Bush war advisor says draft worth a look

[Æmeric]

WASHINGTON - Frequent tours for US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have stressed the all-volunteer force and made it worth considering a return to a military draft, President Bush's new war adviser said Friday.

"I think it makes sense to certainly consider it," Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said in an interview with National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

"And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation's security by one means or another," Lute added in hisfirst interview since he was confirmed by the Senate in June.

President Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. Restoring it, Lute said, would be a "major policy shift" and Bush has made it clear that he doesn't think it's necessary.

"The president's position is that the all volunteer military meets the needs of the country and there is no discussion of a draft. General Lute made that point as well," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

In the interview, Lute also daid that "Today, the current means of the all-volunteer force is serving us exceptionally well."

Still, he said the repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan affedt not only the troops but their families, who can influence whether a service member decides to stay in the military.

"There both a personal dimension of this, where this kind of stress plays out across dinner tables and in living room converstions within these families," he said. "And ultimately, the health of the all-volunteer force is going to rest on those sorts of personal family decisions."

The military conducted a draft during the Civil War and both world wars and between 1948 and 1973. The Selective Service System, re-established in 1980, maintains a registry of 18-year-old men.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY, has called for reinstating the draft as a way to end the Iraq war.

Bush picked Lute in mid-May as a deputy national security adviser with responsibility for ensuring efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are coordinated with policymakers in Washington. Lute, an active-duty general, was chosen after several retired generals turned down the job.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070810/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/bush_war_adviser

All US males are required by law to register with Selective Service within 30 days of their 18th birthday. They remain in the registry until their 26th birthday. To willfully ignore the law & not register is a crime punishable by up to 5-years in prison & a $250,000 fine. In reality the government does not prosecute persons for ignoring registration, except for a few individuals who public stated they were "willfully" not registrating because the wanted to challenge the law in court. However the laws are on the books if the US Government wants to bring back the draft & enforce it. I think most Americans would passively resist a draft - simply ignore the law & draft summons. The Bush adminstration or whoever succeeds him would have to formally establish a police state to enforce a draft. And that could actually lead to the outbreak of Civil War in the US. In my opinion it would be national suicide to try and bring back the draft, but the policy makers in Washington are too arrogant & out-of-touch to realize that.

[SineNomine]

Bush's administration's forte has been ignoring reality - why stop now?

[nätdeutsch]

Good opinion piece by Ron Paul on the Draft:


Before the US House of Representatives, October 5, 2004

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose HR 163 in the strongest possible terms. The draft, whether for military purposes or some form of “national service,” violates the basic moral principles of individual liberty upon which this country was founded. Furthermore, the military neither wants nor needs a draft.

The Department of Defense, in response to calls to reinstate the draft, has confirmed that conscription serves no military need. Defense officials from both parties have repudiated it. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has stated, “The disadvantages of using compulsion to bring into the armed forces the men and women needed are notable,” while President William Clinton’s Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera, in a speech before the National Press Club, admitted that, "Today, with our smaller, post-Cold War armed forces, our stronger volunteer tradition and our need for longer terms of service to get a good return on the high, up-front training costs, it would be even harder to fashion a fair draft."

However, the most important reason to oppose HR 163 is that a draft violates the very principles of individual liberty upon which our nation was founded. Former President Ronald Regan eloquently expressed the moral case against the draft in the publication Human Events in 1979: “...[conscription] rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state. If we buy that assumption then it is for the state – not for parents, the community, the religious institutions or teachers – to decide who shall have what values and who shall do what work, when, where and how in our society. That assumption isn’t a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea.”

Some say the 18-year-old draftee “owes it” to his (or her, since HR 163 makes woman eligible for the draft) country. Hogwash! It just as easily could be argued that a 50 year-old chicken-hawk, who promotes war and places innocent young people in danger, owes more to the country than the 18 year-old being denied his (or her) liberty.

All drafts are unfair. All 18- and 19-year-olds are never drafted. By its very nature a draft must be discriminatory. All drafts hit the most vulnerable young people, as the elites learn quickly how to avoid the risks of combat.

Economic hardship is great in all wars. War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures. The great tragedy of war is that it enables the careless disregard for civil liberties of our own people. Abuses of German and Japanese Americans in World War I and World War II are well known.

But the real sacrifice comes with conscription – forcing a small number of young vulnerable citizens to fight the wars that older men and women, who seek glory in military victory without themselves being exposed to danger, promote. The draft encourages wars with neither purpose nor moral justification, wars that too often are not even declared by the Congress.

Without conscription, unpopular wars are difficult to fight. Once the draft was undermined in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Vietnam War came to an end. But most importantly, liberty cannot be preserved by tyranny. A free society must always resort to volunteers. Tyrants think nothing of forcing men to fight and serve in wrongheaded wars. A true fight for survival and defense of America would elicit, I am sure, the assistance of every able-bodied man and woman. This is not the case with wars of mischief far away from home, which we have experienced often in the past century.

A government that is willing to enslave some of its people can never be trusted to protect the liberties of its own citizens. I hope all my colleagues to join me in standing up for individual liberty by rejecting HR 163 and all attempts to bring back the draft.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

I think the Bush daughters and the Cheney daughters should be drafted into the US Marine Corps and serve on the front line in Baghdad.