Despicable Democratic Draft Deception
There They Go Again
By California Yankee Posted in National Security — Comments (13) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Democratic Congressman Rangel, the soon to be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is again trying to reinstate a draft.
Rangel isn't anymore sincere about reinstating the draft now then he was in 2004. Legislation to restore the draft was introduced in both the Senate and the House in January 2003. Snopes.com, the debunker of urban legends, said both these bills were introduced, not by legislators genuinely seeking to reinstate the draft, but by Democrats seeking to make an anti-war statement.
Read on.
In June 2004, the Chicago Tribune reported that Rangel said his "draft" bill was meant to demonstrate his opposition to the war. Throughout the 2004 presidential campaign the desperate Democrats mounted a fear campaign to scare parents saying a draft was necessary to support the war and that after the election in the spring of 2005 the draft would be reinstated.
The rumors that the government was secretly planning to bring back the draft, encouraged by the Democrats, became so rampant that the Selective Service Administration posted a denial on it's website:
Notwithstanding recent stories in the news media and on the Internet, Selective Service is not getting ready to conduct a draft for the U.S. Armed Forces -- either with a special skills or regular draft. Rather, the Agency remains prepared to manage a draft if and when the President and the Congress so direct. This responsibility has been ongoing since 1980 and is nothing new. Further, both the President and the Secretary of Defense have stated on more than one occasion that there is no need for a draft for the War on Terrorism or any likely contingency, such as Iraq. Additionally, the Congress has not acted on any proposed legislation to reinstate a draft. Therefore, Selective Service continues to refine its plans to be prepared as is required by law, and to register young men who are ages 18 through 25.
Finally, in October 2004 the House of Representatives voted 402-2 to reject Democrat Charles Rangel's efforts to reinstate a draft. Even Rangel voted against the bill he introduced. Only Democratic Congressmen Jack Murtha, from Pennsylvania, and Pete Stark, from California, voted for the draft.
Then House Majority Leader Tom DeLay summed it up well:
"This campaign is a baseless, malevolent concoction of the Democrat Party, ''House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas said during a pointed, sometimes angry partisan debate. "It has one purpose and one purpose only ... to spread fear ... and undermine our commander in chief in an election year. Well, Mr. Speaker, it's a lie.''
Now, Rangel is at it again. This time he is starting a campaign against military action designed to halt nuclear arms development by Iran and North Korea:
If we're going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can't do that without a draft.
This Despicable Democratic Draft Deception is nothing more than typical Democratic anti-war and anti-military rhetoric. It was defeated before. Will it be overcome again, or will we fall victim to the anti-war Democrats hyperbole?
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Despicable Democratic Draft Deception 13 Comments (0 topical, 13 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Is that even If his Draft Proposal were to be passed, it wouldn't increase the numbers of the Military at all. It leaves untold numbers of loopholes for drafted kids to go to the beauracracy or the Police or the Fire Departments o DHS, Border Patrol, Peace Corps...
Not that the military wants most of those that would be drafted in the first place, but we Would lose a lot that we're getting ight now to other things...
"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill
What is the political gain to democrats to bring up proposals for a draft? I've racked by brain on this one and I can't come up with anything. I would think this would hurt democrats. They must be very clever. They have me fooled.
What do they hope to gain? I don't believe for a moment that they are serious, but others might believe so.
Rangel doesn't want a draft. He's playing to the moonbats who believe the volunteer military is an "economic draft" which forces those without means to join, and thus surely die, fighting wars which benefit only the wealthy. The myth is that the military is full of poor urban blacks and Hispanics. It just isn't true.
The military almost mirrors the general population in terms of race. Some minorities join in larger ratio than others, but it is a ratio than can be explained purely by demographics.
The military is disproportionately Southern, and most importantly, rural. As a data point, Rangel's New York is under-represented.
Household income does not correlate to recruitment at all: recruits mirror the general population.
Either by cause or effect of the above, the military is disproportionately Republican.
There is no justification for the term "economic draft". Rangel is spouting lies for the crowd, as usual.
Evil men hide from the truth, but good men stand upon it.
I'll bet the median income differential wouldn't even hold up if you normalized the recruiting area against cost of living.
2006 is done, 2008 is another day and another fight
Would there be deferments for university students? If so, wouldn't that defeat the purpose?
The Pied Piper of the left, the ever crazy NY Times, has already called for a considerably enlarged military. What looks like a ripple can in time turn into a wave. Give the b------s time and they may yet make a serious effort for a combination National Service/military service deal.
The Times certainly didn't have an increased volunteer service in mind, particularly after all those recruiting difficulty stories they ran. And if Bush is our stopgap to this we're in trouble.
An election was just lost due in considerable part because of the influence the media has on people who get their news while driving to and from the shopping mall. The trial baloons have gone up, now it's time to see how far they carry this.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
I suspect that he'll argue that, if we mean to stay in Iraq, then we need a bigger army. Hence, his call for a draft. And, when the Congress rejects his call, Rangel is then free to assert that, because we refuse to grow our Army/Marine Corps--which Rangel asserts are not big enough to win in Iraq--then the only alternative is to leave Iraq! Why fight a fight we can't win?
Rangel will use this bill, and his chairmanship, to hold hearings featuring soldiers and "experts" who will claim that (a) we have too few troops in Iraq and (b) we are losing. He'll use this bill to sustain and amplify the arguments for leaving Iraq sooner rather than later.
It strikes me as smart tactics on Rangel's part. He doesn't have to pass his draft bill in order to"win". All he needs to do is deepen the national desire to leave Iraq. Proposing this bill gives him that chance.
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
You are right, except for the bit where you say "Rangel asserts [our Army/Marine Corps] are not big enough to win in Iraq"...
In fact, Rangel's call is being remade as a reaction to Sen. McCain's call for "20,000 more troops" to "win" in Iraq.
The idea is to get McCain (and others) on the record as being against any draft, thus forcing him to dicuss where the 20,000 troops would actually come from.
That's the kind of discussion that I think Rangel wants to have. One that puts the GOP--and not him--on the spot.
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
1) Young urban male: "I don't want to go to war"
2) Democrats: "Vote or Die"
3) News report: ..."reinstate the draft..."
4) Young urban male: "wha?"
Good, Accountable Leadership
De Opresso Liber
where it leads him and his Party. Personally, I like the idea of a draft. I like better the idea of a Democrat Congressional buffoon playing games with the notion of a draft only to have it come back and bite him where it hurts.
Rangel voted against his own proposal when the Republicans brought it up last year.
This mean, of course, that Rangel was against against the draft before he introduced it. Heh.
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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman