"e: I'm old enough to have been registered "1A" to become cannon fodder in Viet Nam. And yet I've never seen the instant polarization that this pre-emptive war has triggered.
I think that having been around for the Vietnam era adds some historical perspective. I was also 1A, but was lucky to do well in the lottery."
As I did. My number was "181" and the quota for the year (1971) was expected to end at "125." So in the last week of 1971 I told my draft board to change my status from 2S (student deferment) to 1A, thus ensuring I would not be drafted in the _following_ year unless and until they got to "365" and then picked up the count for the previous year. I was home-free!
(Had my lottery number been lower, I still wouldn't have been drafted, as the draft ended fairly soon thereafter, when I was still student-deferred.)
" In retrospect, I'm not sure the draft is such a bad idea: a lot of hawkish folks might need a bit more convincing if they, or their own children, were going to be directly involved."
I disagree completely. Drafting soldiers is involuntary servitude, forbidden, as I read it, by the Constitution. If an absolute national emergency exists, perhaps extenuating circumstances exist. Neither Korea nor Vietnam were national emergencies: they were wars of opportunity, wars created by politicians whose sons were not draftable.
The hawks during the Vietnam war mostly had their sons exempted. Clinton escaped to Oxford. Bush escaped into the "National Guard." Al Gore volunteered.
Nearly all of the "Neo-Cons" today--Podhoretz, Kristol, Fleischer, etc.--avoided the draft in various ways.
"And we're only polarized in this country; it appears the people in the rest of the world are mostly in agreement about the wisdom of our actions. But they just don't understand. "
The Coalition of the Willing will deliver shock and awe to the Axis of Evil in France, Germany, Pakistan, and other Evil-Doer countries!
And rebuilding these nations will help our economy, even if it enslaves American taxpayers for even more months out of each tax year. Besides, Halliburton looks to be a big winner as new wells are drilled in American-annexed Iraq, so Dick Cheney will do very, very well.
As that C-student who escaped combat service says, "We gonna open a can of Texas whoop-ass on those bad boys!"
--Tim May |
