|
|
This morning I listened to a local radio debate over whether or not a draft should be re-established. Although at the moment there is little support for a draft amongst lawmakers, there are vocal supporters of such a drastic measure. From www.seattlepi.com i gleaned the following:
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is adamant that he will not ask Congress to authorize a draft, and officials at the Selective Service System, the independent federal agency that would organize any conscription, stress that the possibility of a so-called "special skills draft" is remote.
Nonetheless, the agency has begun the process of creating the procedures and policies to conduct such a targeted draft in case military officials ask Congress to authorize it and the lawmakers agree to such a request.
"Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others, what came up was that nobody foresees a need for a large conventional draft such as we had in Vietnam," said Richard Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System. "But they thought that if we have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special skills draft."
Flahavan said Selective Service planning for a possible draft of linguists and computer experts began last fall after Pentagon personnel officials said the military needed more people with skills in those areas.
A targeted registration and draft "is strictly in the planning stage," he said, adding that "the whole thing is driven by what appears to be the more pressing and relevant need today" -- the deficit in language and computer experts.
The spokesman said it could take about two years to "to have all the kinks worked out."
As I have a fifteen year old son, I feel I cannot write about matters as important as war and drafts in anything but an emotional way. I am sickened to read about the young persons who are dying each
day. I know I am not the only person who is being worn down by the death tolls. Therefore I have asked our Paris editor, Virginia born Timothy Hagy, to write this month's editorial.
* * *
Déjà Vu
By Timothy Hagy
"The coalition is not crumbling" proclaimed the White House last Wednesday, even as Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republican have pulled troops from Iraq, and it is all but certain that Poland and Thailand will follow suit. Britain and Australia have said they will stay, but have refused to send additional manpower to fill the thinning ranks. And as of today, France, Germany and Russia have shown little willingness to get involved.
Over the past few weeks, the images beamed from Iraq have left little doubt that the situation is grave, while the images beamed from the US home front leave little doubt that the cost of war is considerably higher than the laser-strike video game once predicted by the White House.
The lesson of history has much to offer at this particular moment.
During the Vietnam era, the incumbent President acquired a plush post in the Texas Air National Guard (a leisurely obligation that required no combat duty), while Karl Rove and Dick Cheney evaded military service altogether through the acquisition of student deferments. At the exact same moment, two of my cousins were drafted into the armed forces in the fall of 1969. There are two images that stand out quite clearly in my mind from those very sad and very uncertain years. The first recollection is of our family praying each evening around the dinner table for the safe return of the men on the battlefield, and the second is of the televised national draft lottery. In those days, regular network programming was interrupted from time to time in order to segue to a scene of a giant cage full of capsules spinning around and around. Eventually a capsule would slide down a shoot, and then the appointed host would read out the name of a month and a day: all males born on that date, currently aged 18 or older, were number one on the list for the next round of the draft.
Recently in the hallowed halls of Washington, the delicate subject of reinstitution of obligatory military service has been quietly voiced. The White House, and the Secretary of Defense, Mr. MacnaRummy, are quick to deny that there are any plans to reinstate the draft. The same duo told Americans that "Weapons of Mass Destruction were being fabricated in pre-war Iraq at an alarming rate", that "an oppressed Iraqi people would greet their liberators with showers of roses", and that "terrorists embedded on Iraqi soil were planning further strikes at the west". The latter claim is now correct, only because the American-led occupation of Iraq has generated a whole new sub-species of Quaeda"ish" cells aiming their collective hatred at the United States.
If you believe that "no draft is mandatory", that "the situation in Iraq is under control", and that "no further spending is required to replace the lost men and machinery gone up in flames" - well then, you must have slept through it all the first time around.
|
|
