Dem House candidate: "We're about to have a DRAFT unless we make a change"

[Dems Will Win]

Protestors greet Bush on visit to the North Shore
BY IRV LEAVITT AND SARA LOEB
STAFF WRITERS

-snip-

Goodman rose to prominence as a founder of a Northbrook anti-war group in 2003. He told the audience, "They're going to tell us up and down that we're not going to have a draft, but we're going to have to have a draft if we (continue the occupation of) Iraq, because we're running out of troops.

"We're about to have a draft unless we make a change ... If we don't, the women are going to be drafted this time along with the men. And your friends and your children and your grandchildren will be drafted for a war that doesn't have to be, and doesn't have to continue. And there won't be deferments any more."

Former state Rep. Lauren Beth Gash struck a similar chord when she called for support of Democratic Party candidates for offices in the White House and in Congress "if you're concerned about what's going on in Iraq. I'm standing next to my 18-year-old son, who just registered for the Selective Service, and I'm concerned," she said.

"It's all right with me if Mr. Bush is here to dedicate a police training facility," Goodman said. "You know what else would be OK? It would be OK for Mr. Bush to dedicate a school. But there's no money for schools, is there?"

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http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-story/localnews/current/wi/07-29-04-349816.html

BUSH '04 = DRAFT '05

KERRY '04 = PNAC OUT THE DOOR!!

[Radical Activist]

1. Finally someone said it

But the same thing holds true for Kerry. Unless he has a plan to get out soon we will have a draft.

[Dems Will Win]

2. Actually Kerry DOES have a NO-DRAFT PLAN. Here it is:

The major media cover hardly anything that John Kerry says, especially if it is about the draft. So you would never know it, but John Kerry has a No-Draft Plan, a plan to strengthen the military in key areas yet draw down U.S. troop levels in Iraq by internationalizing the situation and then getting out as soon as possible.

Here are the five main points of Kerry’s No-Draft Plan:

1. Move some paper-pushers to combat (lots of potential there)

2. Increase enlistment with real scholarships, benefits and pay raises

3. Let troops know Special Ops will hunt al-Queda, no more invasions needed, so re-up rate goes up. "Primarily a law enforcement effort, not a full military effort", said John Kerry on Meet The Press.

4. Start a "Civilian Stability Corps" that would help in reconstructing Afghanistan and Iraq and relieve military pressure. It would be kind of like the Peace Corps—but on steroids.

5. GET FOREIGN TROOPS TO COME INTO INSTEAD OF LEAVE IRAQ.

Kerry gave some details about the proposed Civilian Stability Corps, made up of volunteers:

"...I propose that we enlist thousands of them in a Civilian Stability Corps, a reserve organization of volunteers ready to help win the peace in troubled places. Like military reservists, they will have peacetime jobs; but in times of national need, they will be called into service to restore roads, renovate schools, open hospitals, repair power systems, draft a constitution, or build a police force. A Civilian Stability Corps can bring the best of America to the worst of the world—and reduce pressure on the military."
- Source: Kerry, John. "Protecting Our Military Families in Times of War: A Military Family Bill of Rights." March 17, 2004. http://johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0317.html >

In April, on a conference call with 130 College Newspaper Editors, Kerry said “No Draft”, that he would have a sensible foreign policy that would not require reinstatement. And in June, Kerry told a Wisconsin high school that if elected, a draft would be "absolutely unnecessary".

Kerry’s plan calls for increasing active-duty troop levels by 40,000 people. He also doubles the number of Special Ops troops. Half the 40,000 being added are civil engineering/reconstruction specialists and half are combat, costing an extra $7 billion, but it relieves the pressure on the Guard and Reserves for overseas deployments and essentially saves the Volunteer Army. $7 billion is well worth not having to bring back the draft!

Kerry charges that Bush is ruining the Volunteer approach with long Guard and Reserve deployments and numerous stop-loss orders, which Kerry says is a “Back-door Draft”. Since Kerry will increase pay, benefits, scholarships and reduce long deployments of regular troops and the reserves, if he is elected the re-enlistment rates and recruitment rates will return to normal. Recently, troops returning from Iraq are reportedly leaving the Service in huge numbers, although denied by DoD (see David Hackworth, Voting With their Feet http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38644).

With this No-Draft Plan, Kerry will not have to resort to conscription, even after Bush has made such a mess of it in Iraq. Kerry has also pledged that he will push renewable energy development and true energy independence, “so that we never again have soldiers dying for oil”.

