Charles Rangel (D-NY) has again raised the subject of reinstituting the military draft as a way of ensuring that the prospect of war will be treated by the powerful and well-connected with the kind of seriousness it merits. Of course, the proposal will go nowhere, but the reaction to it is always interesting. NPR’s resident political sports commentator Cokie Roberts, for instance, pointed out that people volunteer for today’s military, that they are there because they want to be there, and that, anyway, the military doesn’t want a draft. There’s a civics lesson in this somewhere, I’m sure of it. You won’t get that from me (unqualified, for sure), but this reaction is certainly worth a closer look.

Sure, people volunteer for the military, but very often they do so on the basis of some pretty specious recruiting claims (not to mention glitzy advertising that you and I pay for). Many times they come from depressed communities where there are few options for high school graduates to get an education, start a career, or even just find a decent-paying job. As far as wanting to be there is concerned, my first question is, wanting to be where? Iraq? Doubt it. There hasn’t yet been massive desertion or near insurrection like there was in Vietnam, but then these are, again, volunteers many of whom entered the armed forces not simply because they wanted to serve their country, but because they hoped to either make a career in the military or find a career through the experience. That and the culture of the modern military makes disobedience much, much more difficult than it would be for a draftee who didn’t want to be in the service in the first place.

Finally, the question of whether or not the military wants a draft seems kind of irrelevant to me. Last time I looked, they took their orders from the elected civilian leadership and not the other way around. (They didn’t particularly want to go into Iraq either, and look where we are.) Their reluctance stems, of course, from the Vietnam experience, but what the hell — people were drafted into America’s wars long before Vietnam. Was the problem… Is the problem the draft or the fact that the war was plainly wrong and immoral and no one wanted to fight it? Seems to me it’s the latter. What really bugs people about the draft is that it puts us in a situation where we can’t get into a war unless it obviously needs to be fought — i.e. that there is no alternative.

There’s another basic moral question here; one that Cokie and crew are unlikely to address. Just because people are willing to do our fighting for us, that doesn’t mean we should feel free to sent them on some hopeless, pointless, gratuitous mission like invading and occupying Iraq. I think Rangel’s point is that general conscription would make the decision to go to war a matter of keen interest to every part of society, from penniless kids in Appalachia and south Bronx to ivy league-bound prepsters and their parents. I find it grimly amusing that people are encouraged think of the Vietnam era as a time when people didn’t support U.S. troops and that today we’re behind them all the way. Back in the sixties, if you were an 18-year-old man, you were about two inches away from being a troop yourself. You likely had good friends and/or family members in the service — maybe a cousin, an uncle, or a brother overseas — and you were watching the mails for that draft notice. It’s nothing like that today. Nowadays, people slap a magnetic ribbon on their bumper and you’d think they just came back from a freaking U.S.O. show.

What the fuck — Cheney was no anti-war protester in the sixties; just a selfish slug who was unwilling to push himself away from his Thanksgiving dinner to get shot at in Vietnam. And while people criticize sixties radicals no end, the Cheney model is the one we all follow today.

luv u,

jp

Back in 1980 — what seems like ten thousand years ago now — I spent a year at the State University of New York College at New Paltz, about an hour north of New York City. It was a tumultuous year, the last of the Carter presidency, with the election of Ronald Reagan, the assassination of John Lennon, and — on a more personal note — the death of my brother Mark, a very excellent jazz pianist (among numerous other things), whose car was knocked off the road by some drunk up in Maine (a blood-alcohol brother of Dubya, no doubt… but I digress). It was also a full year of the Iranian hostage crisis, during which our nation was taken by a kind of hyper-nationalism hitherto unknown to me. Some may remember (amid the soaring gas prices) the jingoistic songs on the radio, the first bloom of yellow ribbons, and the like. I can remember walking through one of the classroom buildings at New Paltz and seeing some bulletin board graffiti that read, “Who needs the Ayatollah’s oil? We’ve got 15,000 Iranian students to burn.”

Those were indeed ugly times, as are these. But the madness of 1980 set the template for much of what followed, and we are still living with its repercussions. Iran remains official enemy number one — the “Great Satan”, in the parlance of the mullahs — their crimes against the U.S. a rap sheet that usually includes support for terrorism (mostly in reference to Hezbollah), nuclear ambitions, and posing an existential threat to Israel. Pretty thin gruel, as it happens. Yes, they give money and supplies to Hezbollah, but Hezbollah wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for Israel’s hysterical use of firepower over their 19-year occupation of Lebanon and thereafter. Yes, Iran does seek to enrich uranium, but these activities are still within the legal parameters of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and they have not demonstrated the ability to produce anything approaching weapons-grade uranium… though with a consistently belligerent nuclear-armed state (Israel) threatening them from just over the horizon, I wouldn’t be surprised if they should move in that direction. As for the existential threat to Israel, see the previous sentence. The only credible existential threat is the one directed at Iran by the regional nuclear power and by the global superpower (us). Amadenijad’s fulminations about Israel carry little weight a) because he is not the supreme leader of Iran, and b) because Iran does not have the capability to even begin to destroy Israel.

