Linkster
09-09-2007, 09:25 PM
I like this - and it reflects my opinions perfectly (by Dan Grossman):
http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~r/HP/Politics/~3/154358710/its-time-for-reality-no_b_63678.html
War is serious business, a machine that produces amputees, people without faces, people with half their brains destroyed, and corpses so macerated one needs metal dog tags to identify who that was now lying in pieces on the ground at your feet.
It's time to understand the reality that America should never be engaged in a war without the full understanding and cooperation of all Americans -- all socioeconomic classes, all groups.
The only way to ensure such cooperation in a war is a lottery draft that inducts combatants as needed from all classes -- including the class of legislators and government officials who promoted the war in the first place. There's really no other way to ensure that people in power do not use the children of other people as mere cannon fodder to further their own purposes.
Our leaders have been telling us for years now that we're in a war to save Western civilization. They now tell us the war in Iraq is part of the greater war, the "War on Terror." And yet the sons and daughters of these same leaders continue their parties, their education, their privileged lives, while the sons and daughters of ordinary Americans are overseas in a foreign land getting their bodies chopped up in the meat-grinder of a nasty war.
Mitt Romney says his sons are not fighting in Iraq because they're contributing to the war effort by helping him get elected president. When pressed, he mumbles that we have a "volunteer" army, so his sons don't need to serve.
Maybe Mitt Romney is too dense to understand that's precisely the problem: history shows than an American volunteer army will always be an army without full participation across the socioeconomic board. In this country, such an army always consists predominantly of lower middle class and poverty class kids, never an equal spread of risk.
It's not fair. It's hypocrisy. It's shameful to tell the American people this "War on Terror" is a war to save Western civilization while your own children continue their safe lives.
If this war in Iraq is so serious, every American should participate equally in its hazards.
But of course the war-mongers are not calling for a draft, because then the American people will be forced to sit up and take stock of whether they really want their children to go to Iraq to get their faces blown off. And of course if there's a draft, the children of the war-mongers might get drafted. Heaven forbid!
A draft to fight a just war will not ruin America. And if a war is not just, there should be no war at all.
During the Korean War, I was drafted into the U.S. Army after I finished college. I was lucky enough to come home alive and in one piece and continue my ordinary life. We fought the Korean War to contain expansionist Communism. The war lasted only a few years and then it stopped. I thought it was a just war and I've never regretted my service. There's no reason for anyone to fear a draft -- unless you're afraid a draft will turn the American people against a political policy that you know is self-serving and not in the interests of the all Americans -- or unless you're afraid your own children will face combat, or even afraid of yourself in combat.
If we're afraid of war, let's not fight wars. And if we think we need to fight a war, let's spread the risk evenly across our people.
When Dick Cheney was asked why he didn't serve in the Viet Nam War, he said he had "other priorities."
What priorities were greater than serving his country in a just war? And if the Viet Nam War was not just, why wasn't he out there with the others protesting the war?
What priorities are greater for Mitt Romney's sons than serving in a just war? And if the war in Iraq is not just, why doesn't he call to end it now?
During the next few weeks, the generals will fly in to tell us about the war in Iraq. The problem is generals are professional warriors who achieve more medals and status in wartime than in peacetime, and apparently too few of them understand that for this country their mission is not to fight war but to prevent it. Their bleat that they just follow orders is ridiculous. If a war is unjust, generals should feel obligated to refuse to wage such a war. And if they think this war is just, why aren't the generals in Iraq calling for a draft?
Above all, a continuing unjust war may kill us as a civilized people. Here are the words of Dave Grossman, a retired Lieutenant Colonel and former Army Ranger and paratrooper:
"We cannot help but come away with an image of war as one of the most horrifying and traumatic acts a human being can participate in. War is an environment that will psychologically debilitate 98 percent of all who participate in it for any length of time. And the 2 percent who are not driven insane by war appear to have already been insane -- aggressive psychopaths -- before coming to the battlefield."
It's an obscene injustice for the likes of George Bush, Dick Cheney, the rest of the gang in the White House, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Mitt Romney and the other Republican candidate mental dwarfs, Fox News, and all the other carnival barkers to keep telling us we need this war when it's obvious they're willing to sacrifice someone else's children but not their own.