Kerry has criticized the inequality of the draft, that the poor and minorities are inducted in higher numbers than their fair share and that the draft is a source of conflict. John Kerry will not reinstate the draft—outside of the invasion of the United States by China or something like that.

The choice is thus clear to all voters. Vote for Bush and you are also voting for the resumption of the draft—to man his hidden agenda of invading more countries and staying in Iraq forever.

Or vote for Kerry and you are voting PNAC out of the White House, and with it Bush’s hidden agenda to bring back the draft so U.S. companies can dominate the world’s remaining oil supply.

Finally, a draft is morally reprehensible, an infringement of freedom against the principles of the Constitution. We know that Bush cares nothing about morality when it comes to Iraq and that Kerry has over the years always expressed real opposition to the draft for a number of moral and ethical reasons. Having lived through the Vietnam era, Kerry knows well the long history of conflict and opposition that the draft has wrought.

John Kerry will not reinstate the draft, but Bush is secretly gearing up the whole system right now for the summer of next year.

Moral opposition to conscription goes all the way back to the year 1814. In a response to a proposed draft to fight the British, Daniel Webster perhaps said it best:

“Is this, sir, consistent with the character of a free government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No, sir, indeed it is not.

"The Constitution is libeled, foully libeled. The people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves.

"Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?"

BUSH ’04 = DRAFT ‘05

[Radical Activist]

3. So what happens if

Other nations decide Iraq is BS (like they are right now) and won't send foreign troops? And, what if everyone who was going to enlist did so after 911 and most young people decide they aren't going to enlist now because Iraq is a bunch of BS.

Kerry's no draft plan depends on two variables that frankly, are unlikely to happen. It takes a big leap of faith to believe that we will both have a large number of new foreign troops and a significant rise in enlistment.

The only sure-fire no draft plan that Kerry can control and actually make happen is to get out of Iraq. Everything else is guesswork. I'm waiting for him to describe an exit strategy at the convention instead of a plan to continue Bush's mistake with even more troops.

[napi21]

4. I don't believe that's going to happen.

First, Bush has pissed off almost all the foreign leaders, except Blair, so even if he asks for help, he won't get it. I don't blame them either. If somebody tells me to F off I'll do it myself, and then has to crawl back because it didn't work, TS! A new President is the only possible solution. He can privately say to these leaders that "my predecessor is an idiot, and I apologize for his behavior in the name of America". A good Diplomat can get cooperation.

Second, I really doubt a draft would work today. The armies of the past operated totally different that the one of today. You used to be able to take a body, throw it into a 6 week brainwashing course of shooting, fighting techiniques, and absolute obedience to orders, and at the end of tha 6 weeks, you had a trained fighting man! There's so much technology training involved in todays army, it just doesn't work that way anymore.

[Radical Activist]

6. Besides being less practical

I also think a draft for an unpopular war would be politically impossible today. Since Vietnam I think we learned that the government can't take us into a large scale war that the people don't want. If Bush tried to reinstate the draft I think large numbers of people would find a way to resist it and not serve. If Bush tried to start the draft it would start a massive resistance movement that would threaten Bush's ability to govern the nation. If Kerry started a draft there would be a lot less resistance to it.

[Dems Will Win]

5. Kerry will EASILY get foreign troops in--as long as he gives up

American control of the OIL as he already said he would do.

Then French and Russian oil companies can buy oil too and get reconstruction contracts then and they will be there within weeks of an agreement with Kerry to turn the oil over to the Iraqis and let them buy some--and explore some.

Besides Kerry looks French and has already said the foreign leaders want him to win so they can work again with America.

If Kerry is President, Special Ops will be doubled and the Army will be protecting. 8 weeks of heavy Special Ops--without bombings or helicopters or tanks--and the insurgency will be a fraction of what it is now. I think that's what Kerry appears to be planning.

So Iraq won't be the issue you think it is because Kerry will actually solve it with Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke--just like Bosnia and Kosovo (0 dead, you know).

With increased pay and benes and real scholarships and medical, the Reserves and Guard will boom under Silver Star winner President Kerry, as the troops will know he's not PNAC, won't invade more countries and will care about them, NOT JUST USE THEM.

If Kerry is elected your variables (real enough under Bush) will diminish and then disappear.

[Radical Activist]

7. But that would defeat the purpose of the war

If we give up control of the oil in Iraq then the war was for nothing. Kerry is much better than Bush, but I'm not sure he'll go against the entire military-industrial complex in that way. I guess we'll find out in another year.

