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Saturday, April 03, 2004
The Draft

Well, America is at war. We were attacked on September 11th, 2001, as some of you may recall. It was truly a shocking day in American history, and even though the President seemed like a deer in the headlights for most of the day, he eventually made a speech to the country. And I was absolutely prepared to be inspired. Some presidential addresses are the stuff of the gods.

"We have nothing to fear, but fear itself." FDR - 1933

"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what YOU can do for your country." JFK - 1961

Now, even the most gentle estimation of the president's verbal abilities would still not use the word mellifluous, but he has some amazing speech writers, and this was a once in a lifetime event. I wanted to be overwhelmed with a sense of purpose. So, I tuned in, and what glorious message does the leader of the free world have for his people in the wake of these disastrous attacks?

To paraphrase, "Go buy something or the terrorists win."

To put it mildly, I was disappointed.

We must not sacrifice, for we are already perfect. We must go to the mall to show our unity. We will not ration food or material to gird ourselves against the enemy. We will defeat them by getting fatter, and being more complacent.

The fundamentalists hate us for a lot of reasons, but I don't think they hate our freedom. They aren't stupid. They have a different mindset in many cases, but I can't just write them off so easily. There are millions of peaceful Muslims in the world. I think they know we are soft, though.

So, getting back to sacrifice, a US Congressman, Charles Rangel, I believe, put forward the proposal that we reinstate the military draft.

Were we really so desperate that we needed to reinstate military conscription? Well, not really. But the congressman, who is a black guy, noticed that a fairly large percentage of the men and women who were going to be asked to sacrifice life and liberty, are brown, black, whatever. So, his idea is to reinstate the draft, let everybody's kids roll the dice, and let the chips fall where they may. And you know what? I'll bet doing just that would change a lot of things in America in a very positive way.

First of all, assuming that America wasn't fighting any foreign adventures, certainly draftees in for a two-year hitch could provide valuable services in country. They could build houses for the homeless, clean up projects in inner cities, fix levees, plant trees, whatever. There is certainly an endless list of things that could be done.

Would I personally resent having two years of my life taken by the government? Probably so, Would it do me a hell of a lot of good? Realistically, yeah. And if the country is at war, then maybe my ass gets shipped overseas. America isn't perfect by any means, but it still seems to me that if the time comes where you are asked to defend it, you have to go. That's one of the costs, I'm afraid.

The volunteer military is an amazing collection of all kinds of people, but we all know it's made possible by the man and woman who come from circumstances that provide no other realistic chances at success. The military is full of kids from rural towns, inner cities, and others who just didn't have the sense to be born to Harvard alums. Obviously, many of them are minorities. And Congress is not exactly bursting at the seams with brown faces, so it's easy for these people to send the military off to measure dicks on the President's behalf.

If everybody went into the military, would these chickenshit fatassed Baby Boomers be so excited about their spoiled kids cleaning up some South Bronx shithole, or ducking snipers in the desert? I doubt it.

Perspective is everything, and our leaders lack it.

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posted at 11:52 AM

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