Well thats interesting
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/19/rangel.draft.ap/index.html
We’ve got a thread about this going in IMHO, actually - I say that not because this is redundant, just because I think that thread is worth a look.
When Rangel started making these proposals a few years ago, I thought he was making a valid point in an idiotic way. Now I think he’s making a number of incorrect points in a truly moronic way, and I’m starting to wonder if he doesn’t actually support this idea. It infuriates me, and I’d swear to vote against him if he was my Congressman.
I had a very conservative Catholic polysci professor in college who argued vehemently that we should have a universal draft, for political, not military purposes – so that we should always have (1) a citizen-based military force with no emotional investment in the military as an institution and (2) a much larger population of civilians who had been in the Army and were sick of it.
He had a point. There are a lot of countries where the military is an independent political force in its own right, and it is almost never a beneficial one. And that can happen only if the military is composed mostly of military careerists. Which our all-volunteer force is, now.
I think Rangel is trying to smoke out the people who support the war, but don’t want their families (or themselves) to have to sacrafice for it.
He knows it is political suicide to reinstitute the draft. He wants to illustrate the immorality of hippocracy of the wardrum beaters.
I think.
The same is true of organized religion – does your professor propose to draft people into the semenaries?
Did you see Doonesbury today? Sort of captures the spirit of a lot of the (American) nation I guess.
He may be right that it might make people less supportive of wars, but I wonder if that effect will be overshadowed by the availability of more troops making war more likely?
This is a stunt by Rangel. He is simply trying to make the war more odious to people. A few years ago he even proposed having a draft and making it apply to everyone from 18 to 46 years old. Think of the havoc that would wreak. Around the same time, if I recall correctly, he attempted to insert racism into the issue, claiming that people of color saw more of the actual fighting on the front lines. When it was revealed to him that whites were the ones over-represented on the front lines he shut up for a while.
Now while I don’t thing some type of mandatory service is a necessarily a bad thing, if a nation can protect itself by having people volunteer to do the job, that seems an ideal situation. Otherwise you’re forcing people to do something they don’t want to. And that moves us in the “less personaly freedoms” direction.
It’s a backdoor method to get people to oppose the war. Slightly understandable when most people actually supported the war, but now that they don’t… WTF? We aren’t going to have a draft, we don’t need a draft, and the top brass in the military doesn’t want a draft. He’s straying into Don Qixote territory here.
Two years ago when Rangle was injecting this idea in the discussion the House forced a vote on the bill he brought forth. Only two people voted for it. Rangle wasn’t one of them. (The two members were Stark from California and Murtha.)
We’ll need it if we want to invade Iran. An idea they haven’t given up on, believe it or not.
I, for one, would like to see Congressional Democrats have a special session in which the leaders (Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer, et al) pull in everyone and sit them down and say “Look, damnit. We just regained power in Congress for the first time in over a decade. We have a lot of work to do. The first one of you who pipes up with some stupid bullshit that pisses off the fundie rednecks in flyover country will get every fucking dollar of pork taken away from your district. STFU!”
I think they should have a draft, but only on the children and grandchildren of congress.
My inventation to bet on that is still open. I have not takers yet, so now’s your chance.
An Arkyu: Youre sentiment is about right, but this isn’t about “fundie rednecks”. Why would you think it was? In fact, you might find more support for a draft among “fundie rednecks” than among other demographics in the US.
I was wondering the same thing. If it turns out the demographic that is most supportive of the war is also most against the draft, I say Rangel proves his point.
You may be right…this particular issue might not be a hotbutton for those folks, but it is certainly a “Democrat opens mouth, inserts foot” moment and we just need to put a dang lid on that crap.
Having said that…while our more rural brethren are more likely to support the war and volunteer for it, tell them they have to do it, and that’s when you’ll get the “hey, you don’t tell me what to do” reaction. It’s a fine line there, IMHO.
Rangel is making a point; I realize that, but at what cost? A lot of people don’t get it and Democratic credibility takes some flak to the hull. And as others have already said, the tide of public support for the war is already turning, or has turned. We don’t need some grandstanding parlor trick to move that issue.
I was watching him on CSPAN and Face the Nation this weekend and I thought his point went something like this: If you want to go to war (such as voting for the President’s right to use military force) you need to attach a draft re-instatement to it for a couple reasons
- Looking back historically we haven’t done so well in wars where we haven’t.
- The only wars you’ll end up getting involved in are the ones that you’re truly willing to get personally involved in.
When listening to him, I didn’t get the impression that he was aiming only for Iraq with his proposal, but rather a more universal rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t want your kids getting drafted for it, it shouldn’t be worthy of a war.
Why should they sufffer for the sins of their ancestors?
Now there’s the kind of sweet talk that will really change minds and win hearts.
Are you betting there will be an invasion or there won’t be? (I’m inclined to bet no, because how could they get the new Congress to approve it?) And what’s the timeframe?