest Hollings said he is sponsoring the Senate version of a bill offered in the House of Representatives by Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, who said a universal draft would bring men and women from all walks of life into the military instead of leaving it mostly to low-income people and minorities.
Rangel and Hollings held a joint news conference as weapons inspectors issued a report at the United Nations that said Baghdad had not fully complied with requirements that it disarm, a finding that the Bush administration has said could lead to war with Iraq.
Rangel opposed the congressional resolution authorizing a possible attack on Iraq. Hollings backed it. But citing tensions around the world, they said they worry that the volunteer force would not be enough to fight multiple wars.
"With prospects of continued military action in Afghanistan, a potential war in Iraq, the continued war on terrorism and growing tensions in the Korean peninsula, it becomes clear that we do not have the personnel to fight a multi-theater war," they said in a letter to colleagues.
"Our proposal ensures that all Americans answer the call of duty and that the size of our military forces meets our growing military needs," Rangel, a Korean War combat veteran, and Hollings, a World War II combat veteran, said in their letter.
Hollings said forces already are stretched too thin, as the Pentagon is extending service time of reservists to handle operations in Afghanistan and the troop buildup in the Gulf, which he said is a hardship on them and their employers.
The bill requires military or national service for men and women, ages 18 to 26, without exemptions for college or graduate studies. The president would set the number of people needed for military service, and those not selected for that would serve at least two years in a civilian post.
With the Pentagon against the plan, the bill was seen as having little chance in the Republican-led Congress. But Rangel said it raised issues that the nation should debate.
It already has caused the administration some discomfort as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week apologized to veterans for comments he made dismissing the need to bring back the draft, that was ended in 1973.
With the draft, Rumsfeld said people were "sucked into the intake, trained for a period of months, and then went out, adding no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time."
Rumsfeld said he had not intended to say that draftees added no value to the military, but that he was "commenting on the loss of that value when they left the service."
((Reporting by Vicki Allen; Edited by Bette O'Connor;
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FREE the IRAQI people!!!
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Funny, some US citizens may have learned morality in Boy Scouts and believe in duty to God and duty to Country. Honor crosses all racial and economic lines. By the way Frits & Chuckie, how'd you vote on the Hyde Amendment to protect the Boy Scouts?
Perhaps you hung with the crowd booing and spitting upon Boy Scouts?
I printed that quote a long time ago from a thread here FR....It's still on my refrigerator!
FMCDH
The real Ernest Hollings
I also don't buy the notion that a draft will turn everybody into wonderful patriots. The bulk of the draftees will be cynical and sullen, and the few good ones will not be worth the cost.
By the way, guess who is in the process of ditching their army of draftees in favor of an all-volunteer military, to increase effectiveness? Russia.
The ultimate in stupidity for the United States to go the other way.
Any Conservative in favor of the Draft is a useful idiot of the DNC. If we need more soldiers, let's look at an increase military pay and benefits, not to the draft!
Rangle and Hollings care not one whit for the strength of the military, and NEVER have given a tinker's damn about those who wear their country's uniform. They do, however, care a great deal about all the money they believe they'd have available to buy the votes of the lazy and shiftless should the military budget ever get cut as deeply as they wish.
Such cuts, of course, will not occur if the U.S. Armed Forces are involved in a war. Thus, for such parasites as Rangle and Hollings (and make no mistake, many OTHER Leftists are waiting to hitch THEIR wagons to this Donkey's ass, they're just being quiet and letting the safe gadflies take the initial heat), the primary mission now is to avoid or shorten any combat actions.
Not WIN. Not SECURE VICTORY. Just END, preferably as soon as possible.
The standing, among nations, of their land bothers them not at all, nor does the possibility that MORE Americans might be ground up in the terrorist attacks sure to follow an American pullout. POLITICAL POWER, and with it, JOB SECURITY for their own unemployable asses is what is motivating them. Their strategy is as sick as it is, unfortunately, PROVEN. Allow me to explain...
During the blighted 1960's, the Viet Nam war initially had wide public support, with only a few leftist pockets opposing it. Only after the draft began to affect the middle-and-upper classes did public support begin to wane. Young Americans were now, in their peril-mixed-with-cowardice, susceptible to the rantings and beepings of campus Leftists and their moneymen in the KGB. It meant saving their own skin to oppose the war. Their overprotective parents soon followed suit, with the ultimate result being a lost, unfulfilled cause thrown away with 57,000 American bodies, along with our national pride and innocence.
The Rangles and Hollings of the time, however, got their money for "social spending". The large numbers of gullible Leftists gleefully voted for increased welfare and other giveaways, believing that they were doing good by decimating their only defense.
Think I'm off-base? Simply look at how fast the "anti-war" movement died after the draft was repealed. It was NEVER about "peace"; it was all about ass-saving cowardice.
This is the nightmare decade that Hollings and Rangel would repeat for us, even as it was the U.S., itself which was attacked. They would seek to tear us apart again along class lines, KNOWING that even a LIE about the "wealthy" avoiding service would be believed by the masses. They would seek to have young Americans flaunting the law and refusing to serve, and teach them through their Leftist university friends that it's okay to be a coward.
Cowards, after all, do not complain about paying taxes.
As someone has said, Rangel himself has admitted as much. The cynicism and base evil involved in this proposal goes FAR deeper than the obvious slap to the volunteer military (in which I serve with great pride), and the surface class warfare and race-baiting, which by themselves would gag a maggot.
So, the plan is clear...scare the hell out of Americans by threatening them and their children with conscription; then wait until the demand for "peace" becomes deafening; ride that wave into power. It is disgusting, and all the more so that there are actually people who VOTE for these clowns.
The one saving grace here is that this proposal has a big stamp marked "VETOED" waiting for it on the President's desk should it ever, in my nightmares, pass the collection of whores known collectively as "Congress".
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