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."