End, Don't Extend, Draft Registration
Article by Sheldon Richman found on http://Liberty.me
Below is the link for a 2010 Atlas Society article by Laurie Rice providing the little known history of Objectivist action with regard to ending the draft.
http://bit.ly/1Ht1KUZ
Below is the link for a 2010 Atlas Society article by Laurie Rice providing the little known history of Objectivist action with regard to ending the draft.
http://bit.ly/1Ht1KUZ
Nevertheless, I do think that IF you require men to register you should require women to register. That makes me "misguided" in the writer's language but if you are evaluating an IF THEN you must accept the premise for the purpose of the argument. IF there is registration THEN it should be across the board.
And, as a practical matter, that would probably generate support for completely ending the farce.
The only answer is No Draft or equal draft using people for areas other than military
Rules? Congress don't need your steenkin rules
I spent a longer time dreading the possibility.
Being set free was one of the happiest days of my life.
No one should be forced to serve for anything in a supposedly free society.
I volunteered for the 7 years I did and don't regret a moment of it (okay...maybe, boot camp). Brainwashed, or not, I believe military service to be of a great benefit to many young people in our country and did everything I could to get our two boys to enlist (one did, the other refused).
The military taught me to be, both an independent person and a team member. The things I learned helped me to become the productive person I am, today.
I'm not saying it's for everyone, nor that it should be a requirement, but I feel that I have a little more ownership in my right to call myself an American, because of my service.
I don't mind telling people I was in the Marines and making corporal under meritorious conditions always looked good on a resume.
Still have the paperwork to prove it.
I was no shirker. I did my job but lived for getting out.
I thought the Vietnam War was a sad waste and I'm glad I was not sent over there to risk dying for nothing.
Had I been the right age when the World Trade Center was destroyed I may well have joined to fight.
I was furious. And finally motivated when too old.
Who knows...we may, yet, still get called upon to fight...just not by our government.
I was also too old then and do not recall wishing I was young enough to enlist..
Desert Storm did not affect me as deeply as 9/11.
Curious. Did you have to go back to boot camp?
I've always said that being a "weekend warrior" was far better than doing it 24/7. Unfortunately, a bad back forced me to choose between my civilian occupation or trying to stick it out in the military. Otherwise...I would gladly have put 20 or more years in.
There have been times when I thought I should have stayed in the Marines.
I was told I would have been a sergeant but the barracks morale was terrible in 1971.
I have a state retirement now as a former corrections officer.
Some had visible wounds, others carried them within but no one came home without a scar.
I only had one friend go the Canadian route and one cousin had some strings pulled and miraculously (as well as suspiciously) went from a I-A to a IV-F.
All of my friends and family who answered the call to service looked upon it as their duty to go and would have done so without the draft.
Like you, Allosaur, I don't believe anyone should be forced to serve in a free society.
Never got out of the Carolinas.
I handled the requisitioning of parts for a satellite communications squadron at a Marine air base called Cherry Point, NC.
Halfway through that, I was trained to be a deuce-and-a half ton truck driver so I could also help move those parts and other stuff like office furniture and carpets.
Better than getting shot at or booby trapped by an enemy who successfully used the strategy and tactics of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War, according to The History Channel.
It is important to start with principles, rather than debating secondary consequences. However, the principles are what cause those devilish details. One of them that I offer here is that the modern draft is not equal for all. Exceptions have always existed.
During Viet Nam, the common deferment was 2-S: student in college. But you could get out of the draft by working in an "essential industry." Having dependents placed you less likely that being single and alone. I remember that in the 1950s, professional baseball players would be drafted to serve six months of active duty in the off-season months, and then be in the reserves. So, "social capital" counted. Draft boards were local not federal, and favorite sons could get deferred or be 1-A and never be called. President Clinton was not drafted because he was a Rhodes Scholar. President Bush, Jr. served briefly in the Texas Air National Guard.
