Tuesday, April 22, 2008

More on the "Backdoor Draft"

According to a USA Today Report, the military is once again forcing service members to stay beyond their discharge dates, in a controversial program called "stop loss".

And they are perfectly within their rights to keep unwilling soldiers around long past their normal release dates, as long as it's for "the good of the service". The good of the soldier? As Darth Cheney said so recently, fuck 'em, they knew what they were getting into when they enlisted.

Except they didn't. And why in the hell aren't more of the sons and daughters of rich Rethugs in uniform and "defending" America in Iraq? Why is it by and large the children of the poor, the children of the bluecollar workers, who end up in uniform?

I used to be opposed to the draft. Especially when they were trying to draft me. But I'm older and wiser now, and I think that if we had universal military service, with no weaseling out allowed for the wealthy and the politically connected (e.g., someone escaping into the Texas Air National Guard, and then deserting that when the going got too tough), then we might not have gone into Iraq in the first place.

But there won't be a draft. Not as long as the Rethugs in power, aided and abetted by Rethug-appointed and neocon-based Federal Reserve can keep the economy at the point of disaster. There will be plenty of poor people who will see -- as they do now -- the military as a "way out", and will continue to enlist.

Roman Empire, anyone? Been there, done that, but we don't seem to have any problems with repeating history.

Remember what Karl Marx said? "History repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce."

5 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Farns, if it was true that the poor join the military just as a "way out" why aren't they join in the numbers you suggest? Families that made <$29k/year are 19.8% of the population and yet they made up only 13.7% of the 2005 military recruits. Those that made between $50k and $200k represent 20% of the population and were 22.9% of the enlistees.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/images/table1_large.gif

Sort of blows your theory of the poor enlisting as a "way out" out of the water doesn't it?

And any liberal who tried to insitute a dfaft or even a national service would get the Lieberman treatment for trying it from his fellow democrats.

Diodotus said...

Except, Pepsiholic, that Farnsworth's point is that this IS a sort of a draft, and if we're going to be forcibly conscripting anyone it should be those who've not yet served.

Anonymous said...

The Heritage Foundation? Now there's a completely unbiased organization. You might as well go back to quoting Newsmax and those other rightwing "sources" of yours that you're so in love with.
And that link of yours doesn't even work, Mister 404 Not Found. How do we even know that this source is what you say it is?

Anonymous said...

Diodotus, I don't understand how it is a draft. And if it is, why is it that 48% of the military is registered as republicans and only 14% are registered as democrats? If it was a "forced" draft, I would expect it would be more equal representative of the general population.

Anonymous, Just because a site is right wing or liberal doesn't mean that data is false, it might be biased in what it shows but again, it doesn't invalidate it. For instance, if you look for a study for the study of the number of people that are homeless and there are only liberal sites that do the study and no republican sites, does that mean I can say that all your arguments are null and void because you can't find a conservative site's data to back up your claim? The Heritage site was the only place I could find those numbers. Besides, conservative sites are more known for being factual than liberal sites.

Here is the original Heritage article.

Anonymous said...

"The Heritage site was the only place I could find those numbers."
I rest my case.