Bring Back the Draft

[npk]

As Jesse Ventura said last night on Larry King Live many of our men and women in the military are on the fifth tours with no end in sight.

I think the US should reinstate the draft. And the way it should work is the the wealthiest families children should be drafted first and then using a similar formula to continue on down the economic ladder. The poor and poverty stricken families should either be exempt or should be the last to have their children drafted.

Since so many of the wealthy and right wing Americans support this war, they should actually be the ones SUPPORTING the war with their own children on the front lines.

I am so tired of the poorest of Americans having to pay the deepest of prices to secure our freedom. Let the rich prove that they love this country as much as they say they do.

[grasswire]

1. want to end the wars? support the draft.

It's the most sure way to stop wars of choice.

[pampango]

5. The draft did not end the Korean War. It enabled the military to keep 500,000 in Vietnam

with 58,000 of them getting killed and it took years (5-7 depending on your definitions of large numbers of draftees on the ground in Vietnam) for public protest to push the government to end the war.

So far 4500 have been killed in Iraq and 900+ in Afghanistan. More will die in both countries, particularly in Afghanistan. One can only imagine how many would have died with 500,000 relatively poorly trained draftees in Iraq and Afghanistan. That certainly would have created more political pressure to end the wars, but at the cost of another 58,000 soldiers killed as in Vietnam. (Perhaps Bush would have ended the wars sooner with enough pressure, but it is hard to optimistic on that score.)

[madrchsod]

2. the draft should have been reinstated but bush knew better

i was draft age during the 60`s. todays kids have no idea what we went through during the 60`s.

[MercutioATC]

3. What an asinine statement.

Do you REALLY think that the wealthy don't have the means to keep their children safe from a draft?

All a draft would do is kill a lot of middle class college-age kids.

[npk]

6. That's the whole point

If we instituted a draft, the war would end tomorrow. If we brought back the draft and required that the wealthiest Americans send their children to war, with no exemptions, the war would be over.

Who do you think are the ones dying now. It's the middle class families that are losing their kids. Why? Because they couldn't afford to send their kids to college so they bought into this join the army, join the marines and we'll pay for college. Of course what they don't tell you is that you will be dead before you get the money to go to college. Look at all the kids in the military now, and more than half of them are from middle class families. The other large percentage are poor young people who felt that the military offered them the only option at a life. I'm not saying that everyone in the army is their to get the benefits of education incentives. There are some there that wanted to join the military from very early in their lives. But a great deal of the young people in the military were fed bullshit in order to get them to join.

It's the wealthy who need to start paying some damn sacrifice to this country.

[Ohio Joe]

4. It has been at least a few years since I first saw this idea floated here

and it is still a stupid idea.