Do you remember all of the pundits on the left insisting that if President Bush went to war in Iraq, America would eventually be forced to reinstate the draft?
They were right.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 if the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has his way.
New York Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars. He believes a draft would bolster U.S. troop levels that are currently insufficient to cover potential future action in Iran, North Korea and Iraq.
Except I don’t think they thought that a Democratic Congressman would be the one trying to bring back the draft.
Whoops.
The Draft can be a sticky wicket for any politician !
Gotta love the democrats.
I think you miss the point. The goal of the draft is to provide cheap slave labor for Democratic Party projects. Examples include — and they are drawn from previous Democratic pronouncements — such causes as environmental activism, an internal “Peace Corps,” and body servants for the elderly.
He is trying to play a game of chicken with the Right but he is going to lose. He thinks he can position himself by saying the Republicans have led us down such a path that our army won’t ever be good anymore because we “overused it” and therefore no one will want to volunteer.
Therefore, him, a democrat will save the day by making a draft and that somehow will make future presidents and republican war mongers from going so easily to war.
but it’s a political trick which will only burn him. He’s a moron, I hope he pushes this as hard as possible and takes down as many democrats as possible.
It’s funny, the concept of a draft of more communistic as opposed to the free style of volunteered patriotically.
This is going to be the shortest time a party held power in decades. 2 years and they are done.
Charlie Rangel wants us to think that “the poor” and “minorities” are overrepresented in the military. This is his way of scooping up the little rich kids so their influential parents will force an end to the war before their children go in harm’s way.
He couldn’t care less about getting enough troops in uniform to do the job, because he doesn’t want the job done. He wants us out ASAP.
I agree with Hausman.
Rangel wants another Vietnam.
Rangel knows that instituting the draft will polarize the anti-war element.
He also knows that since he is a Democrat, he can promote such an abomination and not receive public outcry for it (and get voted out of office).
This is a perfect example of how Machievellian politics can get.
Charlie Rangel has a much less open motivation – if, in fact, he can reinstate the draft (which I doubt), over the OBJECTIONS of the military, he will then have grounds to claim a disproportionate number of MINORITIES are being drafted! It’s kind of a win-win for him! While degrading the QUALITY of our military with unwilling, expensive and troublesome amateurs, he can make myriad political points at will! Even though the whole thing was his idea in the first place!
Despicable, any way you look at it.
Ed Hausman has it exactly right (Well, his first paragraph at least).
But this isn’t a “secret agenda”. Rangle has been quite open about it. People only support the war because “other people’s” children are fighting it.
When the rather isolated people who make up the Bush administration and their supports see that this war might hurt them personally, support for it will plummet
Also, Rangle has been the leading voice supporting the draft for years. Anyone under the impression that the it would be brought back by the Republicans just hasn’t been paying attention.
“People only support the war because “other people’s†children are fighting it. ”
James, it would be nice if you put a few qualifiers in along with that statement, because some groups are being very underrepresented by that statement. For example:
There are soldiers whose sons are fighting in Iraq. Yet many of them support the War in Iraq.
There are many widows of the War in Iraq who still support it.
There are many parents whose sons are in Iraq and they support the War in Iraq.
There are many parents who have lost a son (or daughter) in Iraq who still support the War in Iraq (Cindi Sheehan is a notable exception who has far more spotlight than she deserves).
Most importantly: This is an all _volunteer_ military. They do this because they want to.
Minorities _are_ under-represented in the military (except for Hispanic) and os are the poor and uneducated.
There.
I put the qualifiers in. Thanks for reading…
OK, let’s look at some numbers:
According to the US Census
(http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ACSSAFFFacts?_submenuId=factsheet_1&_sse=on)
Blacks/AA are 12.1% of the population
Hispanics are 14.5% (note however, the hispanic is considered a seaparate classification, so every hispanic is also counted in either the Black or White groups)
Now, if we look at this page: http://www.learnmoreindiana.org/careers/military/minorities.xml
we learn that blacks make up 20% of the military population, while hispanics make up 9%.
In other words, (a) you had it completely backward (black overrepresented, hispanics under represented), and (b) blacks + hispanics % in the military is still greater than blacks + haspanics in the general population. (percentage of asain & native american in the military roughly correspond to %age in population).
This bring us to your next unsupported assertion that the the poor and uneducated are also underrepresented, but considering your track record on reporting statistics that are easy to verify, I have little faith in your accuracy on statistic that are exceptionally difficult to count.
Particularly when it’s very easy to skew to the numbers to be what you want to see.
For example, you might say that there is a higher percentage of soldiers with college degrees than in the general population, and that may be true. But the more important question is, How many only have that degree because the Army paid for it? And how many would have still joined the Army if they had some other way of paying for college?
Saying that because the military is volunteer means that every soldier & sailor “wants” to be there is just wrong. I volunterally took my day job. But that doesn’t mean I “want” to be there — I’d much rather be home watching TV — but people do what they have to to eat.
This Heritage Foundation study completely contradicts your data, which I noticed is not sourced by the website where you found it.
It does? Let’s see….
cond0010: non-hispanic minority are under represented in the military.
My data: Blacks 12% of US & 20% of the military.
Hertitage say: Blacks over-represented among military recuits by 43%.
Result: We can quibble a bit about percentages, but essentially, Hertitage agrees with me and contradicts cond0010.
However, the Hertitage article is quite interesting in the way it contradict itself. In one paragraph, it states that the percentage of whites in the military is 1% higher than it is in the population, dispute the fact that two paragraphs earlier, it cites the actual numbers: 77.4% of the population, but only 75.8% of the recuits.
Then we have the figures on wealth & education, which I stated are very easy to skew to your favor, and which Hertitage… skewed to it’s favor.
Hertitage assumes that each recruit is earning the same amount as the average person in his town. This, of course, destroys any significance the study has. The question we are asking is “Are the recruits above or below the average”. If we assume to start that are average individually, obviously we are going go “discover” that they are average collectively.
They similarly skew that educational component: They boil it down to a “binary variable” : High School diploma or not? But, in most cases, the army won’t accept you without a high school diploma, so naturally the military is going to win that one.
But, if you look at chart 7 in the Hertitage report (or actually, squint at the thumbnail, since the link to the full-size version is broken), the vast majority of military recruits fall into the “HS diploma, but no college” category, with the general population far ahead of the military in all the “some college” or more categories.
Hertitage goes on to point out that most recruits come from rural areas, countering claims (made by no one here) that alledge most come from urban areas. I, however, will readily admit there are poor white people living in farm areas.