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Democrats and the Draft

 
 
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 10:06 am
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=t&refer=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER Kerry more likely to reinstate draft

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

By BRUCE CHAPMAN GUEST COLUMNIST

Of all the upside-down, misreported issues of 2004, the phoniest is the Kerry camp's assertion that a re-elected George W. Bush will bring back the draft. The case is much stronger that John Kerry himself would do so.

Military conscription was abolished more than 30 years ago by Richard Nixon (yes, that's right) after a six-year campaign by Republicans to replace draftees with volunteers attracted to service by decent pay and better living conditions. I know, because my book, "The Wrong Man in Uniform," in 1967, helped launch a movement for reform that borrowed heavily on the ideas of economist Milton Friedman and was led in Congress by a young Illinoisan named Donald Rumsfeld.

Fighting on the other side of the issue were Democrats led by none other than Ted Kennedy. President Johnson's administration had resisted draft reform and Kennedy and company wanted to retain conscription and make it more universal. Since only a small share of each age cohort of young men was needed to serve in the armed forces, Republicans sought to enlist that share with positive incentives while the Democrats proposed to draft everybody for "National Service," a new kind of conscription that could be fulfilled in the military, but also in various government-assigned jobs.

The volunteer military was a political victory by libertarian conservatives against social-engineering liberals, and its success, as nearly all military leaders acknowledge, has been a significant factor in improving the quality and motivation of America's armed forces in the years following the draft-driven (and protested) Vietnam War.

But liberals have never given up the idea of national service. Funded by fat grants from major foundations, a long parade of studies and schemes to introduce the idea has marched forth in a seemingly endless column from think tanks and academia. In the face of the military's own desire never again to rely on coerced recruits, such organizations as the Brookings Institution have proposed instead an ever-expanding realm of paid voluntarism in the social service sector.

President Bush, like his father, has supported voluntary service, too, even with government funds, but nothing like the scope and cost envisioned by such liberals as Kennedy, and now John Kerry. Candidate Kerry wants to enlist a half million people in his plan, many doing "service" for indirect pay, such as schooling grants, that taxpaying citizens perform now, or could perform if compensated.

But always lurking in the background for liberals has been the idea of getting "service" out of everybody and the full awareness that that will entail coercion in the form of conscription someday. Democrats are the main backers of comprehensive national service proposals in Congress and two Democrats, Charles Rangel and Jim McDermott, were the sponsors of the bills on the draft that the House voted down recently.

Meanwhile, the military (despite misreporting to the contrary) continues to meet and exceed its recruiting and re-enlistment quotas, even as the total size of the armed forces has been increased somewhat. Only the National Guard has failed, in August this year, to fully meet its re-enlistment quotas, largely, one suspects, because of recent unanticipated extensions of service in Iraq. The latter is a concern, though temporary, but it does not bear on the case for and against a resumption of a draft. Much more serious threats to enlistments and re-enlistments were experienced in the Clinton years when pay scales and health services were allowed to erode.

If anyone doubts what is going on here, he might simply examine who backs Kerry, and he will find that almost all the longtime advocates of national service (including many who wish to resume a draft) are among them. On the other stand nearly all of us who worked to introduce a volunteer military in the first place and have worked ever since to preserve it.

Polls show that military families will vote for Bush over Kerry by ratios of up to 3 to 1. Among other things, they know who wants a competent professional fighting force and who would allow it to degrade to the point that a draft became necessary.

It is demagogic, therefore, for Kerry to claim that it is Bush who would like to bring back the draft, not him. It is even more reprehensible that Kerry's friends in the media have refused to explain the background on this issue to a generation of voters who are too young not to be gulled by campaign propaganda.

Bruce Chapman, a former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, is president of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute.
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FreeDuck
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 10:09 am
The author did not even come close to showing that Kerry is more likely to reinstate the draft.
0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 10:09 am
The one thing the author does not mention is that, should Kerry win this thing, there is a possibility that our military could simply quit en mass, and simply tell the nation something like "Hey, you want to put us under the heel of a total loser like that, you can defend YOURSELVES, we're civilians, see ya...."
0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 10:10 am
FreeDuck wrote:
The author did not even come close to showing that Kerry is more likely to reinstate the draft.


