FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2012 - This Day In History
Forum Board: Everything Obama
You must be a member to post on the forums!
Rate:
Rated
Author Rating: 0 Topic: Time to Bring Back the Draft! Yes! I agree! (Read 420 times)
MaryBoston

Posts: 116

View Profile Send Message
« Reply #0: Nov 09, 2009, 1:02 PM »
Rating: 0
Rate:
Rated

Did anyone catch Bill Moyers PBS actually say: "Bring Back the Draft!"...

Yes! It's time!  If Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan, which looks like it is inevitable, 34,000 perhaps?

I 150% completely totally agree with Bill. Also, John Murtha supported HR#163 Chuck Rangells bill

to "Reinstate the Draft!" 18-42 both men and women.

The Draft will be the only thing to put an end to the war in Afghanistan! 

What else could stop these WAR MONGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Will start with Mitt Romneys sons, Bush's daughters, Cheney's daughter,  how about Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz maybe their niece,nephews, grandkids?  who else?  All members of Congress's kids in this age range, send them out too!  Make sure they all are active on the front line!   All the WAR MONGER
architects at the Washington Post too, send them to the front lines too!

What do you say?  anyone brave enough to step forward and speak up about it too?

anyone?

Here is Moyers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYOcgcO2xK0

MaryBoston

Posts: 116

View Profile Send Message
« Reply #1: Nov 13, 2009, 8:41 AM »
Rating: 0
Rate:
Rated

Pagliuca says he supports draft, then reverses

By Glen Johnson AP Political Writer / November 12, 2009

 

BOSTON—Democratic Senate candidate Stephen Pagliuca said during a radio debate Thursday that he favored reinstating the military draft as a means of ensuring everyone sacrificed for their country, but reversed course two hours later, saying he misheard the question.


The first-time political candidate repeated his answer twice during the hourlong debate on WTKK-FM, and his rivals immediately disagreed with him.

"I incorrectly interpreted the question to be asking if I would support a mandatory draft in the event we needed additional troops and my answer was yes," Pagliuca said in a statement after the debate. "I now realize that was not the question posed to me, and I want to be clear that I do not support reinstating the military draft at this time."

He said that if there were a need to increase troop levels beyond what voluntary recruitment could provide, "I would support a mandatory draft that would be fair, transparent and equal."

The about-face highlighted the riskiness of Pagliuca's original position with the liberal Democrats who may decide the successor to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

While Kennedy himself expressed questions during his career about whether an all-volunteer military drew equally from all spectrums of American society, he was strongly opposed to the current war in Iraq and he found strong political support in the liberal anti-war community.

Liberal Democrats are being courted by all campaigns in a Dec. 8 primary that is expected to have relatively low turnout.

In his initial response to a question posed by a listener, Pagliuca said: "I would support a military draft because I think it talks about equality, so I'd support a draft."

Rep. Michael Capuano, who has cast himself as Kennedy's progressive heir, sharply disagreed.

"I will never support a draft, having been a child of the '60s and '70s," the congressman said. "I saw what the draft did to the poor and less fortunate of this country. They sent them to war and left the rich people at home."

Instead, Capuano said he favored a mandatory one-year term of national service, in which people could choose either military or civilian work.

Attorney General Martha Coakley did not directly answer the question but said she wants the all-volunteer army funded better.

"People choose these services, and I think one of the great things about this is, the men and women who are serving, who are going overseas, they're not complaining about this. Their morale is great," Coakley said.

City Year co-founder Alan Khazei said he opposes reinstating the draft but favors more funding for volunteer services such as the one he started and AmeriCorps, which was authorized to grow up to 250,000 people in one of Kennedy's final legislative acts.

"You don't need to force people; you just need to fund it," Khazei said. "There are more than 250,000 people who would do this."

He also said the country should have imposed a "patriot tax" to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"The rest of us should have skin in the game, and we should be paying for it and not passing it on to our children and grandchildren," Khazei said.

Kennedy died Aug. 25 of brain cancer. After the party primaries next month, a special election to succeed him is set for Jan. 19.

Republicans Scott Brown and Jack E. Robinson are also seeking the seat, but the Democratic candidate will be heavily favored given the state's Democratic tradition.

All 11 of its remaining congressmen are Democrats, as are its governor, its constitutional officers and the majorities in each of its legislative chambers.

