Opinion
Why George Bush will need the draft
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President Bush may or may not have a secret plan to reinstate the draft. But this is beside the point. The deteriorating facts on the ground in Iraq, plus the Bush doctrine of acting preemptively and unilaterally against hostile regimes, will soon leave him no choice. If President Bush is re-elected, he will have to restart the draft. But if Kerry is elected, the draft chances remain equal.
Indeed, President Bush has already imposed Stage 1 of a new draft. Many soldiers whose enlistment period is up are not being allowed to leave the service, and those who left the service years ago are being forced to put on the uniform again against their will. It is clear that we already have a back-door draft. President Bush has effectively ended the all-volunteer military.
And Stage 2 of a reinstated draft would be easy to implement. Draft boards are already in place in every county in America, and young men who turn 18 are already required to register with their local draft board. A major terrorist attack could easily serve as the pretext for flipping the switch and setting this apparatus in motion.
It is obvious that our Armed Forces are stretched dangerously thin. We do not have enough people in uniform to meet current needs in Iraq and Afghanistan, much less to deal with a confrontation with Iran or North Korea.
Right now, total active Army and Marine personnel number about 655,000, and that includes support units, training units, headquarters personnel and others who do not see combat. In a long, drawn-out war like Vietnam or Iraq, units sent to the front lines have to be rotated out periodically and replaced by an equal number of forces.
Currently, we have 135,000 troops in Iraq, 20,000 in Afghanistan, roughly 100,000 in Asia and more than 100,000 in Europe. Our Armed Forces have been strained to the breaking point. To fill the gaps and shortages, tens of thousands of National Guard and reservists have been called up, some for several years at a time.
But there is a cost to all of this. Morale is suffering. Enlistments and re-enlistments are down. The Army National Guard fell 10 percent short of its 2004 recruiting goal. The regular Army has had to ease up on standards in order to meet its recruiting goals.
What if all-out civil war breaks out in Iraq and we have to increase our troop strength to 200,000 or 300,000 to quell it? What if a newly re-elected President Bush decides to act preemptively against Iran, Syria or North Korea?
Today, people are hesitant to join the National Guard or reserves because of skyrocketing odds of being sent into combat or kept away from family and job for a year or longer. Morale, enlistments and re-enlistments are falling, at the same time that military manpower needs are rising dramatically.
So where would a re-elected President Bush get the manpower to pacify Iraq while pursuing the next phases of his doctrine of preemptive, unilateral war? There is only one viable option: a reinstated draft.
It is probably too much to expect President Bush to acknowledge this before Election Day. But we would do well to remember when President Lyndon Johnson was running for election in 1964. Voters were afraid that he had a secret plan to escalate the war in Vietnam. He denied it, repeatedly promising, “I will not send American boys halfway around the world to do a job that Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”
Johnson was re-elected. And sure enough, millions of American boys were drafted and sent halfway around the world to Vietnam. More than 17,000 of those draftees got killed in combat.
So Americans, today we have good reasons to fear the return of the draft. George W. Bush may have avoided the draft when he was a young man. But if re-elected, he will not be able to avoid the draft as president.
Tom Harkin is the Democratic Senator from Iowa.
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Tom Harkin is full of sh*t and he knows it, just like your paper to fill itself with anti-Bush diatribes right on election day. Besides nobody has stated that TODAY'S DRAFT, will be anything like the draft of the 60's and 70's.
For example how about this, absolutely no government assistance outside of loans for college unless you agree to 2 years of government service. Now the spoiled, materialistic, me generation currently in college now will scream to the high heavens and throw the temper tantrums that ritalin will not control, but it seems fair. Why should the government give out good money just so you can attend school when you haven't done a damn thing for that government to begin with? No we are not saying you can't go to college, we are saying if you want the government to pay for it, then you must aid the government in some way shape or form. For you democrats out there of the slacker generation this would be called a "job" wow. Imagine having to give the government something in return for a college education paid for in part, by said government.
Secondly, nobody has said that those drafted necessarily have to be deployed. We could actually formulate a draft that would keep those drafted in the US freeing up soldiers who volunteered to go abroad. Those drafted could man the hospitals, instillations, borders, civil air patrols, fight forest fires, handle national disasters etc, that we used to use the National Guard for.
In short we need to think about a draft and quit scaring away today's generation with nightmares of the 60's that their college professors are so eager to relive. A new draft does not necessarily mean we will harken back to the days of the old draft plain and simple. Finally we need to let our young people, who have been given a free handout on the backs of the previous generations for too long, know that living in America is not a right to be granted but a priveledge to be protected. One day there will come a time when everyone wants to be an American but nobody wants to take the responsibility of being an American. When the day comes that nobody is willing to fight and protect the freedoms we have as a nation, then we simply do not deserve to be a nation any longer.
The above commenter is full of sh*t and he or she knows it. Just because Harkin is anti-Bush does not mean the Badger Herald is full of anti-Bush propaganda and part of some grand conspiracy to remove Bush from office. If you read the next article, you'll see it's just as anti-Kerry as this article is anti-Bush. While I often disagree with the Badger Herald editorial staff's opinions, I think they've done an admirable job presenting a balanced view of the candidates in today's edition. They should be commended for that, not subjected to ad hominem attacks.
Pay troops what they are worth and they will enlist and re-enlist. No need for a draft. But that means cutting all the social programs we don't need. The #1 responsibility of our Federal Government is to protect this country, not give money to citizens that expect hand-outs for everything.
Only Democrats have suggested a draft.
Stop the Draft - elect Republicans!