You claim to be a speed reader??
0 Replies
 
CoastalRat
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 10:11 am
gungasnake wrote:
The one thing the author does not mention is that, should Kerry win this thing, there is a possibility that our military could simply quit en mass, and simply tell the nation something like "Hey, you want to put us under the heel of a total loser like that, you can defend YOURSELVES, we're civilians, see ya...."


He didn't mention it because it is not a possibility.
0 Replies
 
FreeDuck
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 10:16 am
gungasnake wrote:
FreeDuck wrote:
The author did not even come close to showing that Kerry is more likely to reinstate the draft.


You claim to be a speed reader??


Yes.
0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 10:35 am
FreeDuck wrote:
gungasnake wrote:
FreeDuck wrote:
The author did not even come close to showing that Kerry is more likely to reinstate the draft.


You claim to be a speed reader??


Yes.


What about things like Gone With the Wind, or War and Peace? You claim to be able to glance at the covers of things like that and know the contents?

All you had time to do between my posting this article and you replying to it was to try to take in the entire article in a single glance.
0 Replies
 
FreeDuck
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 10:41 am
Was there more to the article than what you posted?
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 11:42 am
Not sure if I've mentioned this before...and I'm sure you will see why I do here, because it is germane to this discussion...

...but George Bush is a goddam moron...and the adminsitration he has assembled is probably the most incompetent in American history.

They have done more damage to America...and our interests during the last four years than the terrorists they are supposedly fighting could do in a couple of decades.

Bush is absolutely clueless...and the people around him are pulled from the pages of "The Emperor has no clothes!"

By the way...did I mention that George Bush is a goddam moron?
0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 11:50 am
FreeDuck wrote:
Was there more to the article than what you posted?


When observing the cover and intuiting the contents of Voina I Mir or something like that, does it matter if it's in Russian or English?
0 Replies
 
Ticomaya
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 12:21 pm
Frank Apisa wrote:
Not sure if I've mentioned this before...and I'm sure you will see why I do here, because it is germane to this discussion...

...but George Bush is a goddam moron...and the adminsitration he has assembled is probably the most incompetent in American history.

They have done more damage to America...and our interests during the last four years than the terrorists they are supposedly fighting could do in a couple of decades.

Bush is absolutely clueless...and the people around him are pulled from the pages of "The Emperor has no clothes!"

By the way...did I mention that George Bush is a goddam moron?


Laughing

Frank, you slay me. (I think the "Emperor's New Clothes" bit was new. Is Kerry the little child in the story, or are you?)
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 12:51 pm
Ticomaya wrote:
Frank Apisa wrote:
Not sure if I've mentioned this before...and I'm sure you will see why I do here, because it is germane to this discussion...

...but George Bush is a goddam moron...and the adminsitration he has assembled is probably the most incompetent in American history.

They have done more damage to America...and our interests during the last four years than the terrorists they are supposedly fighting could do in a couple of decades.

Bush is absolutely clueless...and the people around him are pulled from the pages of "The Emperor has no clothes!"

By the way...did I mention that George Bush is a goddam moron?


Laughing

Frank, you slay me. (I think the "Emperor's New Clothes" bit was new. Is Kerry the little child in the story, or are you?)


Actually...almost the entire world is the little child.

The number of people seeing finery rather than nakedness...are RELIATIVELY few...and almost all are people in America who identify themselves as conservatives.

In fact...the more I consider the analogy...the more I like it. Supposedly the folks who saw the king naked...but who were afraid others would think them non-noble because they couldn't see the clothes...really are a metaphore for many conservatives..and what they are experiencing.

Talk to me about this. You seem like an intelligent and perceptive person, Ti. Discuss this with me.
0 Replies
 
Ticomaya
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 01:07 pm
Frank Apisa wrote:
Ticomaya wrote:
Frank Apisa wrote:
Not sure if I've mentioned this before...and I'm sure you will see why I do here, because it is germane to this discussion...

...but George Bush is a goddam moron...and the adminsitration he has assembled is probably the most incompetent in American history.

They have done more damage to America...and our interests during the last four years than the terrorists they are supposedly fighting could do in a couple of decades.

Bush is absolutely clueless...and the people around him are pulled from the pages of "The Emperor has no clothes!"

By the way...did I mention that George Bush is a goddam moron?


Laughing

Frank, you slay me. (I think the "Emperor's New Clothes" bit was new. Is Kerry the little child in the story, or are you?)


Actually...almost the entire world is the little child.

