"If war is right, let it be declared by the people!"

Beautifully delivered with a stinging yet eloquent message about war!

GO BERNIE!

When it was suggested to him in some interview that the government should always try not to send the military to die in wars needlessly, Cheney snorted, "So what? They signed up for it, didn't they?" This from a man who never served because, he has stated, he had better things to do at the time. And at a time when he and his cohorts were doing their best to ensure that many of the poor men of the country would have very little chance to find any other recourse than enlisting in the military.

Maybe these other people also had better things to do than to be blown to pieces or burned to a crisp. That never occurs to people like Dick Cheney. Or George W. Bush. Of course, they also blithely ignore the fact that the National Guard units when they were young were NOT the first units sent into conflict (as the name implies, if you think about it, the people left at home to guard the nation). Some rich men used pull to get their sons into these units to safeguard their precious sons.

I remember, before and during the Vietnam era, how people were proud that the men in their family had served in some capacity other than the National Guard (You can see it in an episode of that old situation comedy show about Momma and Her Family, in which she boasts to somebody about this). In the after the Vietnam era, there was a sudden quiet change. I believe it was done to cover the tracks of people like Dubya.

Nowadays, of course, the National Guard enlistees are worthy of great honor for their bravery and ingenuity. The Cheney crowd who would send them into needless slaughter to maximize corporate profits because "so what, they asked for it," not so much.

.... go into the stacks and dig out Eugene V. Debbs. He could see everything clearly all those years ago. Thanks Donkees.

K&R

"Even if only two percent of those assigned to perform military service should announce their refusal to fight, governments would be powerless; they would not dare to send such a large number of people to jail." I don't know whether he got the number right there, but there was a little idea going around when I was young: What if They gave a war, but nobody came? If you think about it, what if we could all come up with a bizarre unexpected reaction to a war, something nobody has yet done? There was a time when all our ancestors practiced routine cannibalism, and not as long ago for anybody's ancestors as we all like to pretend. In Europe, some culturally approved cannibalism happened within this millennium. Yet cannibalism is no longer a routine practice anywhere. Why is that? We have stamped it out almost entirely.

... what if a war couldn't be fought if a majority of the troops said "Hell no, we won't go!" Like, instead of asking Congress to declare war, let the soldiers themselves have the power to declare or nix war?

As for cannibalism, I'd rather leave that practice in the past. Ugh!