Overheard in SF: the draft
For whatever reason, the topic of instituting the draft has come up a lot, lately. It’s this unspoken assumption, I suppose, since Bush’s “troop augmentation” strategy as outlined in our last State of the Union. That assumption being, of course, that as we continue wallowing in the totally amoral quagmire that is Iraq (and as things continue to escalate with Iran, among other countries), we’ll revert back to the days where the nation’s young men are semi-randomly called upon to “serve” democracy. (What double meaning those words have.)
Today I was at a local florist where the conversation, oddly, turned to the draft. Mentioning the shooting that occurred just a few steps away from my apartment, one rather corpulent white man mentioned to his two pals that he had his iPod had been robbed by a black youth a couple blocks away, and that laptops are routinely being stolen from the coffee shop around the corner; his disenfranchised middle-class white pal started in under his breath: this generation needs a draft to thin out its numbers, get the dregs off the street. Both cronies agreed. Having some small background in cultural studies and liberal arts — and still being of prime drafting age — I bit my tongue and flashed a dirty look as I left, seething.
Was I really at a florist in the Lower Haight in San Francisco? Is this really how people feel? That my generation’s “wasted youth” would be better served in Bush’s war(s) in the middle east? I… I don’t even know how to end this post, but I should probably do that now before I really fly off the handle.
Oddly enough, I mentioned the draft in a blog post today: http://lagesse.org/index.php/2007/02/14/army-giving-more-waivers-in-recruiting/
Of course, I was making the OPPOSITE argument the fat-asses in the flower show were making - we do NOT need the bottom feeders in society in our Miltary. We need the brightest people we can get.
Right now just under 12% of all of the Army volunteers are getting in with waivers for serious crimes. And we wonder why we have things like prisoner abuse, or rapes happening at the hands of our troops. We have these problems because these are the people we are depending on to represent us on foreign soil.
Rob
Comment by Rob La Gesse — Wednesday, February 14, 2007 @ 6:05 pm
Fly off the handle? You know what your problem is, Ryan? No discipline! A couple months in the Corps oughta straighten you right out! TEN-HUT!
Comment by Chris Grant — Thursday, February 15, 2007 @ 9:53 am
Have you seen the Japanes movie Battle Royale? Sounds like what these guys would like to see.
Comment by mitch — Thursday, February 15, 2007 @ 11:24 pm