The
Rational Argumentator
Four-Thousand-Fold:
An Essay Attempting to Discredit a Potential Draft in America
This time, it is not high taxes, nor is it the PATRIOT Act. It is not venturing into Vietnam, nor is it supporting Saddam Hussein against the Iraqis.
The United States of America is, however, once again considering using conscription as a means to ensure "fairness" in the US Military and to enlarge military manpower.
This may sound good to the fools and politicians upon the grassy knolls of the District of Columbia, but the true Americans, both Republican and Democrat, both young and old, and both rich and poor, despise suggested course of action.
And it is not hard to see why.
Of course, even the Pentagon, the true facilitators of military strategy, know this. Every single time the Democrats raise the Universal National Service Act, which would require almost ALL Americans to serve in the United States military, the Pentagon crushes this by refusing to even acknowledge the existence of this bill. When the same bill was proposed last year, the committee asked the Pentagon for a recommendation and never brought up the issue again.
More fearful is the Selective Service Act, or the Draft, which, although similar to, is not the same as the Universal National Service Act.
It seems that the Defense Department has been VERY quiet about their draft preparations; no notice is made in the newspapers about their budget increase of over $20 million, which BOTH Republicans and Democrats voted for, and few know that the DOD has been moving to silently fill spots on Draft Boards.
Thus, it will take a coalition of BOTH Republicans and Democrats to spread the word about this injustice against America, and then crush it beneath our collective foot.
Why an injustice?
Well, why not?
This IS a basic fundamental violation of our freedoms! We DO have a right to live our lives how we want to; thus, some of us have the freedom to attend Oakton Community College, while others may take a less "efficient" route to Berkeley, located in California.
We have the freedom to buy a stereo.
We have the freedom to pick our own career.
We have the freedom to say what we want.
We have the freedom to worship whatever and whoever we want.
And, yes, we have the freedom to NOT participate in the US military if we do not want to.
I will not contend that all rights have limits; the government does have the power to declare martial law and suspend our freedoms in extreme cases.
Let me reiterate:
The government does have the power to declare martial law and suspend our freedoms in extreme cases.
Meaning that unless the United States is in imminent danger, our freedoms may NOT be infringed upon by the United States government!
To do so in a time of peace would be a DISSERVICE to the generations of the past. Over a million fighting sons and daughters of Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty have died and millions more have sacrificed their limbs, minds, and years out of their lives, all to ensure that American freedoms could endure until the end of time.
And, ONLY when those freedoms that so many gave up so much are threatened can the United States suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus, or force her young men into military service, to fight in faraway lands.?
This is NOT one of those times!
The United States military is UNPARALELLED in all aspects.
A few examples:
Our primary species of tank, the M1 Abrams, performs very well; only a single one has ever been lost in military combat, and only then because the driver stuck his head out the tank and was killed by an Iraqi insurgent; the tank unfortunately drove into a river, killing the entire crew.
The combination of jamming and stealth technology has allowed US F-117 Nighthawks, the less advanced stealth attack aircraft, to penetrate airspace all over the world, from Belgrade to Baghdad. Only a single one was lost, and only because the engine malfunctioned.
Tomahawk missiles can fly just 30 feet off the ground at several hundred miles per hour, making them impervious to enemy attack. They can then deliver a ton of high or nuclear explosive within 20 feet of a target.
F-15 Eagles, the mainstay of the United States Air Force, can perform just as well as the Tomahawk missile in terms of speed and altitude. Beyond that, it can carry missiles that can strike down enemy aircraft from 40 miles away, and has such advanced avionics that most enemy aircraft are destroyed before closing the distance with the Eagle, and those that get within 10 miles are just as dead; F-16s will destroy those.
Not a single F-15 has ever been shot down, whether in the US or Israeli air corps.
This is just a SMALL example of the sheer power that is at the US arsenal. Beyond that, our submarines cannot be detected, we have three-fold the number of carriers the rest of the world COMBINED has.
Once more: all of this technology, save our jamming and tank technology, was designed in either the Johnson, Nixon, or Carter years.
THIS BASIC TECHNOLOGY IS OVER 3 DECADES OLD!
Our military has become so efficient and powerful at what it does, that the United States has lost less than 3,000 soldiers in the past 3 decades, yet we have smashed aside Iraq twice, took out the Taliban infrastructure to the point that the Northern Alliance (once the LA Clippers of Central Asia) could smash them aside in months, restored some version of peace to Bosnia, and kept China and North Korea from keeping true on their promises to take over parts of Asia.
Why is this?
Because of our free market technology-- and the fact that the United States spends almost as much as the rest of the world on military expenditures.
Against our enemies, we have not begun to fight. We did not need a quarter million men to take over Iraq (though occupation is far different) and we don't need a massive force to crush North Korea, or Iran, or Syria, or Libya, or Algeria, or Sudan, or... pretty much anyone except for England, France, Russia, and China!
In fact, if we chose to fight Iraq until we had the same number dead as we did in World War II, we would have destroyed the Iraqi army and won the war nearly 4000 times!
If anything, our military is inefficient because it is too LARGE! A 2 million soldier force, when including active and reserve, is unneeded. We could easily fight a two-front war with such a force, and win. (True, causalities would be higher than we want, but we could still manage it)
Occupation and reconstruction is another issue entirely, that would require an entire book to actually describe, but it should suffice to say this:
Our men and women in arms are given M-16s, M-60s, and M-160s. These are weapons of war. They are meant to take life, not to give it, and the same is true of our armed forces.
