George Bush Set to reinstate the Draft
Bush is of course being very quiet about this right now, but it's QUITE real ... the administration is gearing up for a return of the draft. Mandatory draft for boys and girls (ages 18-26) starting June 15, 2005, is something that everyone should know about.
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The topic of a draft - will they or won't they? - has come up before.
Usually, responding listmembers fall into two, distinct and easily recognizable camps: (a.) believers and (b.) non-believers.
Believers talk about the demonstrated militarism of the Bush administration, the over-stretched state of the US military and rumors of planned assaults on Iran, Syria and perhaps even N. Korea - any one of which would require a serious swelling of the armed ranks.
Non-believers point out how seriously unpopular a draft would be since it would bring the still young "War on Terror" home to millions of people for whom it's all simply a debating exercise (or not) now.
Since Rove and company are certainly clever strategists, with a keen sense of what would damage their party's future chances, it's unlikely anything as drastic as a draft will happen. Not even after a Bush victory in November '04. Also, non-believers say, the "realists" have re-asserted themselves after the Iraq debacle. Neocon militarist ideology has been checkmated by the facts and is out of favor.
Or so the argument goes.
I think the best way to theorize about this is to try to answer a simple question: if the Bush administration remains in power, what military actions is it likely to take over the next four years?
If you believe (or, even better, have hard evidence) the administration will not content itself with using old style covert/proxy war, rhetoric or air power alone to get its way - that it will perform an Iraq style invasion somewhere else - then seeing the draft as very likely is quite logical.
On the other hand, if you think the administration has been disciplined, so to speak, by the demonstrated limits of this supposedly new "doctrine of preemption" and will merely talk tough, work on monkeying still further with the US tax code and other domestic matters - perhaps launching half-hearted missile salvos or limited bombing sorties from time to time at "evildoers" - then this chatter about a coming draft makes no sense to you at all.
Of course, I have no way of knowing whether or not a draft is on the way. But I think it's very unlikely a re-elected Bush team will refrain - over a long, four year time window - from plunging into yet another extraordinarily destructive venture.
I think the Bush administration believes, as the old French proverb states (or was it Napoleon?), in "audacity, audacity, always audacity" and will not be able to keep themselves from trying to engineer history on a global scale.
Whether this will lead to a re-instated draft, a crash project in autonomous battle robots, the use of tactical nukes or some other horrors I can't say.
But something extraordinarily unpleasant is bound to happen.
.d.