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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (128542)	4/6/2004 5:07:43 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<Now there's no draft, and Bush is so far out of soldiers that he's cutting short the returns of guys who thought that their 1-year tours of duty were over.> One year is nothing if it's a serious cause. My father spent four years in tents in the desert in WWII with shrapnel flying around and enemy not far away, because "Hitler had to be stopped". I doubt that most American soldiers have their hearts in it quite as much as that. Fighting for Halliburton's profits must be demoralizing when the expectation of young Iraqi women garlanding their liberators evaporated like the swarms of virgins Jihadis expect to find when they decorporealize. "Mission Accomplished" wasn't supposed to look like this. A few months might have been okay and even fun, but it's starting to look like serious hard work now, even with the mod cons of USA military life at base camp. Meanwhile, there's a draft being prepared, "just in case", they say. In defence of freedom they are planning to force people against their will to kill and be killed. Some freedom. They deserve to get insurrection at home for that approach to freedom. In a capitalist system, with freedom, self-determination, voluntary exchange of value, free association and with money as the arbiter of most exchanges of value, one would think that if there's a shortage of soldiers, the government, backed by the taxpayer electorate, would raise the price paid to soldiers and keep raising it until they had the numbers and quality of people they need. Slavery went out of fashion a century ago, but it seems the skull and bones brigade is bringing it back in. Sure, the slaves won't be just the melanin-rich this time, but they'll assuredly be male, young and unable to buy their way, or have their father get them, out of the line of fire. It's not too late! Call an emergency session of the UN general assembly and start the NUN process. Admit that the PNAC isn't the way to run a 21st century railroad. Superconducting levitation is the way to do it. It's time to move on from the 19th century geopolitical processes. Bleating over Rwanda's genocide is a bit late. Moaning about Iraqis fighting for a piece of the action, [oil and power], where fighting for a piece of the action is the way things are being decided, is a bit late too. A draft in the USA is crazy and criminal! Goodbye freedom. Hello serfdom. Mqurice

To: Bilow who wrote (128542)	4/6/2004 7:13:43 PM
From: h0db	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Carl, there is no draft, but the number of activated guard and reserves is at an all time high, and their proportion in Iraq by the middle of the summer will be 50% of all forces. This is a prescription for disaster, IMHO. We have almost no combat reserves left; Of the US Army's 10 active duty division, all are either in Iraq, just returned, or are preparing to go. The only forces not touched so far are those in Korea, and those already in Afghanistan. With currently scheduled unit departures, within a month there will be 20,000 fewer troops in Iraq than there are now. We should be increasing troop levels as the insurgency builds, but for now we are doing the opposite. Meanwhile, Bush strives to demonstrate American will by sending US Marines into an urban area to conduct house-to-house fighting, negating their advantage in firepower, mobility, and technology. Today we lost 4 Marines in Fallujah, and 12 more in Ramadi to "avenge" the deaths and mutilation of 4 contract security guards last week. The "coalition of the willing" defeated the Iraqi army in a matter of days and proclaimed victory. This week, the real Iraq war may have begun, uniting Sunni and Shia to oppose the occupation. But don't worry-- the handover of sovereignty and government will still occur on 1 June.