Read this: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/20/selective.service/index.html
You'll feel your own way about it, but what amazes me is that the damned draft was eliminated for a reason. Now, had the Iraqis come over here on the boats we sold them and busted down our borders with the missiles we gave them and killed my friends and family with the guns we gave... I'm sorry. I don't want to give some sort of false picture "Hey, look at us, we give out guns to our potential enemies..." That's not true. We sold them those guns.
If all that had happened, certainly, I'd line up, or at least be defending my own home with that crappy samurai sword I bought on eBay and my pellet guns with my pet cat's laser-pointed duct-taped to the barrel. That would be fine. But it looks like, should anyone actually support a renewed draft, I'ma have ta' get my shit arrested.
The guy proposing this suggests that it will be a quicker way to the end the war when, in all honesty, the quickest way is pulling out. Why don't they want to do that? Because it would leave an unstable government? Sure, sort of. But they're more concerned that that "unstable government" will have a taste for "running colors," to quote many an articulate and sensible bumper sticker. And honestly, I would hate that.
I need to quickly address the Iraqi people. As most of you know, my rarely-viewed and occasionally updated blog is the one source of information most post-Saddam Iraqis trust. So here's the deal Iraq - Those of you who hate the US, please hate the government. I know they talk about our "freedom" of the vote and speech and of choice, but what you need to understand is that the vote is just a winding of the key, as it were. Sure, they're on your side when you turn it, but they're left to their own devices and the seemingly random will of those other mechanical devices nearby them. Most of the time they just wander off the table, taking us with them. Yes, we choose the douchebags who run the country, who "speak for us" rather than at us. But we don't control them. As for that age-old idea of rebellion? We can't, we really can't. We've been given opportunity and most of us are taking it to survive. Don't look at us as all being Paris Hilton or George Bush. We all know who they are and most of us don't approve of either of them. Some Americans even wish them death. But there's little we can really do about it until an election comes around.
With one exception.
There is the protest. Most of the time a huge waste of time and energy, if only because the government seems to respond strictly to exit polls. For whatever reason a survey you could easily lie on is more trusted than a few hundred thousand people yelling to you that you might just be wrong in one breath.
Now, there are the douchebags who are there just to protest. And a lot of them have WAY too much time on their hands, painting Hitler 'staches on Bush and devil horns on Cheney, affording the media and the government a much easier target with which to debilitate the entire movement against them or their policies. Not to mention the huge possibility of government infiltrators, a concept relegated more often to nutjob conspiracy theories than to the simple fact that that's what CIA agents are trained to do.
What do we do in this case? It's hard to say, and that's how they'd have it. Protest and you're crazy. Become apathetic and you're not doing enough. Work on a campaign for a person or an issue and you might not fade away. Vote and you give someone a chance based entirely on faith, despite the separation of church and state. When this intermittent chance to change things is our only option, its obvious, at least of late, that we understand this is our chance to do something. But it isn't satisfying. I'll agree with Bush on one thing - We do want immediate change. We are desperate for instant gratification in this country, and if Bush actually does feel the way his mouth says he does, I'll gladly say I agree with him. But I'll also point out the fact that change doesn't seem to be in his nature at all. Being uncompromising on every issue doesn't make you decisive. It makes you stubborn. Yet we, as a whole, sort of voted for him. Four years later, we sort of voted for him again - we didn't change. We had the chance for instant gratification, but we refused it. I can't doubt that we deserve our freedoms, I just think we need more opportunities to express and use them. Like everyone else, I don't have a plan, I just know I'm dissatisfied, and I don't expect the Democrats to fix a damned thing. They've already forced the Republican PR machine to take the image of moderate, uncompromising, uniting and collaborative. With a few strokes they've taken advantage of every little early weakness the Democrats have shown.
My only solution right now? Draft Karl Rove.
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