Elsewhere during the debate, the candidates had a sharp disagreement about whether Sen. John Kerry should have inserted $20 million in a defense appropriation bill to support the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate. The institution is planned for a site next to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum.

They also jabbed over whether abortion-funding restrictions should be allowed in a final health care overhaul; whether more U.S. troops should be sent to Afghanistan; and whether the University of Massachusetts-Amherst should have blocked a convicted terrorist from speaking to students.

MaryBoston

Posts: 116

View Profile Send Message
« Reply #2: Dec 08, 2009, 9:17 AM »
Rating: 0
Rate:
Rated

A Fearful Price

Bob Herbert, New York Times. 12/8/09

I spoke recently with a student at Columbia who was enthusiastic about the escalation of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He argued that a full-blown counterinsurgency effort, which would likely take many years and cost many lives, was the only way to truly win the war.

h

e was a very bright young man: thoughtful and eager and polite. I asked him if he had any plans to join the military and help make this grand mission a success. He said no.

There was an article in The Times on Monday about a new study showing that the eight years of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan were taking an emotional toll on the children of service members and that the difficulties increased the longer parents were deployed.

There is no way that the findings of this study should be a surprise to anyone. It just confirms that the children of those being sent into combat are among that tiny percentage of the population that is unfairly shouldering the entire burden of these wars.

The idea that fewer than 1 percent of Americans are being called on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending them into combat again and again and again — for three tours, four tours, five tours, six tours — is obscene. All decent people should object.

We already knew that in addition to the many thousands who have been killed or physically wounded, hundreds of thousands have returned with very serious psychological wounds: deep depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and so on. Other problems are also widespread: alcohol and drug abuse, family strife, homelessness.

The new study, by the RAND Corporation, was published in the journal Pediatrics. The children surveyed were found to have higher levels of emotional difficulties than their peers in the general population.

According to the study:

“Older youth and girls of all ages reported significantly more school, family and peer-related difficulties with parental deployment. Length of parental deployment and poorer non-deployed caregiver mental health were significantly associated with a greater number of challenges for children, both during deployment and deployed parent reintegration.”

The air is filled with obsessive self-satisfied rhetoric about supporting the troops, giving them everything they need and not letting them down. But that rhetoric is as hollow as a jazzman’s drum because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire at all to share in the sacrifices that the service members and their families are making. Most Americans do not want to serve in the wars, do not want to give up their precious time to do volunteer work that would aid the nation’s warriors and their families, do not even want to fork over the taxes that are needed to pay for the wars.

To say that this is a national disgrace is to wallow in the shallowest understatement. The nation will always give lip-service to support for the troops, but for the most part Americans do not really care about the men and women we so blithely ship off to war, and the families they leave behind.

The National Military Family Association, which commissioned the RAND study, has poignant comments from the children of military personnel on its Web site.

You can tell immediately how much more real the wars are to those youngsters than to most Americans:

“I hope it’s not him on the news getting hurt.”

“Most of my grades dropped because I was thinking about my dad, because my dad’s more important than school.”

“Mom will be in her room and we hear her crying.”

The reason it is so easy for the U.S. to declare wars, and to continue fighting year after year after year, is because so few Americans feel the actual pain of those wars. We’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than we fought in World Wars I and II combined. If voters had to choose right now between instituting a draft or exiting Afghanistan and Iraq, the troops would be out of those two countries in a heartbeat.

I don’t think our current way of waging war, which is pretty easy-breezy for most citizens, is what the architects of America had in mind. Here’s George Washington’s view, for example: “It must be laid down as a primary position and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government owes not only a proportion of his property, but even his personal service to the defense of it.”

What we are doing is indefensible and will ultimately exact a fearful price, and there will be absolutely no way for the U.S. to avoid paying it.

Rate:
Rated
Copyright © 2012 EyesOnObama.com. All Rights Reserved.
Home | About | Advertise | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Links | Feedback | Contact | RSS

  
FeedbackClose




Email Address:

Comments


Image Verification:
(Case Sensitive)

JoinClose


Username:
Password:
Retype Password:
Email:
Image Verification:
(case sensitive):


Forgot Pass?Close


Username:
Email:
Image Verification:
(case sensitive):


Add FriendClose


To:
Subject:
Image Verification:
(case sensitive)

Compose Message Close


To:
Subject:
Image Verification:
(case sensitive)

Message: