Since the discussion here is about whether instituting a draft would be good social policy, and since it would likely take longer to institute a draft than it’s going to take to withdraw substantially from Iraq, we need to be building our social policies regarding military service for the next war, not the last one.

On the other hand, smart, quick-reflexed teenage gamers might volunteer to fight our wars just for the fun of it, and all the free pizza and cola they could want. This will also open up new opportunities for cheerleaders, and for a lurking audience that can cheer them on as they kill the all-too-real-flesh-and-blood enemies in the VR immersion of the battlefield.

Let our enemies play to their pretend audience of gods and angels; we’ll really be there, just as much as our troops will be (which is to say, with a safe and glistening realism from far away), lending support and encouragement.

I wonder what the mortality rate is for a mercenary force versus a volunteer army? If you’re paying a competitive wage for skilled labor, it seems to me you’d want to protect your investment in trained fighters. Maybe they’d even have armor for their vehicles… oh wait. The mercenaries do.

Meanwhile, the counselors at low-income high schools plaster the crumbling walls with recruiting posters. But that’s a different post.

Yes, the virtual border fence needs to be guarded by private security guards so smugglers don’t destroy it before it’s operational.

The boomers responsible for Iraq are the ones in the press, who should have known better than to enable another war on false pretenses. Specifically, Judith Miller, given the front page of the Times, set the tone that the rest of the media happily sang along with. It was a time when we needed to be at war, but Iraq was the wrong battlefield at the wrong time. So the pacifist boomers ended up being right about Iraq, but were overall wrong, so couldn’t be leaders. And the boomers cognizant of the need of war then didn’t have good information, since even the liberal press was criminally complicit in the Cheney disinformation campaign.

I guess you have to act the part of what you WANT to be, huh?

AHHHH! I get it. By imposing a draft, it’ll wake the young out of their slumber and push them to actively protest. Makes good sense. It’s a shame that it would have to come to that, but people are generally selfishly motivated, and war is a lot less attractive if you’re the one who has to fight it.

Very nicely played.

(Not necessarily national draft, but that’d be an option, of course.)

1) Bastards like Ford and the IBM execs are readily available for every war – profiteering goes back to the pharoahs. As for the politics, that’s as usual the province of demagogues and weasels.

2) When the call came (and we can argue about whether they should have done so sooner until the cows come home), the greatest generation stood up and did what had to be done to defend this country. My generation did, too – against the stupidity and greed that was Vietnam and the M-I Complex. Then we turned into money grubbing swine. We can, however, end well if we make some effort to stop Blackwater, Bush, et. al.

3) I noted that it’s about energy resources. And that’s got to be solved with good old American ingenuity and technology – not with bullets, as I state. We’re on the same page….

4) I’d advise my sons to resist the draft and protest like hell against this unjust war. I did against mine. Got arrested 3 times. Do I want them used for Big Oil cannon fodder? Hell, no. And neither will my contemporaries want their kids used so. THAT’S how to get some traction with these other issues. Nothing makes you politically active and committed to regime change like some dumb SOB trying to send you – or your kids – off to die for corporate profit…. If the Boomers step up on this, things will happen. We’ve got money and that gets power. What we need is motivation….