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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (97325)	1/28/2005 10:10:54 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793739

And what is your explanation for the recruiting shortfall in NC, I uncovered last month? Perhaps the explanation is simply that there are not enough people who want to go there and do that. I wonder if anyone is addressing it from that angle. There are people who would want to go but have obstacles, for example, family at home who would suffer from their absence or difficulties in restarting their studies or careers. There are ways to compensate them such as providing alternate child, parent, or spousal care or making arrangements with schools or employers so they are free to go. But for those who just plain aren't interested for whatever reason, there isn't any incentive. Their hearts and minds need to be changed. Wonder if any thought is going into that. I'd love to see a survey of prospective candidates...

To: unclewest who wrote (97325)	1/28/2005 12:28:39 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 793739

UW -- I am not going to second guess you on your predictions of a recruiting shortfall. You have your ears to the ground with sources we don't have. Further, the MSM is widely reporting that the war in Iraq has lost the support of the American people, so you can't expect people to agree to dying "for nothing". Several people have suggested options other than the draft, e.g., yesterday I suggested that the new Iraqi government might institute its own draft. You said (to someone else) you did not think the WOT will stop with Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't know if that was meant to be a response to my suggestion, as well. You and I are about the same age, I think you might be a little bit older, but we both remember Vietnam. I was opposed to the draft then, and am opposed to it now, for philosophical reasons. I am a libertarian, I don't believe that people should be coerced into serving the interests of others. With respect to the military, that philosophy has a bit of a problem, in that it's well understood that if you enlist, you can't back out unilaterally and refuse to serve, even if you decide you made a terrible mistake. It's very, very hard to go into battle. Normal human behavior is to avoid danger. So, anybody who spent their life in the military has spent their life in a situation where behavior is coerced. You don't have a problem with that. I understand. I don't have a problem with coercing the service of those who have made the initial commitment to serve. It's the initial step we disagree on. I think the commitment to serve in the military should be voluntary, except in the case of national emergency, existential wars which require the mobilization of millions. I think the Civil War was one of those situations, and so was WWII, but not WWI, Korea, or Vietnam. Those last three on the list were not existential wars. The war in Iraq is not an existential war. We thought it was, going into it, but it wasn't. Or at least we were told that it was. The thing that bothers me, to this day, is that there doesn't appear to be any real effort being made to get at the source of the false intelligence. This bothers me, and I know I am not alone, although I am well aware that it's an unpopular opinion among Bush supporters. I don't want to go to war on any more pretexts. And I don't want to draft any unwilling American men or women on the basis of a pretext, or for any purpose other than the existential needs of their own country which ultimately preserves their own wellbeing.