Maybe draft would awaken public

Joe,

Not many weeks ago, people were getting upset about Senator John Kerry "disparaging" the troops, and my guess was that he knew something the rest of us didn't besides the fact that the war would continue. And sunuvugun, here, peeping its head around the corner is a bill to reopen the draft. Dip me in shit and roll me in Post Toasties, did that ever not take me by surprise. The talking heads say that it's "symbolic", "unworkable", a "gesture and statement", and I'm guessing it'll remain so until after the next presidential election. By then the military is going to be depleted, worn out, overextended, and may even have a few more jobs tacked onto it, so there'll be crocodile tears by all concerned, both sides of the aisle will nod gravely and their explainers will talk about time for the younger generation to "pay their dues".

Gotta ante up for citizenship, folks. Of course no one will be surprised at who gets to ante up their time and their flesh and blood for full citizenship while others will get a free pass, seems they were actually citizens all along, don't need to give any such sureties as, well, maybe your life.

I have a cousin my age, one of my few in-town relatives. I usually see him (when unavoidable) at a barber shop we both use. The socialist publisher of the last century Emanuel Haldeman-Julius would have loved him; he is just what Haldeman-Julius described as a Babbitt. He forms an opinion, and its correctness is confirmed by the vehemence, volume, belligerence, and longevity of his holding forth. Emoting and reacting are most important, thought, facts (verifiable ones, anyway), and logic, well, they're just signs of weakness. Conservative, this guy. I learned that it's handy to have military service behind you when you're dealing with people like this. He questions my suitability as an American and I just point and say, "Talk to the (scars, cane, bronze star, purple hearts as necessary)" and that usually backs him and others off. Atheists and 'commies' like me have no place there. With his ilk, if the label is the thing, then the thing is the label. Among the names he has bestowed on me over the years, the really outstanding one was just a while ago: a "Pinko com-simp." I thought that sort of expression died with McCarthy -- well, ya never know.

But, he came in killing al-Qaeda with his mouth. He envies me that I've been in combat, actually shot and otherwise harmed people, thinks it would have suited him ever so much better (he's probably right) and also going after Kerry for "disparaging" the troops. He holds Kerry in about the same regard as "The Liberal Media". So I asked him where he got it. What? The word "disparage". I'd heard him use it more in the last two minutes than he'd ever probably used it in his whole previous life. He was outraged. But he was one of the many who thumped the tub for Gulf War I using the same phrases: We have to stop him. We can't let him get away with it. He's another Hitler. 'He' being Saddam Hussein, of course. 'We' being persons other than the speaker whose body fluids are much too precious to spill on the sand of some ghastly, far away place. Almost the exact same words out of so many mouths. Effective media, if nothing else.

Maybe there is a chance that some people would wake up if there was a draft. Maybe they'd sit up and take notice that the "State" is a separate entity from the people who live in it and that it has interests which are often at variance with them and that its interests trump theirs. Maybe they'd see that there are 'citizens' and a residue which may be regarded and used as chattel. Doubt it, though.

Bob Myers

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Hi Bob,

My guess is that the draft reinstatement proposal will remain a symbolic offering, part humorous and part symbolic and illustrative justice. I have learned that people are very literal, not to mention that the news media would simplify it down to "The Democrats wanna draft your kid." Dems will never take that chance. Also, old guys will remember that it was only the college deferments offered as a sop to middle class families that bought off middle class protest for so long during the Vietnam War. So while so many working class kids were sweating in some hooch the children of the true management, professional and semi-professional middle class were getting a start on their working class classmates. I came back from the Navy and worked for some of those fuckers.

I never thought I'd say this, but hell yes, I wish there were a UNIVERSAL draft.

And hey, your cousin is by no means the worst of it. Read this months Harper's magazine about how millions of fundamentalist Christians are spending nearly a billion dollars to educate two million kids in "Christian manliness," which emphasizes making war, willingness to kill civilians and, most chillingly, disobeying orders while in uniform, in order to obey god's higher commands, and moving to replace our government with a theocracy. The writer did an excellent job, but he still doesn't know the half of it. Liberals still do not understand what 30 million people who want or would easily accept a theocratic state means. Their danger to our nation does not take place entirely at the voting booth. Or even mostly in the voting booth. Americans had better learn to look out for what these people call "The Joshua Generation."

Meanwhile, they are happily gearing up to put large numbers of their own in the military. Maybe we need a draft just to water down their presence!

Solidarity,

Joe