Friday, October 22, 2004

10-4, Back Door...

This Web-only commentary on the draft is by a major babe, Elinor Clift of Newsweek, the only woman with enough stones to go toe-to-toe with 'The Shouters' for years on PBS.
Bobby Muller was a Marine lieutenant leading an assault in Vietnam when a bullet severed his spine in April 1969. He spent almost a year recovering in a Veterans Hospital in the Bronx, where the woes of other battlefield casualties echoed his own and led him to dedicate his life to what he calls “war-related work.”

George W. Bush says he opposes the draft, but he supports an adventuresome foreign policy. Where will he get the bodies to put on the front lines? John Kerry says there’s already a back-door draft through extended tours and call-ups, and he’s raised the specter of a draft should Bush win a second term. The attack rattles Republicans because it has plausibility, and it speaks to the overstretched military and the issue of national sacrifice. Bush wants to wage a perpetual war against terrorists while not demanding any sacrifice from the broader public. The soldiers are sacrificing enormously in this war while the rest of the population, particularly the wealthy, is getting off.

Muller is white-haired now at 58, but he is pictured along with Kerry in “Going Upriver,” the new documentary about Kerry’s Vietnam experience and his leadership in the protest movement. “There was a lot of anger about him because he wasn’t more radical,” says Muller. “Remember, we were a bunch of dirt bags—longhaired and bearded. He was more presentable to the Establishment. I knew Kerry was going to run for president. Coming out of that war, it’s not surprising you dedicate yourself to political work. People died, and it was wrong.”

Good article. Go read it.

Ms. Clift would blush and tingle all over if she knew what she does to me!

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