Referendum on the Draft

[bryant69]

Imagine you are in the voting booth - you are going to vote on a draft bill, that will create a national draft tomorrow (if passed). If passsed, people in their 20s across the land will be drafted into the military tomorrow and will be in Iraq in 8 weeks or so (however long Basic is). Would you pull that lever?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Phredicles]

1. No - our culture needs to be less militarized, not more so.

[smb]

2. Now, Give Me A Lever...

...to wire Charlie Rangel's mouth shut before he does any more damage, and I might injure my wrist yanking that sucker....

[Phredicles]

4. Yeah, between this and his comments on Hugo Chavez,

I dread seeing the man's name in print.

[Bucky]

3. I'd vote no, but only because the Pentagon opposes the draft

Generals like having a volunteer, motivated Army. It makes for higher morale and more disciplined troops. If there were a draft, I would hope it would be limited to Yale, Sanford, and Harvard graduates.

[TechBear_Seattle]

5. My polling place doesn't use levers.

I would fill in the circle next to No, however.

[NotGivingUp]

6. a draft that effects the entire population will make for less war and

a populace that will be more concerned with what is going on in this country. this being said i am entirely against war.

[sui generis]

7. just because we think of a solution doesn't make it the best solution

draft is "a" solution to reducing our willingness to engage in war. Is it the best we can come up with?

If so, America is a sad and pathetic country.

[NotGivingUp]

8. no, i don't believe it's the best solution.

[phantom power]

13. I will argue that it is a good solution:

We are in this war in large part because relatively few Americans had any personal stake in it. The Iraq invasion is, in essense, an example of the tragedy of the commons. People making decisions without ownership. And I would hasten to point out that this applies not only to Congress and the Chimp, but it applied to the majority of Americans.

In my mind, a draft is a good preventative measure for wars-of-choice when it's in force all the time. If, leading up to 2003, every American either knew that they would be in line to serve, and/or their children would be in line to serve, then you would have seen quite a lot more healthy skepticism from the public.

Although the rich/powerful are likely to always have ways to dodge such obligations, I think the basic principle is still operational. Relatively few citizens will ever have the wherewithal to actually dodge service, or help their kids dodge it.

In Finland, every male serves 2 years in the military. I used to consider that needlessly draconian, but watching the events of the last 6 years has made me think maybe that's not such a bad system. Every citizen would know what it meant to be a soldier, and every family would have a stake in drastic decisions such as warfare. Every politician would also have at least a passing familiarity of warfare, unlike in our current system where former hypocritical draft-dodgers with delusions of grandeur can send other people's family off to war.

I don't know what it would mean to be the "best" solution. Do you have a "best" solution?

[sui generis]

14. I don't know about best but "better" perhaps

Let's start with open government.

Let's not have hidden oil executive meetings and PNAC cabinets and private interest agendas hidden in the name of White House security and national security.

Let's read our intelligence briefings and comprehend them when they tell us Bin Laden is going to fly airplanes into our skyscrapers.

Let's not lie about yellow cake and then punish the very people responsible for providing accurate intelligence for us to make decisions with.

Let's not fire military personnel for being gay, or for being presumed gay.

Let's not take away Top Secret and higher security clearance and tranlator jobs from people because they are gay or presumed gay.

Let's make sure that if we say failed inspections are the criteria for going to war, that we use an inspection that has failed as criteria for going to war. Let's incentivize military service rather than make it a sequence of lost civil rights subject to extrajudicial process governed by military tribunals.

Let's make people want to serve in the national guard and coast guard by NOT having stupid wars.

Let's put that cart behind the horse where it belongs.

[phantom power]

19. Good examples. All of that is part and parcel...

The cretins and criminals who committed all those atrocious acts did so because they are immature romantics masquerading as "serious" leaders. They were allowed to get away with it by a public who wasn't paying attention, and a news industry who didn't take it's own role seriously (and still doesn't, with a few noteworthy exceptions).

So, how do you make people take the acts of their government seriously? One way is to put everybody's ass on the line for the decisions their elected officials make: a standing draft.

In a way, that is what is happening right now. As more and more people are being affected by this war, they're slowly realizing that their government needs a major overhaul. The Democratic victory in the elections was an expression of more and more people finding their ass on that line one way or another. But it required several major disasters. Iraq. Afghanistan. Katrina. GOP scandals. A tanking economy.

However, I'd rather there were some other way besides a standing draft, or having to experience the disastrous consequences of bad govt every generation, to keep people's attention. I'm open to suggestions.

