The Continuing Backdoor Draft
by Jeff Davis
Officially, there is no draft in the United States, and our wonderful neocon rulers have made a great to-do about promising us that there will be no draft in the future. I doubt this exceedingly, since we are having trouble maintaining an adequate troop level in Iraq as our allies bail out one after another not to mention the oft’ rumored invasion of Iran and Syria which seems to be the neocons’ mentally disturbed game plan. While a draft has not yet materialized, there is however a “backdoor draft” whereby American soldiers who have completed their enlistments are not being discharged, but simply being told “No, you ain’t getting out,” and packed on board transport planes back to Iraq. They didn’t even do THAT in Vietnam; once your tour was up, at least your tour was up.
One news article reports “For more than 800 members of the Army’s Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), the most memorable part of the holiday season was a surprise stocking-stuffer from the United States Army. It came in the form of a blue and white Western Union Mailgram that ordered them to report for active duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Eric, a second-year law student, who completed four years of active duty in 2002, was at his parents’ house on Christmas Eve when they handed him what looked like an innocuous piece of mail from the Secretary of the Army. ‘I was pretty shocked,’ Eric (not his real name) says. ‘I went up to my room and hyperventilated for a bit and then came back down and didn’t tell anyone for two days. I didn’t want to ruin Christmas (for anyone else).”
The U.S. Army has forced about 50,000 soldiers to continue serving after their enlistments ended. The official rationale for this involuntary servitude (supposedly banned under the Fourteenth Amendment, if the Bush administration ever gave a damn about the Constitution) is a legal fig leaf called “stop-loss.” Efforts thus far to challenge “stop loss” in court have
failed; as anyone who has served recently can tell you: When the Army wants something, the Army gets it. Period.
This desperate resort to violation of enlistment contracts demonstrates how thinly America’s military is stretched in occupying our latest imperial conquests in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could also further complicate efforts to attract new recruits. Nobody in his right mind is going to want to join the Army or the Marines when it’s possible you could sign on for three years and end up doing six or more years active duty in combat zones under “stop loss.” This is quite possible, since there seems to be no end to the Middle East imperial adventure in sight. Iran and Syria are clearly next, possibly followed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon especially if Mad Cowboy disease continues to spread in our government.
Another news article reports ” ‘As the war in Iraq drags on, the Army is accumulating a collection of problems that cumulatively could call into question the viability of an all-volunteer force,’ said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute think tank. ‘When a service has to repeatedly resort to compelling the retention of people who want to leave, you’re edging away from the whole notion of volunteerism.’ ” It seems more like you’re butchering the notion of “volunteerism.”
Folks, the handwriting is on the wall. The draft is coming back, not only for the purpose of expanding the Oil Empire and making the world safe for Israel, but also as a cure for the coming mass unemployment which is just around the corner thanks to years of outsourcing and the ongoing collapse of our automobile industry.