The shit is really hitting the fan
I'm sure everyone has read this story about mutiny amongst the troops already, but if you haven't, do so. My gut feeling is this stuff is happening more than we know, and the Pentagon is only keeping a lid on it by restricting the soliders' abilities to communicate with their families. But there's no telling. Hopefully when Kerry's in office, that transperancy he promised in the debates will extend to operations in Iraq and we will find out for sure how bad it's gotten.
If they are getting this kind of revolt from a volunteer army, a draft is going to be an absolute nightmare. I suspect that young people today may be even more resistant to the draft than they were in the 60's. Raised on images of defiant hippies burning draft cards and Oliver Stone movies, we have internalized a message that was not available to the baby boomers--that defying the draft and resisting authority are noble actions. If they start a draft, we will have that tradition to draw on and you can bet the draft resistant will begin immediately.
posted by Amanda Marcotte at
16.10.04
4 Comments:
Oh,I'm not so sure that nobility would inspire action, so much as having the voyeurism that passes for citizenship, which the Republican party has spent the last 35 years pushing on us, crushed by the sudden realization millions of young right wingers would have, upon realizing that watching TV and parating slogans isn't, in fact, the same thing as fighting for your country.
Don't foget, these are the same assholes who bitch, bitch and bitch about high gas prices, but get offended when you point to their SUVs as the problem. I strongly suspect that mere selfishness will win in the end.
10/16/2004
Yeah, but it will give people a convienent excuse for their actions. ;) I think people forget that for a lot of young people in the 60's, draft resistance was an agonizing choice, because they had been brought up to believe that the authorities wanted the best for them. Young people know don't believe that at all. Also, those who would be the first to openly resist the draft would naturally come from the left, then and now. But back then, the people who started the war were self-proclaimed liberals and now they are self-proclaimed conservatives, which means liberal young people have even more reason to be suspicious of their motives than they did in the 60's.
10/16/2004
I wasn't celebrating the solider mutiny, but singling it out to show that the way that things are falling apart under this leadership's administration. I don't celebrate everything that helps "my guy" in the campaign, but this isn't a game. If something is seriously wrong with this administration, it needs to be understood by all citizens so that they can decide what needs to be done.
The horserace mentality has gone too far. I reread that post and nothing in there was celebratory. I am alarmed, to say the least, that this country is moving towards a showdown between the government and young people that has the possibility of being even worse than what happened around the Vietnam draft.
10/17/2004
I meant to convey that there's a certain nobility to resisting the draft as an objector. Reasonable people certainly can disagree on that point, but I would say many more people now are inclined to be supportive of draft resisters than used to be.
10/22/2004
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