I have a nice 12 mile commute to work from my house. A very nice length - long enough to leave home & family problems at home on the way in and focus onto work... and vice versa on the flip trip.
It also gives me a time to just think, and be, and daydream some. Today I was thinking about the illegal, immoral, unethical war in Iraq, and about when it was that *I* became politically interested. It was in High Shool,during the Vietnam era. I remember sitting in the hallway before class, across the hall my male classmates sitting with a hand-sized transistor radio held up to their ear, waiting for the results of the draft lottery - to find out if their birthday would be used to condemn them to death in the jungle on the other side of the planet.
I remember their fear, and their anger that they could not even VOTE for/against the very people who were going to be sending them off to die. And I became political.
The world then is so like the world now... but different as well. I do not see the news of protests on college campuses, I do not see protestors with peace symbols on street corners. And so I was wondering on my drive in - what is different?
And the answer came loud and clear. "The boys in the hallway were being DRAFTED. They had no choice, they didn't volunteer. The young people rose up in protest because they had no choice, and they had no voice."
This is when the answer came to me. I SUPPORT A RETURN OF THE DRAFT.
Now, my friends, before you go biting my head off... I have some little changes I'd make first:
1) Anyone (male AND female) from age 18 to 35 would be eligible for the Draft. Those found physically incapable of combat duty (using an ANONYMOUS, standardized medical screening) would be placed in administrative support positions. Rather than using birthdates or social security#, each person registered for the draft would recieve a "selective service number". Draftees would be chosen by "selective service number"
2) Collegiate Deferrments would be abolished.
3) Anyone who is not a citizen would be given a second "number" by the selective service, thereby receiving an additional "chance" to be chosen for the draft. Watch the H1-B visa abuses vanish overnight!
4) Anyone who has a parent in any form of state or federal elected office would be given a second "number" by the selective service as well. Serving in a non-combat (coast guard, etc.) branch of service will NOT exempt you from the combat draft. No amount of political "muscle" would be able to remove either of the two numbers.
Now, on the surface, this may seem odd. But here is my reasoning:
Vietnam became a serious problem because those who were being sent there to die began to protest. Imagine the protest if this were instituted? We'd be back out of Iraq in a heartbeat. College students would stage sit-ins, peace-ins, protests, marches, and write gut-wrenching folk songs.
And if each Senator... every Representative... all the judges... even, and ESPECIALLY the Commander in Chief... would be gambling with 2-1 odds with their OWN CHILDREN'S LIVES...
How many deaths will it take till they know that too many people have died? The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind...
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5 comments:
That's "dead-on", Sew. . .
interesting- i think i may agree. except that i don't want to go and i don't want my husband to go.
Nobody does, in a bullshit war-of-choice like this one. That's the point. . .make it more difficult for the people who dodge service to do so in wars of choice (like this one). The rich elitist's (I find it so funny that THEY call us liberals by that moniker)aren't sending their precious children off to die in Iraq!
The party of wealth and privilege likes to paint our educated and informed blue-collar members as being snooty and aloft. This plays well among the poorer, rural audience that they have been pandering to as of late.
Thankfully (It seems), these folks are finally becoming aware of the snow job that has been done on them, and are ready to stand up for things in the voting booth.
The problem has always and ever been that the rich and powerful are willing to gamble with the lives of the poor and weak - but not with the lives of their own.
Shrub never saw combat, but he should have done. He has had his cronies libel and slander those who have fought for this country and its' Constitution - Men like Kerry and Murtha and McCain - in order to further his dictatorship agenda, and refuses to listen to the folks "on the ground" in Iraq, preferring to be pablum-fed his "Stragerty" by Rumsfeld who is driving the bus from the back, a continent an an ocean away.
Wow. I like your reasoning, that's brilliant. It's to be hoped that real-life experience of the hell "over there" really WOULD turn the tide of this war. I could have so easily ended up in Iraq myself as I was in the Territorial Army for a while before my little boy was born. Not long after I'd left the army, a considerable number of my unit were sent over there. Sad thing is, I don't think many of them thought that deeply about the whole issue and looked at the wider picture. Back then, I didn't have a problem with being in the British Army. Now, I wouldn't join again because if they tried to send ME to Iraq to fight, I'd have to refuse on conscientious grounds. Coulda got messy ...
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