The major media cover hardly anything that John Kerry says, especially if it is about the draft. So you would never know it, but John Kerry has a No-Draft Plan, a plan to strengthen the military in key areas yet draw down U.S. troop levels in Iraq by internationalizing the situation and then getting out as soon as possible.
Here are the five main points of Kerry’s No-Draft Plan:
1. Move some paper-pushers to combat (lots of potential there)
2. Increase enlistment with real scholarships, benefits and pay raises
3. Let troops know Special Ops will hunt al-Queda, no more invasions needed, so re-up rate goes up. "Primarily a law enforcement effort, not a full military effort", said John Kerry on Meet The Press.
4. Start a "Civilian Stability Corps" that would help in reconstructing Afghanistan and Iraq and relieve military pressure. It would be kind of like the Peace Corps—but on steroids.
5. GET FOREIGN TROOPS TO COME INTO INSTEAD OF LEAVE IRAQ.
Kerry gave some details about the proposed Civilian Stability Corps, made up of volunteers:
"...I propose that we enlist thousands of them in a Civilian Stability Corps, a reserve organization of volunteers ready to help win the peace in troubled places. Like military reservists, they will have peacetime jobs; but in times of national need, they will be called into service to restore roads, renovate schools, open hospitals, repair power systems, draft a constitution, or build a police force. A Civilian Stability Corps can bring the best of America to the worst of the world—and reduce pressure on the military."
- Source: Kerry, John. "Protecting Our Military Families in Times of War: A Military Family Bill of Rights." March 17, 2004.
http://johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0317.html >
In April, on a conference call with 130 College Newspaper Editors, Kerry said “No Draft”, that he would have a sensible foreign policy that would not require reinstatement. And in June, Kerry told a Wisconsin high school that if elected, a draft would be "absolutely unnecessary".
Kerry’s plan calls for increasing active-duty troop levels by 40,000 people. He also doubles the number of Special Ops troops. Half the 40,000 being added are civil engineering/reconstruction specialists and half are combat, costing an extra $7 billion, but it relieves the pressure on the Guard and Reserves for overseas deployments and essentially saves the Volunteer Army. $7 billion is well worth not having to bring back the draft!
Kerry charges that Bush is ruining the Volunteer approach with long Guard and Reserve deployments and numerous stop-loss orders, which Kerry says is a “Back-door Draft”. Since Kerry will increase pay, benefits, scholarships and reduce long deployments of regular troops and the reserves, if he is elected the re-enlistment rates and recruitment rates will return to normal. Recently, troops returning from Iraq are reportedly leaving the Service in huge numbers, although denied by DoD (see David Hackworth, Voting With their Feet
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38644).
With this No-Draft Plan, Kerry will not have to resort to conscription, even after Bush has made such a mess of it in Iraq. Kerry has also pledged that he will push renewable energy development and true energy independence, “so that we never again have soldiers dying for oil”.
Kerry has criticized the inequality of the draft, that the poor and minorities are inducted in higher numbers than their fair share and that the draft is a source of conflict. John Kerry will not reinstate the draft—outside of the invasion of the United States by China or something like that.
The choice is thus clear to all voters. Vote for Bush and you are also voting for the resumption of the draft—to man his hidden agenda of invading more countries and staying in Iraq forever.
Or vote for Kerry and you are voting PNAC out of the White House, and with it Bush’s hidden agenda to bring back the draft so U.S. companies can dominate the world’s remaining oil supply.
Finally, a draft is morally reprehensible, an infringement of freedom against the principles of the Constitution. We know that Bush cares nothing about morality when it comes to Iraq and that Kerry has over the years always expressed real opposition to the draft for a number of moral and ethical reasons. Having lived through the Vietnam era, Kerry knows well the long history of conflict and opposition that the draft has wrought.
John Kerry will not reinstate the draft, but Bush is secretly gearing up the whole system right now for the summer of next year.
For 31 years, the Conscientious Objector system, called the Alternative Service, has lain dormant. The 2004 plan also calls for this to be brought up to speed and to be ready to decide cases and place COs in the Alternative Service by July 6, 2005 (96 days after March 31, 2005). The SSS is even going so far as to draw up the SOPs, the Standard Operating Procedures which identify local employers eligible to receive cheap AS workers and to also draw up the actual MOU, the Memorandum of Understanding the employer must sign to get their CO workers and allow their mandatory attendance to be monitored. This is the last obstacle to be hurdled before the draft could actually be ready for activation under the law.
So Bush is filling the draft board seats, testing the entire combat draft this year and the medical draft next year (early next year?) and making sure the Alternative Service is geared up—all by March 31 of 2005.
But that’s not all going on quietly behind the scenes.
It turns out that the SSS has presented a secret 6-page proposal to the Pentagon and given to the Congress that calls for the creation of a “Skills Draft”, conscripting men and women up to age 34 for non-combat jobs such as linguist, computer specialist or engineer—the first three occupations the DoD has already identified as being in short supply. Modeled after the Medical Draft, the secret document was obtained only through the FOI Act by a reporter from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
If this is created after Bush’s re-election, DoD could theoretically ask for hundreds of different occupations to be drafted. The SSS, right this very minute is designing procedures and a massive database that would track everyone who had special skills—including their entire skill set and most important, their address.
Why would Bush need such a large draft? The answer lies in the secret plan that Wesley Clark revealed in his book Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire:
“I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, and one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan. So, I thought, this is what they mean when they talk about ‘draining the swamp.’"
Assuming Libya is now off the list, according to Clark Bush and the neo-cons plan to invade 5 more countries. That need does not include trying to defeat the insurgents solely with the U.S. military as a re-elected Bush might attempt. Bush, moreover, is building 14 permanent bases and huge intelligence centers in Iraq and has no intention of ever leaving that oil to the Russians or even worse, the French.
Moral opposition to conscription goes all the way back to the year 1814. In a response to a proposed draft to fight the British, Daniel Webster perhaps said it best:
“Is this, sir, consistent with the character of a free government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No, sir, indeed it is not.
"The Constitution is libeled, foully libeled. The people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves.
"Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?"
BUSH ’04 = DRAFT ‘05
KERRY '04 = PNAC OUT THE DOOR!
Link:
http://www.sss.gov/perfplan_fy2004.html
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