|
|
Monday, November 20, 2006 - 12:49am Leading Democrat Wants Draft Reinstated Democrats continued to shoot themselves in the foot and this time Congressman Charlie Rangel has stepped up to the plate. Last week, he publicly stated that he didn't know why anyone would live in Mississippi and on Sunday he declared that the draft should be reinstated. Rangel is set to become the Chairman of the very powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is determined to implement a draft on all Americans between the ages of 18 and 42.
What's frightening is that Rangel does not want a draft because he thinks our forces are depleted. He just doesn't like how the military is constructed. He rightly points out that the military has a disproportionate number of minorities and lower-income families, but his answer for solving this supposed problem is to force non-minorities and higher-income people to serve. It doesn't make sense.
The United States already has an exceptional military that is all volunteer. The military does not want to baby-sit people that don't want to be there. If you institute a draft, you will get scores of people that would rather be somewhere else and who will create more problems than they solve.
The war in Iraq has brought this issue to the forefront because the U.S. military has occupied the nation for nearly four years and the forces are strained. However, the United States Armed Forces consist of over 1.4 million active duty troops and 2.68 million total. They only have about 10% of their active duty troops in Iraq. Rotation of troops and support personnel bring that number higher, but a draft is simply unnecessary at this point.
Congressman Rangel is way off-base. The solution is not to increase the size of the military. The solution is to stop waging illegal wars against other countries. A larger military will just give the politicians more of a reason to invade someplace else.
Political Critic - political blogs, conservatives, vlog, liberals, democrats, republicans, video blogs, political opinion. |
|
Rangel honestly believes that a draft will dissuade other politicians
from waging war in the future. He thinks that if the child of a
politician is forced to serve their country, then that politician would
be less likely to start a war with another nation. The problem
with that logic is that rich kids always find a way out of getting in
harm's way. Just ask George Bush.