The United States military is designed to annihilate all opposition, and it can do that without massive numbers. The reason the US needs such high numbers for rebuilding Iraq is that the US military is not supposed to rebuild Iraq; its job was to destroy Iraq, and to eliminate Saddam Hussein, once and for all.
In summary: THE DRAFT IS NOT NEEDED!
I need not say more than that, but I shall continue.
Even in times of crisis, the draft is something I would never wish to see implemented.
The reasons are obvious.
In most cases, these are NOT men and women fighting these wars. They are children, fresh out of high school and idealistic. They are, moreover, civilians; they do not want to fight because they have no motivation to fight.
Conscripting those men would have disastrous repercussions upon their psyches; how many would suffer post-traumatic stress disorder after seeing their best buddies die? How many would become depressed in the midst of battle and let down their comrades, letting four of them die to a VC mine? How many would simply lose all faith in the United States government, or even life in general?
We owe our young men better than that. We owe them a LOT more than that; after all, those 480,000 men and women who were killed upon the islands of Japan, islands of Italy, deserts of Morocco, and plains of Germany fought and surrendered their lives so no one else would HAVE to go through the same pain they went through.
What about college students? How long will it be before virtually all go to college and we have to draft them? Surely, they would be QUITE upset that their lives were being put on hold to fight a war they did not want to fight in the first place.
What about women? How long before "equal rights" finally does take hold, and women are forced to fight, along with men? Of course, pregnancy would be an automatic disqualification, meaning we would see the highest teen pregnancy rates in the history of the United States.
Considering how bad the urban areas are because of children born out of wedlock, I, for one, wish to stay away from seeing what the reprecussions would come to be if every one of my female friends decided to have a baby to avoid the inevitable military service.
Besides, these soldiers would have little motivation to fight; I need not prove it, as even Donald Rumsfeld agrees with me, but the logic is quite simple. If these people did not want to fight, as they did not volunteer, forcing them to fight would invite morale problems, which would lead to higher casualty rates and a greater likelihood of a My Lai-type incident.
Which, of course, leads back to the post-traumatic stress disorder, exacerbated by the knowledge that you were not given the right to decide the path of your life.
And the worst of it all, even worse than the deficits and riots, would be the foreign policy of the future. After the horrors of the Vietnam War, including the draft, the United States was hesitant to enter world affairs. Thus, following the Tet Offensive, China and the Soviet Union went on their greatest period of offensives, stopping only when the Islamic Fundamentalists of the Mujihadeen, warriors willing to fight to the death, stopped them in their tracks upon the killing fields and hidden mountain passes of Afghanistan.
The same thing happened after World War I, and the United States allowed Hitler to arise and dominate Europe.
Consider the times when we attacked countries with defined objectives, and where we did not draft soldiers--Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, Serbia, Sudan-- the public was somewhat willing to fight these battles, partially because it was not exposed to the brutality of war (only the soldiers were, who volunteered to fight those wars).
The draft is ineffective, and must be reserved for times when we have absolutely no other choice. Both the social and military side effects should dissuade anyone from proposing the re-institution of the draft. The basic fundamental violation of liberties should simply reiterate that sentiment.
But logic alone can not account for fevering passion against the draft.
What truly accounts for my opposition is the human face I can put on it. I can see 5 year olds full of joy, and I can see college-bound seniors full of hope. I see 13 year olds having fun at a mall, and I smile when freshmen stumble their way through the hallways of my school for the very first time.
These are people that I see every day. I cannot avoid it, and I know what these people, all my friends, like and dislike. I know their dreams and ambitions, and I know how much they just want to be accepted and loved.
What is worse is that I know what they will see when conscripted: 9-year-old girls burned by napalm, blood pouring from gaping, open wounds, infants covered in 3rd degree burns, the corpses of friends.
I know the screams they will hear will haunt them for as long as they live.
I know that they will never forget the smell of humans rotting.
And I know that my precious friends, whom I value so much, will never be the same after a brutal fight.
And I do not want a single one of them fighting. I would rather go myself.
True, some will go, and I cannot stop them, because they go of their free will rather than the will of a major force. I know that I cannot fight this war for them, unless I lie to the federal government about my asthma, and it does not find out about it.
But the rest.
The rest will stay in America, if they want to. When I look into the smiling faces of those whom I love as much as my family, I know that I cannot let the tyrants in the White House, on Capitol Hill, or anywhere else nail those people upon a cross of war that will leave them with chaos, poverty, and depression-- or, possibly, nothing at all.
This draft shall not be enacted and remain unchallenged as long as I still live, and freedom will persevere against such reckless evil.
It is simply the right thing.
~Robert Olson
___________
Robert Olson is a student at Glenbrook South High School. Besides being nominated for the David P. Pasquini Social Studies Award, he is also a member of the National Forensic League and a quality public speaker. In his free-time, he studies history and debates politics with a wide number of people, also contributing to The Rational Arguementator and a variety of other publications on occasion. He hopes to utilize his talents in a political career, and is currently working on a book that details necessary education reforms in America.
Robert Olson is a student at Glenbrook South High School. Besides being nominated for the David P. Pasquini Social Studies Award, he is also a member of the National Forensic League and a quality public speaker. In his free-time, he studies history and debates politics with a wide number of people, also contributing to The Rational Arguementator and a variety of other publications on occasion. He hopes to utilize his talents in a political career, and is currently working on a book that details necessary education reforms in America.
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