Israel, on the other hand, has the capability to destroy any state in the Middle East, with hundreds of undeclared nuclear weapons in their arsenal. And while the rest of the world is transfixed on the horror we’ve created in Iraq, Israel has taken this opportunity to kick the living hell out of the slum that is Gaza, firing missiles into densely populated residential neighborhoods and following their usual tactics. The IDF has iced so many children in the occupied territories that the western press hardly bothers to report on the phenomenon any more — it’s becoming remarkably unremarkable. All the while, our government — the only one that can effectively restrain Israel — is asleep at the switch, standing aside while the blood flows in Gaza, much as we did when Lebanon was savagely attacked last summer and when Jenin and Nablus were being pounded by the IDF. We have demonstrated in a multitude of ways how little we care about the lives and livelihoods of people in that area of the world. Repairing that will take more than a cosmetic changing of the guard at the Pentagon and some high sounding rhetoric.

In any case, twenty-six years of pointless enmity is enough. It’s time to start behaving like adults and make peace with the Muslim world like we did with Russia and China. Iran is a good place to start.

luv u,

jp

Whoa. Even the longest winning streaks run out one day, I guess. Prior to this last Tuesday, I was beginning to wonder if the Republicans could do anything that might lose them an election. It appears as though the voters have their limit after all. The Dems even took my local congressional district seat, which has been held by the GOP for more than fifty years. Who can doubt that there were more than a few bricks in the White House toilets come Wednesday morning? Rumsfeld immediately took the bullet, probably guessing that the Democrats would be satisfied with his departure and not drag him in front of a semi-hostile committee. (Good guess. Remember what they did after Clinton’s first election… yeah, that’s right — you can’t remember because there’s nothing to remember.) It’s distinctly possible, however, that foreign courts will be less forgiving. With universal jurisdiction on war crimes and ample evidence that Rumsfeld not only condemned but encouraged torture of detainees, he may need to plan his travel itinerary a bit more carefully from now on. (Tip: Ask Kissinger what travel agent he uses.)

So what does this Democratic victory mean, aside from the prospect of being able to say “Chairman Conyers” and “Chairwoman Lee”? Is this really a sea change, as some have suggested? Not likely. As I’ve mentioned here before in my usual haphazard way, working towards a Democratic resurgence in the House and Senate was a minimal political act — an attempt to shove a log into the juggernaut’s wheel-spokes (though it may be more akin to clipping a playing card to the forks of Bush’s bicycle). The Dems did not generate anything like a consistently progressive theme during the campaign (see Rahm Emmanuel); some talked a good game, while others mouthed the usual weasely platitudes that may easily be backed away from later on. It is during these first few weeks following an election when the betrayal of the voters typically takes place, and there are signs that such a process may be underway.

The air is thick with calls for bipartisan cooperation. Oh, sure — when the Republicans had total control of everything, it was “Fuck off an die, liberal Osama-huggers! We’ll make the laws ourselves and the president will spend his political capital as he sees fit.” Now that they’ve lost Congress, suddenly it’s time for everyone to come together for the good of the country. Something tells me that when the GOP wrenches control of the legislative branch back again, their attitude will be, “Well, we tried bipartisanship and it didn’t work, so fuck of and die, children of Saddam!” And the Dems will be shocked… shocked, as always. If they would only give as good as they get, just one time. Ah, well — it was a pleasure, at least, to see fuckers like George Allen, Rick Santorum, and Rich Pombo get the drubbing they so richly deserve. That, in itself, may have been worth the price of admission.

Now that that’s over, it’s back to pushing for an end to this lousy war, which is killing people in sickening numbers every day. So bug the shit out of that new congressmember, senator, etc. — no honeymoon!

luv u,

jp

We’re just days away from the close of one of the most asinine election seasons I can remember (and trust me — I can remember quite a few). Like the Howard Dean “scream” of 2004, the media has latched onto a phrase from a John Kerry speech, the interpretation of which apparently was fed to them directly by Jack Abramoff friend Ken Melman or White House blimp Karl Rove. At this point in the game, can anyone possibly believe that this administration gives a flying shit for the fighting men and women in Iraq? Just this week it was reported that the Pentagon cannot account for thousands of guns, rocket launchers, etc., that we have sent to that sorry husk of a nation. (My guess is that our troops know what happened to them, since they’re being shot at all the time.) And yet these Bush clowns feel confident enough to actually field Kerry’s lame laugh line as a campaign issue. But that’s our corporate media — Kerry botches a joke (so what’s new?) and it’s a story. Bush lets 104 young Americans die pointlessly in Iraq during the month leading up to the election, and it’s ho-hum.

