What about National Defense, Charlie?

Pudgy little nobody Charlie Rangel is again raising the prosepect of a draft. Traditionally, for more than 170 years, the US has instituted the draft for national defense. But, not Charlie…nope. He wants to institute a draft for political reasons – and admits it.

Do we need more troops in the military? Nope the services are all meeting their recruiting/retention goals as late as June 2006. And since I volunteered to go back on active duty last May, I haven’t heard a word from the Army – they can’t be that hard-up if they won’t take an experienced trigger puller and qualified instructor/linguist back on active duty, can they? 

So why does Charlie want to start a draft? So the rich kids will revolt. Because Charlie and his elitist buddies don’t know anyone in the military and so they figure the rest of us don’t know anyone either and they want to broaden our experience, bring the war to our living rooms and dining room tables. Because Rangel wants to make a point – he wants to divide this nation. And if a few innocent people get killed in the interim, well, that just makes it so much better.

I guess he figures this volunteer military farms kids from some genetic engineering facility in the desert and no one knows people who are fighting for our security. According to DoD, our fighting force is made up of the best and brightest young people in this country.

Rangel is so fricken clueless that I guess he figures that if we start drafting rich kids and Congress becomes more thoughtful about sending rich kids in harm’s way the threat from Islam will automatically evaporate. And this is all to convince people that we didn’t need to go to iraq in the first place (although the Left, throughout the 90s, whined that poor Bill Clinton wouldn’t have to bomb Hussein if the current President’s father had finished the job in 1991).

I remember Charlie, on December 20, 1989, asking when the troops were coming back from Panama. Most of the troops weren’t even in the theater yet when he was demanding a firm date for their withdrawal! Yes, I know he’s some sort of war hero from Korea – but what kind of war hero tries to muddle the debate about war with useless pranks. If Charley was really concerned about the troops, he’d be rah-rahing them instead of calling them morons and dirt-eating, poverty-stricken victims. 

Was Rangel talking about a draft when we were committing troops to Bosnia and Kosovo under the past administration? In fact, how did Rangel feel about the draft when President Nixon ended it in 1972? How did he feel about it when Jimmy carter reinstituted the draft registration in 1979 in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? And if he felt so strongly about the draft, why didn’t he vote for it when Republicans brought his own bill up for a vote in Congress?

Besides, since there’s no real need for more troops, since it costs millions of dollars to train one single soldier to prepare him to survive combat, since the services are meeting their recruiting goals and there’s no imminent threat to our shores that requires a home-defense force, and since we need experienced troops in the field, not training some bonehead halfwit college dropout, Charlie’s recommendation should be called DOA.

I suspect this is just the first time we’ll hear of this. The Democrat Congress will try peawit measures like this constantly to get President to bend to their will over the next two years – just so long as Rock the Vote and the rest of the “Republicans are coming for your children” types remember who it was that introduced this nimroddery in 2008.

Category: Politics