Say Anything Blog

That’s what Charlie Rangel wants to do.

WASHINGTON—Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 if the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has his way.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars and to bolster U.S. troop levels insufficient to cover potential future action in Iran, North Korea and Iraq.

“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” Rangel said.

This is a totally transparent, wholly obscene bit of political theater.

Remember that it was the Democrats, including Rangel and Jim McDermott, who tried to bring up the specter of the draft right before the 2004 elections.  And they were totally dishonest about it too, implying that it was the President/Republicans who were going to make the draft a reality again even as they themselves introduced legislation to re-instate it.

This country doesn’t need a draft.  Military recruiting efforts have been meeting and exceeding goals for a while now.  Rangel and his cohorts aren’t talking about the draft because we actually need it, they’re talking about the draft to scare Americans and undermine public support for the mission in Iraq.  The same mission they want to choke to death by cutting off the resources our troops are using to pursue it.

In short, this is just the latest effort by the Democrats to demoralize Americans with the “our military is stretched too thin” lie.  It’s total nonsense.  The mission in Iraq, though costly in terms of “blood and treasure,” is absolutely sustainable.  America has continued to prosper during the first 3+ years in Iraq, and we can continue to live and prosper even if that war goes on for years into the future.

If we should complete our mission in Iraq, I hope Americans come to realize that we did so despite Democrats who (aside from the fact that many of them voted for the war at its onset) have sought to undermine it and even lose it for us almost from the beginning.

Update: Allah:

With talk now of Bush sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq and Zinni and Batiste telling the Times that withdrawal would be disastrous, doves need to recapture the momentum. Enter the draft bill, which is doomed to fail but at least gives the media a few weeks of material with which to dissuade anyone leaning towards redoubling our efforts to win this thing.

Quite right.  When a draft bill was presented to Congress before the 2004 elections it failed 402 - 2 with Rangel himself voting against it.

You can bet that if such a bill were to come to the floor of Congress again (if Democrats would even allow it to get that far) it’d suffer the same fate.  Because as I’ve already pointed out, this isn’t really about sound foreign policy so much as it is about Democrats trying to undermine the war effort.