Bringing Back the Draft?

[JackLuis]

What does Memorial Day mean to a country where one percent serve in the military?

Since the late 1860s it has been our national custom to set aside one day of the year, Memorial Day, to honor soldiers whose lives were sacrificed on behalf of our country. Yet, the rest of the year as a nation, we largely ignore the grinding daily sacrifice of the soldiers that are living.

And with the introduction of the all-volunteer military over 40 years ago that’s been increasingly easier to do since military service became a “voluntary” choice often driven by the most predatory aspects of late stage vulture capitalism that feasted off the profits generated by the collapse of wages that coincidentally happened right around the same time.

It was President Richard Nixon, who had prosecuted the Vietnam War he was elected to end, who signed off on the shift after a commission he set up to study the issue recommended it.

No doubt, Nixon experienced first-hand the blowback from trying to enforce universal military conscription to fight an unpopular war. If you eliminated that coercive aspect of overseas warfighting American policymakers would have a freer hand to wage was in whatever country they had in their geopolitical crosshairs for as long as they wanted.

If you could eliminate that mandatory civic obligation hokum you could shift that obligation to the lower economic strata of society and market it as a “golden opportunity” wrapped in camo.

Afterall, it was the universal nature of the draft during Vietnam that required everyone to pay attention.

Resistance to the Vietnam War cut across classes because everyone’s son was at risk of being shipped off, with the exception of the Donald Trump types. As Daniel S. Levy recalled, even Paine, Webber, Jackson & Curtis, a Wall Street brokerage firm, joined in the resistance fray running an ad proclaiming that ending the war in Vietnam would be “the most bullish thing that could happen to the stock market.”

I was part of the whole "Golden Opportunity" thing. When I graduated from High School, I knew I had to do my service , or be drafted. So at the age of almost 18, I enlisted and opted for the $55 a month and the joy of jumping out of perfectly good aeroplanes. I thought I'd be sent to Germany like everybody else I knew. Little did I know that I would end up halfway across the world in Tropic Climes.

After being in country for about four months, I realized, we were there, not to Bring Freedom and Democracy to our little brown brothers, but to make Kellogg, Brown, and Root ( now Halliburton) a shit load of money and to give the officers a fast track to promotion.

Now with only the bottom 1% serving, the Army finds it hard to fill it's ranks and the National Guard and Reserve being called up and serving to enrich the Halliburtons in shithole countries where the carnage goes on, and on, and on again.

It is time to bring back the civic responsibility to the top 1% to send their sons and daughters off to be sacrificed for the good of the Military/Industrial complex. Only this time No Cadet Bone Spurs, if you can't serve in the front lines, then you can burn out the privies, or drive a truck, or spend some time viewing the reality of Endless War. It really drives home the actual point of our subsidy of the War Industry.

So yes, I think the draft would be good for our country.

 

[My I]

The Draft is still there. Never went anywhere. We just haven't had cause to use it.

All males 18 yrs or older must be registered for Selective Service, AKA the Draft. Only Congress can use Selective Service to bolster our military ranks.

That makes all males over the age of 18 a member of the militia.

And since women have equal rights under the Constitution of The United States of America, why do they not have equal responsibility?