hi - we again - pretending to be normal...

anyone awake has been concerned about the draft for a year or more. this week it has hit the tv media in full force. im sure you'll be bombarded with emails about it.

but as far as i can tell, everyone seems to be missing the point. the draft idea seems to be based on two no-brainers a) need more troops b) drafts have historically been racist/inequitable. but the conclusion is very odd. because a) is true, and b) is true, therefore we need to draft *everyone* 18-26.

it seems that people dont realise that the enormity of the draft plan - which is specifically to draft 30million americans - 'and if the military doesnt need 'em, we'll use them for civillian purposes'. its difficult to ignore the cheap-labour parallels with 43s odd immigration plan that seemed to die not so long ago. last friday i wrote 'my read is that people arent scared of a draft yet - it seems more of an intellectual/abstract notion at best.' i still think thats true (phew! one of my ideas lasted a week!) - there's just too much cognitive dissonance in the concept for people to buy it - even *despite* the hannity/brown/blitzer blitzkreig this week. eg theres not a reference to it in nyt's 25 most popular stories.

rangel (*D*) said on hannity yesterday 'of the 30m, only 500k would be military. the rest would have mandatory federal experience - protecting the ports and whatnot.' (paraphrased - i wrote it down when i heard it) - the 30m number is very effing real. ergo, the entire 'we dont have enough troops in iraq' line is complete rubbish - that logic would state '500k forces isnt enough, lets recruit 30m'. and then theres the other argument that a volunteer army is inequitable - fine, and true, so the answer would be to put everyone equally in a lottery for the draft, not 'therefore lets recruit 30m kids cos it would be unfair to leave anyone out'

its amazing that they are pulling this idea out before an election - political wisdom states that a draft is political suicide. we can presumably therefore accept two premises i) theres not the slightest skerrick of democracy left in the US ii) this bill will be on the desk for signing on the morning of nov5 (if we even bother to have an election), perhaps in the pile just under the bill outlawing abortion.

from my perspective, the real 'unknown news' is that everyone has fallen for the 'not enough troops' argument to explain/justify the need to draft 30million kids. take this wsws article for example http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/draf-a22.shtml titled 'Iraq crisis spurs call for US military draft' - it seems that even wsws has been logically hijacked - it seems its just beyond them to consider the reality that everyone is gonna get drafted. they kind of mention it, but dont connect the dots - its kinda cool that the rich dont get excluded, but in the meantime, 100% of the much larger poor and middle class get sucked into the stoopid wargames. are they somehow comforted that at least its not discriminatory?

wheres the interim argument that says 'we understand that there needs to be a draft, and we welcome that everyone goes into the *lottery* equally'? i find it amazing that this isnt part of the dialogue - although it wouldnt be the first time we've seen everyone go binary. what a crazy world.

allah (LR)



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