Enough! If this war is to continue, we must institute a draft as soon as possible
http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/~r/HP/Politics/~3/154358710/its-time-for-reality-no_b_63678.html
War is serious business, a machine that produces amputees, people without faces, people with half their brains destroyed, and corpses so macerated one needs metal dog tags to identify who that was now lying in pieces on the ground at your feet.
It's time to understand the reality that America should never be engaged in a war without the full understanding and cooperation of all Americans -- all socioeconomic classes, all groups.
The only way to ensure such cooperation in a war is a lottery draft that inducts combatants as needed from all classes -- including the class of legislators and government officials who promoted the war in the first place. There's really no other way to ensure that people in power do not use the children of other people as mere cannon fodder to further their own purposes.
Our leaders have been telling us for years now that we're in a war to save Western civilization. They now tell us the war in Iraq is part of the greater war, the "War on Terror." And yet the sons and daughters of these same leaders continue their parties, their education, their privileged lives, while the sons and daughters of ordinary Americans are overseas in a foreign land getting their bodies chopped up in the meat-grinder of a nasty war.
Mitt Romney says his sons are not fighting in Iraq because they're contributing to the war effort by helping him get elected president. When pressed, he mumbles that we have a "volunteer" army, so his sons don't need to serve.
Maybe Mitt Romney is too dense to understand that's precisely the problem: history shows than an American volunteer army will always be an army without full participation across the socioeconomic board. In this country, such an army always consists predominantly of lower middle class and poverty class kids, never an equal spread of risk.
It's not fair. It's hypocrisy. It's shameful to tell the American people this "War on Terror" is a war to save Western civilization while your own children continue their safe lives.
If this war in Iraq is so serious, every American should participate equally in its hazards.
But of course the war-mongers are not calling for a draft, because then the American people will be forced to sit up and take stock of whether they really want their children to go to Iraq to get their faces blown off. And of course if there's a draft, the children of the war-mongers might get drafted. Heaven forbid!
A draft to fight a just war will not ruin America. And if a war is not just, there should be no war at all.
During the Korean War, I was drafted into the U.S. Army after I finished college. I was lucky enough to come home alive and in one piece and continue my ordinary life. We fought the Korean War to contain expansionist Communism. The war lasted only a few years and then it stopped. I thought it was a just war and I've never regretted my service. There's no reason for anyone to fear a draft -- unless you're afraid a draft will turn the American people against a political policy that you know is self-serving and not in the interests of the all Americans -- or unless you're afraid your own children will face combat, or even afraid of yourself in combat.
If we're afraid of war, let's not fight wars. And if we think we need to fight a war, let's spread the risk evenly across our people.
When Dick Cheney was asked why he didn't serve in the Viet Nam War, he said he had "other priorities."
What priorities were greater than serving his country in a just war? And if the Viet Nam War was not just, why wasn't he out there with the others protesting the war?
What priorities are greater for Mitt Romney's sons than serving in a just war? And if the war in Iraq is not just, why doesn't he call to end it now?
During the next few weeks, the generals will fly in to tell us about the war in Iraq. The problem is generals are professional warriors who achieve more medals and status in wartime than in peacetime, and apparently too few of them understand that for this country their mission is not to fight war but to prevent it. Their bleat that they just follow orders is ridiculous. If a war is unjust, generals should feel obligated to refuse to wage such a war. And if they think this war is just, why aren't the generals in Iraq calling for a draft?
Above all, a continuing unjust war may kill us as a civilized people. Here are the words of Dave Grossman, a retired Lieutenant Colonel and former Army Ranger and paratrooper:
"We cannot help but come away with an image of war as one of the most horrifying and traumatic acts a human being can participate in. War is an environment that will psychologically debilitate 98 percent of all who participate in it for any length of time. And the 2 percent who are not driven insane by war appear to have already been insane -- aggressive psychopaths -- before coming to the battlefield."
It's an obscene injustice for the likes of George Bush, Dick Cheney, the rest of the gang in the White House, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Mitt Romney and the other Republican candidate mental dwarfs, Fox News, and all the other carnival barkers to keep telling us we need this war when it's obvious they're willing to sacrifice someone else's children but not their own.
Enough! If this war is to continue, we must institute a draft as soon as possible