I got a number of messages like this one from Andy Rose…
I'm not sure where Warren Stubli got his information (or if he was just trying to make a factless point about political correctness), but a draft would most certainly not include women…at least not at first. The list of potential draftees is drawn up by the Selective Service System, which still registers only men between the ages of 18 and 25. (They have a website with a pretty exhaustive explanation of deferments and what would happen in a draft lottery.)
Yeah, but no one pays any attention to those things now because we don't have a draft and they don't matter. If actual human beings were actually being plucked from their lives and sent over to risk those lives in war, there'd be a lot of discussion over whether those should be only male lives and the answer would almost certainly be "No." And I don't think this nation would be as tolerant as it once was of a selective service system that seemed to have all sorts of escape clauses for the wealthy and well-connected…especially if it seemed to be a necessity thanks to the efforts of George "absentee National Guard" Bush and Dick "I had other priorities" Cheney.
If we did reinstate the draft in this country, they'd have to deal with those issues. But it's not going to happen because no one wants a draft…not even the military, insofar as I can tell. What they want is more recruits and one way to make that come to pass is to eliminate things like soldiers having to buy their own body armor and equipment, and the shameful reports of them being denied proper medical care. As with too many past wars, we seem to spend money on all sorts of stupid things, including just plain losing zillions of it to God-knows-where…but we short-sheet the soldiers. It's sacrilege to not love the troops but okay to skimp on their equipment and medical care.
If Bush and Cheney want to build support for this war, it sure wouldn't hurt (or be that difficult) to make those outrages go away, and I don't know why this isn't done. These are smart men. They can figure out a way to improve the lot of our soldiers and drive Halliburton stock up another few points.