Why This Administration Wants to Keep Draft an Unspoken Option

Someone in the market was saying today - and I noticed it was a person without children and whom I know has voted for our belooped leader - that Mr. Bush should just institute a draft and be done with it.

But although - and many don't know this - the feds have a draft plan that was cobbled together to impose as needed, there are probably very good reasons why we haven't heard the Bushies do more than 'dis the idea.

For one, Mr. Bush's rotten economy is doing a bangup job of making certain that there's a plentiful supply of kids who can't afford to go to college and see their employment prospects largely in terms of "part-time, no benefits". More than one parent has regretted getting angry and telling the 19-year-old loafing on a sofa, "At least join the military and get off the couch!"

For two, a good part of this population are the teens you might not think twice about: the poor, the people of color.

See, if Bush pushes the draft button, these wars of his become everyone's problem. And when you have a draft, it's harder not to pay attention to what's going on. Suddenly, the upper middle class person's son or daughter may be nearly (with exceptions) as much at risk at the poor Latino or the underemployed Native American.

Right now, even though the majority of people have turned against the president's "vision", still no one (very sadly) is actually blaming him for being wrong. But if the draft button is deployed, they might. While they won't have another chance to try to vote him out of office, there are still a few ways we can make his 8-year vacation from reality into less of the big nap delimited by trips driving Putey-Put around in an old Russian car he seems to assume the presidency is.

There's also that nasty question to rear its head: do you draft women? It would be very difficult for the military to say women should not be included when women are in high-danger assignments now. Newt Gingrich can appear again and talk about "women don't belong in foxholes because they get infections" bit as many times as he'd like, and you're still going to have lawsuits from young men and (who knows?) perhaps women who say the draft is inherently unfair because there's discrimination.

But Bush's flat-earth Dominionist base won't hear of women being drafted. They'll turn on him faster than they should when he fell asleep in the middle of his own "National Day of Prayer" service at the White House last week or when his batshit wife talked about strippers, "Desperate Housewives", and George masturbating a male horse.

Myself? I'd like to see America start yelling questions about Bush's damned war. We impeached Clinton because of semen on the blue dress of a consenting adult who was not his wife; Bush is screwing us all and not consentually, either.