[Dems Will Win]

8. Radical Activist, you need to find out a lot more about John Kerry

if you think he's going to keep the oil.

Kerry is an internationalist and believes strongly in the UN. Here is Josh Marshall on the difference between Bush and Kerry and the Dems. (Who Will Win):

The key threats to the United States came to be seen less in terms of traditional conflicts between states and more in terms of endemic regional turmoil of the sort found in the Balkans. "The Clinton Administration," says Jonathan Winer, "started out with a very traditional Democratic or even mainstream approach to foreign policy: big-power politics, Russia being in the most important role; a critical relationship with China; European cooperation; and some multilateralism." But over the years, he went on, "they moved much more to a failed-state, global-affairs kind of approach, recognizing that the trends established by globalization required you to think about foreign policy in a more synthetic and integrated fashion than nation-state to nation-state."

As Winer argues, the threats were less from Russia or China, or even from the rogue states, than from the breakdown of sovereignty and authority in a broad geographic arc that stretched from West Africa through the Middle East, down through the lands of Islam, and into Southeast Asia. In this part of the world poverty, disease, ignorance, fanaticism, and autocracy frequently combined in a self-reinforcing tangle, fostering constant turmoil. Home to many failed or failing states, this area bred money laundering, waves of refugees, drug production, gunrunning, and terrorist networks—the cancers of the twenty-first-century world order.

In the Balkans, Holbrooke, Clark, and other leading figures found themselves confronting problems that required not only American military force but also a careful synthesis of armed power, peacekeeping capacity, international institutions, and nongovernmental organizations to stabilize the region and maintain some kind of order. Though the former Yugoslavia has continued to experience strife, the settlement in the Balkans remains the most successful one in recent memory, and offers the model on which a Kerry Administration would probably build. As Holbrooke told me, the Bush Administration's actions in Iraq have shown that the Administration understands only the military component of this model: "Most of them don't have a real understanding of what it takes to do nation-building, which is an important part of the overall democratic process."

A key assumption shared by almost all Democratic foreign-policy hands is that by themselves the violent overthrow of a government and the initiation of radical change from above almost never foster democracy, an expanded civil society, or greater openness. "If you have too much change too quickly," Winer says, "you have violence and repression. We don't want to see violence and repression in . We want to see a greater zone for civilization—a greater zone for personal and private-sector activity and for governmental activity that is not an enactment of violence." Bush and his advisers have spoken eloquently about democratization. But in the view of their Democratic counterparts, their means of pursuing it are plainly counterproductive. It is here, Holbrooke says, that the Administration's alleged belief in the stabilizing role of liberal democracy and open society collides with its belief in the need to rule by force and, if necessary, violence: "The neoconservatives and the conservatives—and they both exist in uneasy tension within this Administration—shift unpredictably between advocacy of democratization and advocacy of neo-imperialism without any coherent intellectual position, except the importance of the use of force."

-snip-

Now do you understand? It's called nation-building, the thing George said he wouldn't do--and he didn't.

[DemBones DemBones]

11. Move paper pushers to combat? That's gotta be a joke!

A draft would be easier to accomplish. Paper pushers are awfully good at securing their posteriors.

[KoKo]

12. Has he made any comments about the Hired Mercenaries, though?

I think these folks are scary. Hired guns not responsible to our own Military? If he plans on keeping these folks then he won't need a draft but if he keeps them, I worry that at some point they will get out of hand and be their own "private army" working to destabilize parts of the world for special interests.

I hope this will be addressed by someone down the road in this campaign.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. You're right. Kerry has the same "plan" as BushCorp.

He calls for staying in Iraq for, at least, 4 more years. His "plan" that calls for international involvement is pure B.S. and he knows it.
NATO and the UN want no part of the briar patch that Bush and a rollover congress got us into.

The only way that the UN or NATO would send troops is if the U.S. would give control of the military to them.

The military is stretched to the breaking point now. It's just a matter of (not much) time before the poor sods that are there now realize that they're fighting and killing for nothing. They're already pulling back reservists and retirees because no-one in their right mind is enlisting. And, it won't matter a bit whose in charge, Bush or Kerry, when the troops run out, the draft will be back.

[Dems Will Win]

10. You're Wrong. If Kerry did that, Teresa will NOT give him any NOOKIE

Think about it. No, wait--maybe don't think about it...

[Dems Will Win]

13. kick