Republican Senator Suggests Compulsory Service

[Kooperman]

Senator says US may need compulsory service to boost Iraq force

Tue Apr 20,12:34 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A senior Republican lawmaker said that deteriorating security in Iraq may force the United States to reintroduce the military draft.

"There's not an American ... that doesn't understand what we are engaged in today and what the prospects are for the future," Senator Chuck Hagel told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on post-occupation Iraq.

For the rest of the article click here:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=...draft&printer=1

Edited April 21, 2004 by Kooperman

[Shawn]

That's the 3rd time in as many months that I've heard that from some U.S. politician. They're gauging public reaction. Which means this isn't a pie in the sky idea.

:(

[Redneck4sure]

I read somewhere that the military is opposed to the draft at this time. They said they weren't having shortages enough to warrant a draft and they thought the quality of the applicants was better if they were all volunteers. I dunno.......

[nate]

if worst comes to worst, they still have immigrants, prisoners, and high school dropouts in droves ready to go

[Wolfie]

The Nebraska Republican added that a draft, which was ended in the early 1970s, would spread the burden of military service in Iraq more equitably among various social strata.

"Those who are serving today and dying today are the middle class and lower middle class," he observed.

Instituting the draft will not solve that problem. The rich and influential will always make sure their soldiers will be somewhere behind lines at HQ and the low and middle class soldiers will still be doing 90% of the dying.

There are only very incidences of soldiers from privileged families seeing front line action (such as JFK) and not taking advantage their families position to stay safe behind the lines.

[nate]

The Nebraska Republican added that a draft, which was ended in the early 1970s, would spread the burden of military service in Iraq more equitably among various social strata.

"Those who are serving today and dying today are the middle class and lower middle class," he observed.

Instituting the draft will not solve that problem. The rich and influential will always make sure their soldiers will be somewhere behind lines at HQ and the low and middle class soldiers will still be doing 90% of the dying.

There are only very incidences of soldiers from privileged families seeing front line action (such as JFK) and not taking advantage their families position to stay safe behind the lines.

and they were officers, never grunts

[DudeAsInCool]

Other than Colin Powell, who in the Bush administration really served in the services? And has the Senator above? I love it how these men want the youth in the country to service in wars when they didnt go through them themselves :reallymad: :reallymad: :reallymad:

[Ken]

This wouldn't be for the safety and security of the U.S., or anything worth dying over.

Good luck getting support for this.

The current opinion polls don't look promising.

Also, this could damage the republican's chance at the white house, come election time, if Kerry decides to act on these statements.

[Kooperman]

One thing you can count on...you won't see the National Guard getting as many volunteers as before. All these people who were working at Pizza Hut or Wal-Mart a year or so ago are suddenly supposed to be a professional fighting force after only some weekend and summer drills.Many are being sent home in flag-draped caskets that the administration doesn't want you to see. The era of easy money being in the National Guard is over now that the risks outweigh the rewards.

[Redneck4sure]

You're right Koop. I bet all the branches of the military are having enlistment declines. Probably having re-enlistment rates decline too.

[Wolfie]

Well they have been busy trying to find more canon fodder for the war:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2.../ma_153_01.html

Edited April 21, 2004 by Wolfie

[Redneck4sure]

Very good story, Wolfie. I know the Navy called here for 2 years after my son graduated from high school even though he told them he was not interested and was enrolled in college.

[desdemona]

Playing the 'race card'

By Mark Shields

Creators Syndicate

WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-New York, and Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-South Carolina, must be driving the right wing absolutely bananas.

Here is the story up to now: Rangel and Hollings have made a joint call to revive the military draft -- along with the admirable American tradition of the citizen-soldier -- because, in Hollings' words, most especially at a time of war "we must all shoulder the burden of defending our nation."

The Rangel-Hollings summons reminds us that, to name just a few, among those who answered their country's call to serve in uniform during World War II were all four of the president of the United States' sons, and future baseball Hall of Famers Hank Greenberg, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio, along with heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, and Hollywood's Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Kirk Douglas and Mel Brooks.

Future American leaders Gerald Ford, John Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, George McGovern and Dwight Eisenhower all served. The young sons of Massachusetts Republican Sen. Leverett Saltonstall, New York Democratic Gov. Herbert Lehman, former U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph Kennedy and FDR's closest political confidant, Harry Hopkins, were all killed in combat.

So apoplectic apparently are today's conservative opponents over any possible return to the draft that their preferred line of argument is to go nuclear and unfairly accuse Rangel and Hollings, as former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger did in The Wall Street Journal, of "attempting to play both the race and the class-warfare cards."

That dog simply won't hunt. Yes, according to the Defense Department's own figures, African Americans, who comprise only 12 percent of the total civilian population, do account for nearly 30 percent of Army enlistees. But race is the straw man that opponents of the draft -- not Rangel and Hollings -- have raised. What the two Democrats have confronted and spotlighted is that dirty little ugly secret of American life that is avoided in polite and prosperous circles: class.

Combat veterans Rangel and Hollings both understand that today's U.S. military is the nation's public institution most integrated by race and -- simultaneously -- most segregated by class.

The result is a military that is the total opposite of that which won World War II: the sons of the nation's most affluent and most influential families are overwhelmingly missing from the enlisted ranks of the military. The most privileged are woefully underrepresented, particularly in the enlisted ranks.

As Rangel rightly pointed out on the "Today" show, when the nation does go to war, "more poor whites, especially from the rural areas, will be put in harm's way."

Hollings puts the case this way: "It is not the army that fights a war; it is the country that fights a war." Hollings painfully remembers Vietnam, when no sacrifices were asked of civilians on the home front, while millions of young Americans were sent to fight -- and 58,135 were sent to die -- in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Conservatives (and liberals) who worship the all-volunteer military must concede that something is now profoundly wrong in this democratic society of ours when the most privileged and advantaged classes overwhelmingly choose -- when combat is all but certain -- to go AWOL.

Not once -- not to the students at his alma mater, Yale, not to any gathering of the College Republicans, nor the young business leaders -- has President George W. Bush publicly ever urged, asked or even suggested to anyone that any one of them serve his or her nation by enlisting in the military.

Because the message from the commander in chief continues to be that, here at home, we, civilians, will pay no price, we will bear no burden, and that any conflict will be essentially ouchless, painless and costless, the United States is today spiritually, emotionally and civicly unprepared for war.

For forcing us to confront, however briefly and however reluctantly, the real class divide in our society over who shoulders the burden of sacrifice -- and who avoids and evades any possibility of sacrifice -- Charlie Rangel and "Fritz" Hollings are doing their nation and their fellow citizens an important and valuable service.