Representative Charles Rangel said he would initiate legislation that would essentially revive the draft. Rangel wants all able-bodied Americans between the ages of 18-42 to serve two years of mandatory military service. My first reaction was, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’ However, before the Republican media bandwagon and anti-war activists start sharpening the stick at both ends for the Representative’s head, we should look at his reasoning (albeit misguided) as to why he would ever want to do such a thing.
Rangel says the main reason he is calling for a requirement of military service is that perhaps those in Congress wouldn’t have been so quick to support Resident Bush in his war lust if it was their kid who might be sent to Iraq. He also says that minorities and the lower income Americans bear the largest burden of service, and by instituting mandatory military service, it will even out the playing field.
I completely understand Rangel’s frustration at watching young people die while realizing that many of them come from low-income households where it’s often military service or unemployment. I also realize that the bulk of the Americans dying in Iraq don’t have white faces, and I agree with Rangel’s desire to bring about some urgency to the issue of war in general, but instituting mandatory military service will accomplish none of his goals.
The Resident is the best example of why Rangel’s policy will fail. During Vietnam, Bush served loosely in the National Guard, because Resident Bush Sr. was rich and powerful enough to get his idiot son out of being exported to Southeast Asia. Perhaps Daddy knew even then that Georgie wasn’t cut out for intense stress, and after all, the idea of G.W. with a machine gun is enough to scare the daylights out of even the bravest person. Our own president got out of his duty solely, because of influence; therefore Rangel’s idea that Congress won’t be so quick to vote in war is mute. The power elite will always be able to protect their own, and they will still not care about sending anybody else’s kids to war. Do you honestly think Donald Trump’s children will have to wake to the sounds of trumpets before dawn or do a 20-mile hike in the rain? Can you realistically see Jenna and Barbara Bush in boot camp?
The burden of defending this country, even if Rangel’s policy had a prayer (which it doesn’t), will still fall on the minorities and lower classes. The only thing that would change would be the impact on the middle class, which is already being squeezed into extinction. Regular kids from the ‘burbs would end up serving, but I guarantee it wouldn’t be for long. Their Baby-Boomer parents would turn out in droves to vote for the first candidate that agreed to repeal mandatory military service, thus creating a huge bureaucracy to institute the program, then another to dissolve it.
The fact is the majority of this country is made up of lazy, spoiled brats who love their freedom as long as they don’t have to get off their asses or forego an hour of PlayStation to do anything for it. Less than 40% of those eligible to vote turned out for this last election, which confirms my ‘lazy bastards’ theory. Most countries have a mandatory two-year military service requirement for all able-bodied citizens, so in the United States we have gotten off relatively easy.
I understand where Chuck Rangel is coming from. For years, we have watched this terrible war waged for oil, power, and elitist corporate profits at the expense of 3,000 dead kids and 10,000+ injured civilians whose medical expenses us working folks will have to cover. However, if the volunteer military system has worked for this long, then there is something we are doing right.
At this point, we need to focus less on staffing the war, and more on giving a boot to the asses of those who got us in the war in the first place. We need to involve a coalition of Middle Eastern countries to help us solve this mess, because we obviously can’t deal with those crazy bastards and their civil war, so we might as well admit we fucked up and get the people in place who know how to end this thing.
Mainly, we need to put Rangel’s idea of mandatory military service to rest, because the last people I trust with making decisions about my kid’s life are the same group of schmucks who started this all of this bullshit to begin with.
3 comments:
There's been murmerings over here about a return to National Service. The theory being that the feral kids on the streets now would learn some discipline and be better citizens as a result. The truth is more likely to be that, assuming they don't get killed, they'll return far more highly trained and equiped to spread terror amongst the law abiding citizens.
4D - That's true. I think these politicians tend to forget that the potential draftees are not their father's generation.
A draft might be good, people would either wake up or succumb, resulting either in a revolution or else complete submission.
Wouldn't it be interesting to find out? Fabricating dreams of continuous materialistic well being would come to an end, that's for sure.
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