Skip to main content

Why do Democrats want to reinstate the draft?

They say:

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

As the article then points out:

Rangel, a veteran of the Korean War who has unsuccessfully sponsored legislation on conscription in the past, said he will propose the measure early next year.

What the article doesn't point out is that Rangel introduces the legislation...then votes against it. He is, in other words, making political hay. He is, to put it politely, full of shit.

Radicals want a draft because they know their history. They know that the anti-Vietnam war movement was driven primarily by a hatred for the draft. When the draft ended, so did the vast majority of anti-war protests. In order to stir up more current anti-war protest, they need a draft to piss people off. So you get manipulative, disingenous cretins introducing legislation to reinstate the draft. Then they vote against it. How principled of them!

The military doesn't want a draft. A draft means they must accept anyone who is drafted; you have to find a place for him/her/it. Right now, the only branch of the military that occasionally can't meet its recruitment goals is the Army. The Marines aren't having a problem. The Air Force and Navy actually turn people away.

So if Rangel (and his ilk) were honest and felt that we needed a bigger military, the first thing they'd do is vote to increase the size of the military, which would increase the recruitment goals, which would get more people into the U.S. military.

That's step one, even if you're silly enough to actually think the draft is a good thing.

For myself, I agree with the late, great Robert A. Heinlein (the writer who whack jobs insist on calling "fascist"):

No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and in the long run no state ever has.

'Nuff said.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I (Briefly) Try a Mac

 I Bought a Mac. My first computer was an Atari 800, fully loaded with 48k of RAM. And I mean the original, beige model, not its low-slung, fancy successor. My friend went for an Apple IIe, which cost a relative fortune. Eventually, I’d step up to an Atari 1040ST, while he’d get a IIgs. And even more eventually, we both ended up with IBM PC compatibles. MSDOS was my friend, Unix an ally. It was with great reluctance that I transition from a command-line interface (CLI) to a Graphic User Interface (GUI), always on a PC platform and never a Mac. I never bought into the hype and never experienced all the horrid things that allegedly befell anyone using a PC. For me, they just worked. Yet here I am, these many decades later, typing this on a brand-new MacBook Air M4. How things change... Initially, there was little regret but a mounting list of frustrations. Adjusting to the keyboard isn’t too hard, it’s just a matter of experimentation. Learning how to scale the display wasn’t awful, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dune Part 2 (2024)

I have come not to praise Dune but to bury it. I am in a distinct minority. So be it. To explain why, there will be some minor spoilers ahead; sorry. The short version is #NotMyDune. Summary: Picking up where Dune Part 1 left off, we find the young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) hanging out with the Fremen. Plots to overthrow rival houses and empires ensue. Go here to see what I thought about Dune Part 1 (2021) . Overall, I found it to be technically brilliant, but lacking a human heart, an exercise in frenetic slow motion. D2 is more of the same, though with far more action. Acting-wise, everyone is doing a fine, more than adequate job. Absolutely no one or nothing stands out. The way the characters are written (adapted, actually), their back and forths and interactions, are all weak and unengaging. I generally hate when they speak. I've read the novel a ridiculous number of times, and these films are prompting me to read it again. I understand that trying to translate the n...
1 comment
Read more

Have I mentioned I saw Monsters vs. Aliens?

It’s possible that Pixar is becoming a blight on the world of animation. Yes, they do some really great work ( The Incredibles , Ratatouille ), but they’ve also done some clunkers ( Cars , Wall-E ). Their greatest sin, though, is that they apparently radiate a variation of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, so that any other animated film – especially if done with CG – is automatically judged inferior. There is some justification to this, but you don’t see every live action film being compared to, say, the films of Ingmar Bergman (well, except by brooding people wearing dark glasses sitting in dim coffee shops smoking clove cigarettes discussing cinema, damn you ). In the traditional film world, it’s accepted that different artists turn out different products. In the animated world, everyone is supposed to match or surpass Pixar, or so it seems. Needless to say, that’s just a crock. Monsters vs Aliens is to your typical Pixar production as Spielberg is to Scorsese. And I h...
2 comments
Read more