Monday, June 20, 2005

Someone Else's Child

Me 'n Fixer have gone on about this before. No links, I'm lazy. Just read the entire Brain back to 1973. Op-Ed by Bob Herbert in the NYTimes:
It has become clearer than ever that Americans do not want to fight George W. Bush's tragically misguided war in Iraq.

You can still find plenty of folks arguing that we have to stay the course, or even raise the stakes by sending more troops to the war zone. But from the very start of this war the loudest of the flag-waving hawks were those who were safely beyond military age themselves and were unwilling to send their own children off to fight.

It's easy to be macho when you have nothing at risk. The hawks want the war to be fought with other people's children, while their own children go safely off to college, or to the mall.
If the United States had a draft (for which there is no political sentiment), its warriors would be drawn from a much wider swath of the population, and political leaders would think much longer and harder before committing the country to war.
Especially a bullshit criminal war like this one, fought for empire and wealth for the few. When the draft starts up, and the Selective (used to be, if you were poor or black, maybe not so much this time) Service has personnel on standy ready to rock right now, you'll hear an outcry that you won't believe from the parents who supported this war until their kids have to go fight it. I think it'll actually be something like, "My kid is too privileged, I've spent an awful lot of money giving him a shot at the big time, who's gonna reimburse me if he gets blown to pieces or comes home with PTSD? Send the poor kids, they got nothin' to live for anyway. Let Bush use them up!"

Wouldn't doubt it a bit. Bring on the draft, I say. It'll signify the end of the Bush cabal when the moneyed class turns on him.

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