[lumberjack_jeff]

22. And how about 1930's Germany? How did universal military service work for them?

A society that is geared around military service is a militaristic society.

[smb]

25. The Lessons Of History

a draft that effects the entire population will make for less war and a populace that will be more concerned with what is going on in this country.

It sure was good thing that the draft got all those European politicians in 1914 to step back, take a deep breath, and count to ten, and who can forget how it convinced JFK and LBJ to limit American involvement in Vietnam to a few advisors and supply drops.

Oops -- none of that happened.

Another beautiful theory suffers a fatal collision with reality.

[LWolf]

9. Never.

I would never pull that lever. I would spend everything I've got: time, money, ideas, legal channels, intellect, to block the enaction of such a law. Should it become law, I would engage in civil disobedience until I was dead or the law was repealed. My first act of civil disobedience would be to get my boys out of the country, whatever it took. I didn't give birth to them, raise them, teach them, and see them to manhood to have their lives controlled by or spent on some corporate politician's dreams of empire. My next would be to call publicly for, help organize, and take part in actions that would hogtie the efforts. Legal or not.

[BurtWorm]

10. I support Rangel's position generally, but not a draft for this war.

I would vote no. However, if there were a referendum to create mandatory national service, one option of which would be for the military, I would seriously consider voting yes, especially if draftees had the option not to join the military.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Imagine that the law passed and nobody showed up for induction.

Since we're "imagining".

[bryant69]

12. It's just a way of making it more immediate

A certain amount of those who supoprt the draft i think support it because of rangel and what rangel is using this debate to say. IF the draft were really on the horizon I think they might change their minds.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Which is exactly what Rangel wants.

He wants to make war an immediate debate. Not some abstract notion of "smart bombs" and victorious troops far away reduced to 30 second film clips followed by politicians and generals assuring America that we can win a lost war.

Rangel wants to end America's proclivity to settle disputes by sending young people needing a job to kill and die for nothing but the ambitions of politicians and generals waiting for their seat on the board of General Dynamics or Boeing.

Judging by the firestorm the idea has stirred up here on DU, Rangel's effort to bring the war home and make it real, has worked admirably.

There will be no draft because there is (in reality) no need for a draft.

[Raiden]

15. HELL NO!!

Those of you who voted yes should be ashamed! :mad:

[endarkenment]

16. No Fucking Way.

[ThomWV]

18. You're Goddamned Right I'd Pull That Lever

Every single time. I believe in National Service. I think that people who are not willing to serve their nation should be expelled from it. You skewed the poll with your go-to-Iraq-immediately nonsense of course, but it doesn't change the basic question which is this: Do you owe your nation anything or not? I say yes.

[sui generis]

20. I owe my nation taxes

and forty hours a week fifty weeks a year of earning those taxes.

After that, nothing. My nation is not my master. My citizenship is voluntary. And nobody, not even jesus fucking christ himself is going to "expell" me unless I say so.

[smb]

26. As I Noted On The Previous Threads

We already have "national service" -- it's called GET A JOB.

[NotGivingUp]

21. If the draft truly worked the way it is supposed to work...

that ALL in their 20s would be called to active duty, the war in Iraq would be over. Just as an example of the directness of it and let's say it includes females - that means bush's daughters would be going. Now how long do you think we are going to have this profit/power-seeking war continuing? If laws are followed for everyone equally, there would be no useless wars.

[smb]

28. If...

If the draft truly worked the way it is supposed to work... that ALL in their 20s would be called to active duty

Yeah, and if cows could fly I'd never go outside without an umbrella.

[NotGivingUp]

23. This poll is seriously flawed. The war in Iraq would be over

if EVERYONE in their 20s was drafted.

[ContraBass Black]

24. It should have been over when it was confirmed that it was based on lies.

Throwing more people into this machinery isn't going to jam it.

[NotGivingUp]

29. Let the ones who lied us into this war be prepared to back it up.

Their sons and daughters go FIRST. Next in line are the ones who voted in favor of it. The war would be over in a heartbeat.

[ContraBass Black]

30. There's no draft law that says Republicans go first, nor will there be.

If a draft comes, it will be for everyone at best, and those who have few other economic options at worst. Even though I have fought vocally against it to everyone within earshot since before its beginning, my body will be thrown into that machinery, and still it will grind on.

[trotsky]

27. Other.

[Hobarticus]

31. Voters don't reinstate the draft, Congress does.

I understand the point of the poll, but boiling this complex issue down to a black-and-white, right-or-wrong decision that each of us has to make is hardly honest. It reeks of Faux News, to be honest.