The Iraq War turns two on Saturday, and I hope you will share the occasion thoughtfully wherever you find yourselves. Seattle's peace community will rally (12:00) at Seattle Center and march (1:30) to Westlake Center. I'll see many of you there, and invite extended discussion at my 11th Annual Potato Festival later in the day.
It is almost impossible to be coherent about the situation in Iraq. 1500 Americans dead. Over 10,000 maimed in mind and body. Too high a price for no increase in national security.
Today's "liberation" optimists give us the purple finger, but this evidence raises a sense of deja vu. The optimists were applauding on September 4, 1967, when our puppet government in Vietnam won national elections with 83% turnout. Eight years and 40,000 body bags later, the last liberators scrambled into helicopters on an embattled US embassy roof.
President Bush, with his usual cocksureness, tells us we'll stay until this "fragile democracy" is stable. The problem is we're in a guerrilla war, but we don't have the troops to fight one.
Young people have figured out that this is not spring training -- that even if they survive the initial commitment, they may be kept in the military under "stop loss" orders. Then, if their grades aren't high enough, they may be denied the college benefits they enlisted for in the first place!
What if the volunteer army concept loses momentum? Find younger and more vulnerable recruits! Buried in the "No Child Left Behind" Act is Section 9528, an Orwellian provision that takes money away from any school that denies military recruiters equal status with colleges and prospective employers, plus access to students' home phone numbers. "Go after the unsuspecting and innocent and those easily impressed" -- that seems to be the plan.
Charlie Rangel faced a Korean wartime draft and saw combat. I faced a Vietnam wartime draft and served as a military psychiatrist -- deciding which trauma cases got returned to duty status. In the debate leading to this war, we introduced H.R. 163, a bill authorizing a military draft.
I am the last person who wants to see Americans drafted. (We both voted against H.R. 163 later that year.) The whole point was to raise awareness and force the Administation to face this war's open-ended cost.
Gen. Shinseki spoke from professional military experience, and warned Congress that "post-conflict" occupation might occupy hundreds of thousands of US troops. Deputy SoD Wolfowitz spoke from an ideological perspective, and assured Congress that Gen. Shinseki did not represent the views of the Administration. (He also suggested Iraq would foot most of the bill for this caper. They want this guy to run the World Bank?)
It's two years later. We're stuck in Iraq, but we're threatening Iran and Syria with our fighting forces depleted, a back-door draft, and vapor-lock in the recruiting pipeline. Bush Administration numbers never add up and they never tell it straight, even with American lives at stake.
I want to make a difference.
But that decision isn't up to the Army. It's up to us.
Jim
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