| Subject: The Draft |
Author:
Rob Dog Bastard
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Date Posted: 21:14:10 07/15/04 Thu
Okay - this one will make me some enemies, but I suppose it must be said.
The draft may become an issue in the next year or so. We have active engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have potential trouble on the Korean Penninsula and with China. We have ethnic cleansing in the Sudan. We have homeland security to deal with and this list is not complete.
For many Americans - myself included - the draft is a foreign concept. We hear the stories from our parents, we hear Springsteen sing about it, and we watch it in the movies but we do not know the draft the way the previous generations do. And it is scary.
Nonetheless, if conscription is deemed necessary and we are called - make no mistake on this - we must comply. Your first instinct may be to find a way out. To become injured, to simply not respond, to find a home in Canada, Australia or Europe. Like it or not this is yours and my duty as citizens of this country and to shy away from that is the worst kind of double-standard. You simply cannot take advantage of this country's gifts and meanwhile refuse to defend them.
And what about the draft itself? Well - a few things must change. The draft must not be selective based on race, sex, class or education as it has been in the past. As a student I should be just as eligible as those who did not or could not go to school.
And so should the ladies.
If equal rights are in fact equal rights than the draft must include the fairer sex. I am not implying that front line battle would include women - the fact is that men are bigger, stronger and faster and therefore better suited to such conditions. There are many important duties which could be fulfilled by draft-eligible women and to deny them that responsibility would be to acknowledge an inequality of the sexes which we have fought hard to tear down.
An unequal draft including inordinate amounts of uneducated minority men such as we saw with Vietnam would create a less effective force, a less representative force, and would increase racial and sexual tensions at home during and after duty. This cannot be allowed to happen.
So come on out there - wha'd'ya kids say? Who wants to talk about the draft?
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