We Need the Draft

The flap today is all about Blackwater. Erik Prince testifies before an investigative committee on the hill that his boys are all sweet professionals while answering questions about instances like on of his drunken professionals killing another security guard then being spirited out of the country before he could be tried by the Iraqis. Isn’t that just the kind of behavior you want your country to be represented by?

This blog has discussed America’s mercenaries several times in the past. What it all boils down to for me is that if the people of America want to have some say in how the military is used and whether they would rather pay private companies three times the money to do military jobs or have the military do it themselves, they will have to reinstate the draft.

If everyone’s sons and daughters were obligated to provide two years of service to their country, everyone would pay a lot more attention to the uses to which those sons and daughters were put.

The far right wingnuts can rant all they want about how we lost Vietnam because Congress cut off the funds, but the true fact is that Congress withdrew funding because the right thinking people of the United States were fed up with seeing their children turned into cannon fodder for no valid purpose.

Another pure fact is that the privatization of military functions has cost – not saved – us money. To top that off, as the size of our mercenary forces grows the likelihood and frequency of the kind of inappropriate behavior that has brought Prince before the Senate multiply.

Draft enough people to fill all the needed military and supportive positions and then demand that they be used only for valid purposes. For instance, if we weren’t now spending all our human and monetary capital in the totally out of line war in Iraq, we could perhaps do something positive for the people of Myanmar.

As long as the American people are so isolated from the impacts of the war, they will remain complacent in their support of or inaction regarding that war. Involve the people directly and we will begin to see more responsible action from our government. As I see it, draft into national service, whether military, military support or world community service is the straightest path to that goal.

Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle