Editor,
While I share William Valentine’s frustrations with the unfair treatment that veterans are receiving, I have to disagree with him about the draft being an antidote.
First of all, if equitability is one of Valentine’s concerns, the current draft sign-up law is sexually discriminatory against men. Even handicapped men and fathers of little children have to register, while able-bodied women without children to care for don’t.
Of the 25 congresswomen in 1980 who voted for resumption of male-only registration, not a single one of them, to my knowledge, ever served in the military as a volunteer, much less as a draftee. If it were up to me, these 25 women who are still alive and in good health would all be drafted in place of male (or female) 18-year-olds.
Second (and most important), the draft would further prolong this useless Middle Eastern adventure by supplying the president and Pentagon with unlimited cannon fodder and support personnel. The lack of personnel acts as a break on further involvement. As more soldiers desert or refuse to fight, President Obama will eventually be forced to pull out or, at the very least, to quit using U.S. military personnel.
Had it not been for the draft, we probably would never have fought in the equally
pointless conflicts of Korea and Vietnam. It was President Eisenhower’s desire to shrink military personnel with the “New Look” military in the early 1950s that motivated him to seek a cease-fire in Korea by 1953 and to prevent the use of U.S. ground troops in Vietnam, at least while he was in office.
The war in the Middle East has nothing to do with national security but instead is caused by our overdependence on the private automobile. Put in more mass transit and we could drastically lessen our dependence on the very oil that plunged us into the Middle East in the first place.
William Delzell
Daily Lobo reader
