Sunday, April 25, 2004
Anyone Feel A Draft Coming? posted by Richard Seymour
The Answer is Blowing in the Wind
MarxMail is currently discussing, among other things, a recent US opinion poll on whether to reinstate the draft. CNN's poll on the issue of whether there ought to be a reinstatement of the draft was both encouraging and discouraging.
Encouraging because of the results:
"Among 30 and over, 79 percent opposed, 18-29, 88 [percent] opposed."
Discouraging because the matter has even come up for discussion. The draft is a contemptible form of state coercion, one of the few forms of extreme authoritarianism to retain a modest aura of respectibility in liberal democracies.
It is amazing enough that Larry King can say on national television that "I have no basic objection to a draft" , but the re-emergence of the question reminds me of the way the topic of torture was introduced as a tacitly acceptable method of state interrogation after 9/11. It is even more insidious to say "okay, let's talk about it, who are we harming if we just discuss the possibilities" than if there was an attempt to pass legislation making such methods legal.
Why is the draft suddenly back on the agenda? Well, apart from the official 143,000 troops "inside Iraqi borders", there are tens of thousands of US troops in surrounding countries. This could elevate the total to perhaps 200,000. The US army is completely over-stretched, with commitments in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and of course Iraq. The Iraqi Resistance cannot be put down by the current troop levels. British forces have admitted that they could not possibly hold Basra if the population enacted a Fallujah-style uprising. US troops are finding themselves frequently on the run . And the loose bands of mercenaries they've got in there for "protection" are presumably not going to be up to the task either.
I would therefore expect there to be a big push to reinstate the draft. The US authorities in Iraq are presently holding out for a political solution, but that is unlikely to happen. If all else fails, of course, Negroponte can simply whip up some death squads like he did when he was "Ambassador" to Honduras. (Yeah, how did that work? "Oh, Mr Ambassador, with these drug-funded ex-Nazis you are really spoiling us!")
I hope you guys are up for it. Pack some clean underwear cos if I were you, I'd be shitting myself.
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