Now What? by Jim McDermott

First Sen Feingold and now Rep McDermott post diaries at MyDD

Mar-19-2003: War in Iraq. Mar-19-2005: Now What?
by Jim McDermott

The Iraq War turns two on Saturday, and I hope you will share the occasion thoughtfully wherever you find yourselves. Seattle's peace community will rally (12:00) at Seattle Center and march (1:30) to Westlake Center. I'll see many of you there, and invite extended discussion at my 11th Annual Potato Festival later in the day.

It is almost impossible to be coherent about the situation in Iraq. 1500 Americans dead. Over 10,000 maimed in mind and body. Too high a price for no increase in national security.

Today's "liberation" optimists give us the purple finger, but this evidence raises a sense of deja vu. The optimists were applauding on September 4, 1967, when our puppet government in Vietnam won national elections with 83% turnout. Eight years and 40,000 body bags later, the last liberators scrambled into helicopters on an embattled US embassy roof.

President Bush, with his usual cocksureness, tells us we'll stay until this "fragile democracy" is stable. The problem is we're in a guerrilla war, but we don't have the troops to fight one.

The regular Army is exhausted, Guard and Reserves are over-deployed, and recruiters are falling short for the first time in years, despite offering $30,000 signing bonuses. Reuters:
The regular Army is 6 percent behind its year-to-date recruiting target, the Reserve is 10 percent behind, and the Guard is 26 percent short.
Young people have figured out that this is not spring training -- that even if they survive the initial commitment, they may be kept in the military under "stop loss" orders. Then, if their grades aren't high enough, they may be denied the college benefits they enlisted for in the first place!

What if the volunteer army concept loses momentum? Find younger and more vulnerable recruits! Buried in the "No Child Left Behind" Act is Section 9528, an Orwellian provision that takes money away from any school that denies military recruiters equal status with colleges and prospective employers, plus access to students' home phone numbers. "Go after the unsuspecting and innocent and those easily impressed" -- that seems to be the plan.

Charlie Rangel faced a Korean wartime draft and saw combat. I faced a Vietnam wartime draft and served as a military psychiatrist -- deciding which trauma cases got returned to duty status. In the debate leading to this war, we introduced H.R. 163, a bill authorizing a military draft.

I am the last person who wants to see Americans drafted. (We both voted against H.R. 163 later that year.) The whole point was to raise awareness and force the Administation to face this war's open-ended cost.

Gen. Shinseki spoke from professional military experience, and warned Congress that "post-conflict" occupation might occupy hundreds of thousands of US troops. Deputy SoD Wolfowitz spoke from an ideological perspective, and assured Congress that Gen. Shinseki did not represent the views of the Administration. (He also suggested Iraq would foot most of the bill for this caper. They want this guy to run the World Bank?)

It's two years later. We're stuck in Iraq, but we're threatening Iran and Syria with our fighting forces depleted, a back-door draft, and vapor-lock in the recruiting pipeline. Bush Administration numbers never add up and they never tell it straight, even with American lives at stake.

I want to make a difference.

Today in D.C. I'll help launch a nation-wide Section 9528 "opt-out" campaign to inform parents and students how to keep recruiters' hands off our kids' personal information.

I will submit a statement to be read at an April 6 Seattle rally < link? > for Emiliano Santiago, an Oregon National Guardsman who served eight years - including a tour in Afghanistan -- and fulfilled his contract with the military in March 2004. A year later, he still isn't been allowed to leave the military and is suing Secretary Rumsfeld to stop the backdoor draft.

I will always speak out for our veterans, who incur the full life cycle cost of war whether their leaders face facts or not.

I urge every one of you to speak out with me to support our troops by making sure they come home and stay home.

Why is this urgent? Because the President's foreign policy is chewing up young Americans faster than the military can convince new ones to volunteer. As Erin Solaro put it in a recent op-ed, "bluntly: The U.S. Army has no desire to be large enough to implement the Bush/neocon agenda".
But that decision isn't up to the Army. It's up to us.

Jim

http://jim-mcdermott.mydd.com/story/2005/3/17/132346/026

You gals and guys in Washington are lucky to have him. Wish we could clone him.

as always Washington State is so proud of you.