Antiwar activists, youths, military agree: no draft

Antiwar activists, youths, military agree: no draft
By Adam Fifield

The Philadelphia Inquirer

(MCT)

PHILADELPHIA - It's hard to imagine that Oskar Castro could find any common ground with the Pentagon.

But one issue has emerged on which the antiwar organizer and the military agree: bringing back the draft is a bad idea.

Raising the specter of conscription, even with the intention to deter war, is a grave risk, said Castro, who runs the Youth & Militarism Project, a Quaker-run program that tries to counteract the presence of military recruiters in high schools.

Mandatory service is immoral, Castro said, a practice that is not "consistent with the principles of a democratic republic."

The U.S. military prefers a volunteer force because retention is greater and it attracts a higher-caliber soldier, a Defense Department spokesman said.

Resurrecting the draft, which ended in 1973, has become a hot topic since Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., pledged to introduce a bill next month that subjects all 18- to 42-year-olds, male and female, to the possibility of mandatory service.

The outspoken critic of the Iraq war says his goal is to force lawmakers to think more about the human cost of going to battle and to spread the burden of service more fairly across the population.



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PER DU RULES.

One of the things I have been really disappointed about during the Bush regime debacle is the lack of citizen involvement in the on-going debate. There have been no large protest to speak of while this administration committed criminal acts. The colleges have been virtually silent. And it is because the large portion of the public has no investment in what their politicians are doing. Anyone who makes an issue out of their loved ones dying in this unlawful war, like Cindy Sheehan, are told that their loved one volunteered, they knew the risk.

If a draft had of been in place we might have got a whole different response from the public at large. And keep in mind, while some are hailing the Baker Hamilton report as a breath of fresh air, there are parts of the report that talk about actually winning this mess which would mean increasing the troops in the region substantially. We can't do that without a draft as we just don't have the military resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_2003_Iraq_war

October 26, 2002
Protests took place in various cities across the world. Over 100,000 people took part in a protest in Washington. 50,000 people took part in a demonstration in San Francisco.

January 18, 2003
In San Francisco, between 150,000 and 200,000 people attended the demonstration. The San Francisco police had originally estimated the crowd size at 55,000, but admitted later that they had badly underestimated the number and changed their estimate to 150,000. The day started with a waterfront rally at 11 am, followed by a march down Market Street to the Civic Center.



Where was the media?

but nothing like what we had in the 60's during the Vietnam war, which is what eventually brought the war to an end. When people have a personal stake they get more involved. Otherwise it is just more or less an abstract argument to them.

I doubt that many people protested the Tonkin lie.



I'm not sure if you have to throw more firewood in to the oven, just to make the water boil.


Why not examine the cause for this war, we know it's a lie and they know it's a lie.
When you have people like Cheney directly profiteering from this war, it's a no-brainer that he prefers mayhem and staying 100 years.

A lot of DUers were there, so please stop spreading lies.

a helluva lot more anti-war activists and might well have kept us out of this current fiasco.

Does that mean we should make it happen?

<snip>

Mandatory service is immoral, Castro said, a practice that is not "consistent with the principles of a democratic republic."

The same reason that arguments about needing to erode civil liberties to "keep us safe" are specious.