"When Cheney became eligible for the draft, during the Vietnam War, he applied for and received five draft deferments. In 1989, The Washington Post writer George C. Wilson interviewed Cheney as the next Secretary of Defense; when asked about his deferments, Cheney reportedly said, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service".[23] Cheney testified during his confirmation hearings in 1989 that he received deferments to finish a college career that lasted six years rather than four, owing to sub-par academic performance and the need to work to pay for his education. Initially, Cheney was not drafted due to his marriage to Lynne Cheney.[24] When the draft was expanded to include married men without children, he applied for four deferments in sequence. He applied for his fifth exemption on January 19, 1966, when his wife was about 10 weeks pregnant. He was granted 3-A status, the "hardship" exemption, which excluded men with children or dependent parents. In January 1967, Cheney turned 26 and was no longer eligible for the draft.[25]" --- Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Ch...
Draft Dodger Rag -- Written by Phil Ochs
Oh, I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town
I believe in God and Senator Dodd and a-keepin' old Castro down
And when it came my time to serve I knew "better dead than red"
But when I got to my old draft board, buddy, this is what I said:
CHORUS
Sarge, I'm only eighteen, I got a ruptured spleen
And I always carry a purse
I got eyes like a bat, and my feet are flat, and my asthma's getting worse
Yes, think of my career, my sweetheart dear, and my poor old invalid aunt
Besides, I ain't no fool, I'm a-goin' to school
And I'm working in a DEE-fense plant
(19-year olds went before 18-year olds so as not to draft kids while in high school. In fact, in the 12th grade, two 19-year olds were drafted out of my homeroom.)
The egalitarian argument had very real horrible results under Nixon, which with your having been there you may remember the history of directly. Faced with massive protests against the war and the draft Nixon inherited from Kennedy and Johnson, along with "inequalities" under deferments as a secondary issue, instead of denouncing the war and the draft, then getting out of all of it as soon as he could, he implemented the sophistry that he would make the draft "fair" by instituting a "lottery". Which he did, cynically making a big show out of the televised drawing of birth dates from a big drum as if it were all a game show. As part of his pandering to sacrifice in the name of egalitarianism he had already disrupted more lives eliminating some deferments, including all graduate students.
Nixon had the gall to cover over a massive injustice with the sophistry that no one was responsible for forcibly conscripting people if only they made it "fair" by replacing conscious choice with egalitarian "chance" in ignorance -- as if that made no one responsible for what the government was doing. A blank out deliberately making draft officials unaware of what they were doing to whom was regarded as morally superior. That cynical evasion served to buy Nixon time, which is what he was after, leading to countless more enslavements and deaths. If that cynical amoralism and pragmatic manipulation pandering to replacing justice with "equality" doesn't sum up Nixon and his administration then nothing can.
Air National Guardsmen not only were called into direct federal service, but had whole units activated and sent into combat, including units from Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, and New York. That's not counting the ancillary support flights, or the Ohio and Kansas air national guard units that were called up to replace units sent to Vietnam from South Korea.
That's also not counting the Army National Guard (State Guard) from 8 different states that were deployed IN Vietnam for support, artillery, and direct combat roles.
My point is, anyone suggesting that joining the National Guard or Reserve so that they can "Dodge the draft" is either flat out wrong, or know that they are wrong and lying about it to denigrate someone.
*Addendum: This post is not for support or criticism of Bush as a man, but the fact that people call a Mach 1.2 recon pilot a draft dodging coward are perpetrating lies. He may be many things, but a coward is not one of them.
I wouldn't blame Bush at all if he did the same thing, I would blame him if he wouldn't acknowledge it, and do blame him for not morally denouncing the draft when he was accused of avoiding it, providing an at least implicit sanction.
Similarly, while the present political and military involvement in the Middle East is also an intellectual and moral quagmire, the national ethic has changed. The general view since 9/11 is more aligned with World War II than Viet Nam.
And just for the record, I am a PO3 in the Maritime Regiment of the Texas State Guard.
==> http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
==> http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
==> http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
... and see others on the same subject ("Texas State Guard") on my blog.
If you think joining the Air National Guard, especially in a time of war, is a cushy gig filled with pansies and draft dodging cowards, nothing will happen if you say so to their faces. So my challenge still stands. Either accept it, or admit that you are wrong about George Bush being a draft dodger.
Jan