This election is very important to the party in power, and they are pulling out all the stops to keep it from being a total disaster for them. Both parties have dumped millions of dollars into mostly negative advertising here in my backwater hometown district (New York’s “fighting” 24th), but it’s worth saying that I’ve received a different glossy mailing from the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee every other day, each one attacking the Democratic candidate. As someone who’s worked in advertising and done a fair amount of direct mail, I can tell you that this represents enormous sums of (unregulated) money, to say nothing of how much they’re spending on local television air time. Where campaign law is concerned, this is considered legitimate party-building activity, but really all it is is an attempt to depress turnout and build cynicism. Cynicism helps to ensure that the powerful will not be inconvenienced by “meddlesome outsiders”, as Walter Lippman put it — that is to say, people like you and me.

Some of the ads stoop pretty low, as you probably are aware. Bogus shit about triple-X 800 lines and all that. One purports that Democratic congressional candidate Michael Arcuri pushed for the release of a convicted rapist. It features an excerpt from a letter sent to a parole board by one of Arcuri’s assistant DA’s, the text of which noted the convicted man’s role in helping prosecute a murder case, closing with: “Please consider such in your overall determining of whether Thomas should be released on parole.” The excerpt featured in the RCCC mailing? “Thomas should be released on parole.” This attributed to Arcuri. The Republicans are apparently applying the same standard of accuracy to these ads as they applied in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Next they’ll be telling us Michael Arcuri has been building weapons of mass destruction. (They’ve probably already linked him with Osama.) Will the investment pay off? Not if I can help it. Don’t get me wrong — I think the Democrats are about as ineffectual an opposition party as can be imagined. But we need to shake up this one-party state a little bit.

So here’s my advice, for what it’s worth. Vote this repulsive Congress out of office. Then turn right around and hold the new Congress’s feet to the fire. Either way, keep at it. ‘Nuff said.

luv u,

jp

Well, it only took two solid months for the Israeli government to admit that, yes, it had used white phosphorus bombs against what it termed Hezbollah targets — though the vast majority of targets so termed have proven to be civilian homes, apartment buildings, shelters, hospitals, family cars, etc. Of course, the admission came (to me, at least) via a small item tucked inside my Gannett daily newspaper. If memory serves, Tel Aviv’s indignant denials were displayed a bit more prominently. Now that no one’s paying attention, it’s okay to admit that you used chemical weapons in violation of international law. First law of modern warfare, I suppose. (It certainly worked for the U.S. in Fallujah, where similar weapons were enthusiastically deployed.) We live in a strange world where war crimes such as these are not taken seriously unless (a) they are committed by our enemies, or (b) they rise to the level of Nazi war atrocities. It apparently raises few eyebrows anymore to drop burning phosphorus on people and generally trash the Geneva Conventions. What next — a reality show?

Actually, it seems as though the Bush administration is actually sweating this election a bit more than previous ones, since the possibility (however remote) of investigations and prosecutions looms a bit larger should the Democrats win control of either or both houses of Congress. My illustrious brother was commenting on this the other day, and judging by the increasing shrillness of Dubya and his crew, I suspect he may be right. It’s interesting to watch the GOP slime our local Democratic congressional candidate as being “soft on crime” while their candidates consistently warn the voters that Dems will launch congressional investigations and tie up the legislative process with this foreign thing called “holding people accountable.” Apparently they’re only concerned with certain types of crime — not the kind that involves dropping bombs on people or leaving unexploded ordinance lying around where some kid can find it. For that kind of crime, it is sufficient to merely express your regret at the always unintentional deaths and injuries that result.

This last couple of weeks have seen a good many more “unintentional” deaths added to the bill of particulars against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Blair — more civilians blown to bits in Afghanistan, more people caught up in the most recent counterinsurgency sweeps in Baghdad… to say nothing of the 2,800th U.S. soldier to die in Operation Iraqi Fiefdom. All this death and misery provides a morbid backdrop for this year’s political campaigns — few candidates speak directly to the issue that is in the back of everyone’s mind, namely, when and how is this all going to end? The response from the administration is to change their rhetoric so that they will seem more flexible, while denying (quite laughably) that Bush was ever big on the phrase “stay the course”. Fact is, they’re trying to avoid the issue as well, hoping some superficial atmospherics will help grease their way to another slender victory.

End of the road for these clowns? I’ll believe it when I see it.

luv u,

jp