The number of people seeing finery rather than nakedness...are RELIATIVELY few...and almost all are people in America who identify themselves as conservatives.

In fact...the more I consider the analogy...the more I like it. Supposedly the folks who saw the king naked...but who were afraid others would think them non-noble because they couldn't see the clothes...really are a metaphore for many conservatives..and what they are experiencing.

Talk to me about this. You seem like an intelligent and perceptive person, Ti. Discuss this with me.


Can't say I agree with you, Frank. I clearly see the clothes.

But I would vastly prefer a naked king whom I felt could protect me from my enemies, than a well-dressed king who did not provide that confidence.
0 Replies
 
FreeDuck
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 01:08 pm
gungasnake wrote:
FreeDuck wrote:
Was there more to the article than what you posted?


When observing the cover and intuiting the contents of Voina I Mir or something like that, does it matter if it's in Russian or English?


Feel free to point out the convincing evidence that I missed that Kerry would reinstate the draft.
0 Replies
 
Dookiestix
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 01:13 pm
Gungasnake:

What is wrong with you? It took me 2 minutes to read the ridiculous article. Why bring in novels like "Gone with the Wind," which have NOTHING to do with the subject?
0 Replies
 
Dookiestix
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 01:16 pm
And how IS your fully clothed "king" protecting us, Ticomaya, when both Bush and Cheney have said that it isn't a matter of IF we're attacked but WHEN?

How is your fully clothed king protecting us when he uttered recently that the war on terrorism cannot be won?

How is your fully clothed king protecting the American worker, the middleclass, and the thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi women and children who have died at the hands of his bombs?

He's an absolute moron. And he'll be gone very soon.

And both liberals and traditional conservatives will rejoice.
0 Replies
 
Ticomaya
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 01:33 pm
Dookiestix wrote:
And how IS your fully clothed "king" protecting us, Ticomaya, when both Bush and Cheney have said that it isn't a matter of IF we're attacked but WHEN?

How is your fully clothed king protecting us when he uttered recently that the war on terrorism cannot be won?


Here's how.
0 Replies
 
A Lone Voice
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 01:33 pm
1. Gunga:

Yes, Duck is quick with the reply, and just about always has his facts straight. I usually disagree with him, but find that he is not taken to use hyperbole.

2. Go Frank! Prediction on the outcome of the election?

3. Dookie = opposite of #1.

4. Why Kerry is likely to bring back the Draft:

This was covered in another thread, but the actions of Kerry and the Democrats suggest they will create a likely need for the Draft to be reinstated.

-In the debates, Kerry said he will respond with military force wherever there is injustice in the world.

-He said he will increase the Army by two divisions.

-He said he will enter into unilateral negotiations with North Korea, without the involvement of the Chinese or any other country.

-Two Democrats just recently introduced legislation to have the draft reinstated. It was soundly defeated, but what might happen if Kerry is elected?

-Last, and most important: Bush has said in the debates he will keep the military an all-volunteer service. Kerry, in the same debates, did not say he would do the same.
0 Replies
 
FreeDuck
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 01:46 pm
I will agree that those introducing legislation to bring back the draft are Democrats. But they have very little support, even from within their own party. To extrapolate their actions to Kerry's intent is dubious.

Two little quibbles:

Quote:

-In the debates, Kerry said he will respond with military force wherever there is injustice in the world.


I don't recall this. I think he said he will respond with force to terrorism.

Quote:

-He said he will enter into unilateral negotiations with North Korea, without the involvement of the Chinese or any other country.


Not exactly. He did say he would enter into bilateral negotiations with North Korea. The part you added is speculation.


Quote:

-Last, and most important: Bush has said in the debates he will keep the military an all-volunteer service. Kerry, in the same debates, did not say he would do the same.


The question wasn't put to Kerry that I know of. Though I confess I did not search the transcript.

Not saying it isn't possible that he would bring it back, just saying that the case hasn't been made that he's more likely to do it than Bush. I find it hard to believe that Kerry would do something like that, given his feelings about Vietnam. (yes, i said the V word)
0 Replies
 
Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Fri 29 Oct, 2004 01:47 pm
A Lone Voice wrote:

2. Go Frank! Prediction on the outcome of the election?


Kerry is gonna win...and I honestly don't think it is going to be all that close. Certainly not as close as some have been predicting.
0 Replies
 
 

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