Can You Feel a Draft?
by Jeff Davis
The math is simple. If the United States is going to conquer the world, or at least every part of the world containing oil reserves, then it will need millions of soldiers. Right now the US can barely maintain a force of 140,000 troops in Iraq; some of those units are well into their third tour of duty. The Pentagon maintains that they are meeting their recruiting goals, but they have re-defined those goals and cooked their books, and now they’re accepting recruits as old as 42 into the army. In the meantime, almost one thousand soldiers have died in each year of the insurgency. Tens of thousands of soldiers come back every year from Iraq and Afghanistan horribly wounded or too psychologically scarred to ever go back into combat (and often too scarred to function in normal society). The army can’t afford to lose one or two divisions of soldiers each year. We are gradually losing our combat experienced troops and we replace them with trainees straight out of boot camp. The United States military is bleeding to death. The government needs a draft if the occupation of Iraq is to continue.
Congressman Charlie Rangel, soon to be chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, will once again be proposing a law to do just that. According to an article in the Washington Post, “Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars and to bolster U.S. troop levels insufficient to cover potential future action in Iran, North Korea and Iraq. ‘There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,’ Rangel said. Rangel, a veteran of the Korean War who has unsuccessfully sponsored legislation on conscription in the past, said he will propose a measure early next year.”
The Post has followed Rangel’s previous draft bills. “In 2003, he proposed a measure covering people age 18 to 26. This year, he offered a plan to mandate military service for men and women between age 18 and 42; it went nowhere in the Republican-led Congress.Democrats will control the House and Senate come January because of their victories in the Nov. 7 election. At a time when some lawmakers are urging the military to send more troops to Iraq, ‘I don’t see how anyone can support the war and not support the draft,’ said Rangel, who also proposed a draft in January 2003, before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. ‘If we’re going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can’t do that without a draft,’ Rangel said.”
Rangel’s repeated draft bills are stunts intended to make the children of the wealthy just as likely to go to war as the children of the poor. Does anyone really believe that if a draft bill were passed, the children of Congressmen or neocons or any other rich people would actually be forced to go to war? The same loopholes and special favors that kept Cheney, Bush and Wolfowitz from serving one day in combat will keep the children of the rich from seeing one day of combat.
On the flip side, remember–the massive anti-Vietnam protests were not an anti-WAR movement, they were an anti-DRAFT movement. If the two-party system installs a nation-wide draft during wartime, that might be enough for a third party to rise to victory. We truly live in interesting times.