VA TO VETERANS - WE WON’T HELP YOU REGISTER TO VOTE

In what has to be one of the most illogical, unreasonable, hypocritical, and downright disrespectful decisions made by the new VA Secretary James Peake, the VA will not allow voter registration assistance in VA facilities. The National Voter Registration Act was passed in 1993 and imposes an obligation - indeed, a duty - on federal, state, and local governments to promote the exercise of the citizens’ fundamental right to vote.

VA Secretary Peake has a different take on promoting the right to vote, especially when those citizens are veterans. Peake’s position is that:

“the VA remains opposed to becoming a voter registration agency pursuant to the National Voter Registration Act, as this designation would divert substantial resources from our primary mission.”

Diverting of substantial resources? Voter registration forms can be downloaded from the internet and copied in a matter of minutes. I have helped at several different events where we registered voters, and helping with the form must take a whole 2 or 3 minutes. If VA personnel are asked to spend a few extra minutes with VA patients, I bet they would gladly do it. To think otherwise is to dishonor those who have served our country and those who serve our veterans.

Peake also insists helping veterans to register to vote is “partisan.” Voter registration does not require that the registrant declare a party. Obviously, he does not know the definition of partisan which means allegiance to a party or cause.

An interesting twist in the whole debacle is that armed forces recruitment offices are mandated to develop and implement procedures to ensure that those registering at the recruitment offices have the opportunity to register. The following is a section from the National Voter Registration Act of 1993:

ARMED FORCES RECRUITMENT OFFICES- (1) Each State and the Secretary of Defense shall jointly develop and implement procedures for persons to apply to register to vote at recruitment offices of the Armed Forces of the United States.

(2) A recruitment office of the Armed Forces of the United States shall be considered to be a voter registration agency designated under subsection (a)(2) for all purposes of this Act.

Since the passage mandates recruitment office voter registration assistance, I decided to call one of the local Army recruitment offices to see if they provided voter registration assistance, and, yep, they do. I spoke to a recruiter and asked one simple question, “Do you have voter registration forms?” His reply? “We sure do.”

The hypocrisy is staggering. The Bush Administration sends our military to fight and die in needless wars. Volunteers are provided the opportunity to register at the front end as they enlist. But at the back end, as our wounded return to lives filled with adjustments and frustrations and physical and emotional therapy and missing limbs and suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome, the Veterans Administration denies help with one of the very basic rights that our veterans fight to protect - the right to vote.

Could it be that after service in wars, our veterans are more likely than not to vote against those who sent them? Keeping faith with our veterans requires more than laudatory speeches - it requires matching those speeches with actions.

Photo Credit: About.com

A young soldier in DaNang, Vietnam - August 3, 1965

MARCH 29, 1973 - “THIS DAY IN HISTORY” THE U.S. WITHDRAWS FROM VIETNAM

Two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops left South Vietnam as Hanoi freed remaining American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam. America’s direct eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War was at an end. In Saigon, some 7,000 U.S. Department of Defense civilian employees remained behind to aid South Vietnam in conducting what looked to be a fierce and ongoing war with communist North Vietnam.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy sent the first large force of U.S. military personnel to Vietnam in 1961 to prop up the ineffectual autocratic regime of South Vietnam against the communist North. Three years later, with the South Vietnamese government crumbling, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered limited bombing raids on North Vietnam, and Congress authorized the use of U.S. troops.

By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left President Johnson with two choices: escalate U.S. involvement or withdraw. Johnson made the ill-fated decision to escalate the war, and troop levels soon jumped to more than 300,000 as U.S. air forces commenced the largest bombing campaign in history.

During the next few years, the extended length of the war, the high number of U.S. casualties, and the exposure of U.S. involvement in war crimes, such as the massacre at My Lai, helped turn many in the United States against the Vietnam War. The communists’ Tet Offensive of 1968, three years after Johnson escalated the war, crushed U.S. hopes of an early end to the conflict and galvanized U.S. opposition to the war. In response, Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not seek reelection, citing what he perceived to be his responsibility in creating a perilous national division over Vietnam. He also authorized the beginning of peace talks.

In the spring of 1969, as protests against the war escalated in the United States, U.S. troop strength in the war-torn country reached its peak at nearly 550,000 men. Richard Nixon, the newly-elected president, began U.S. troop withdrawal and “Vietnamization” of the war effort that year, but he intensified bombing. Large U.S. troop withdrawals continued in the early 1970s as President Nixon expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos in attempts to block enemy
supply routes along Vietnam’s borders. This expansion of the war, which accomplished few positive results, led to new waves of protests in the United States and elsewhere.

Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. Its key provisions included a cease-fire throughout Vietnam, the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the release of prisoners of war, and the reunification of North and South Vietnam through peaceful means. The South Vietnamese government was to remain in place until new elections
were held, and North Vietnamese forces in the South were not to advance further nor be reinforced.

In reality, however, the agreement was little more than a face-saving gesture by the U.S. government. Even before the last American troops departed on March 29th, the communists violated the cease-fire, and by early 1974 full-scale war had resumed. At the end of 1974, South Vietnamese authorities reported that 80,000 of their soldiers and civilians had been killed in fighting during the year.

On April 30, 1975, the last few Americans still in South Vietnam were airlifted out of the country as Saigon fell to communist forces. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, accepting the surrender of South Vietnam later in the day, remarked, “You have nothing to fear; between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only the Americans have been defeated.” The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular foreign war in U.S. history and cost over 58,000 American lives. As many as two million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed.

CONGRESSMAN SOUDER MEETS WITH LOCAL VETERANS ACTIVIST GROUP

Thursday night, Congressman Mark Souder met with our small, grass-roots group, Veterans for Better Health Care. Our group was born back in August 2004 in response to then VA Secretary Principi’s announcement that he would follow a recommendation to close our inpatient beds here at out local VA Hospital.

About 10-12 men gathered to figure out a strategy to defeat the recommendation. The group’s chosen name was “Veterans for Better Health Care.” Although I am not a veteran, that was not a criteria to join the group, so I joined in November 2004 and found myself participating each month and getting to know the veterans who were members. We did have one overriding requirement - no matter what our political persuasion, we wanted to maintain bipartisanship and avoid political affiliations. Our issue was saving the VA Hospital inpatient beds: an issue that we felt should not be subject to our own political ideologies.

Getting ready for our meeting with Congressman Souder

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I became our Director in October of 2005 and am still in that position. I am extremely proud and honored to be involved with this group and to be its director.

Some of our first efforts at getting the message out to the public included writing letters to the editor and handing out flyers containing our message. In April 2005, we organized a rally which was held at the World War II Victory Museum in Auburn, Indiana. The Kruses allowed us to hold the rally without charging us, which was greatly appreciated since we were a new group and had no means of financial support other than passing around a “donation can.”

The Rally was a success and drew about 150 people. We had a number of guest speakers who emphasized the need to maintain our inpatient beds, and a newly returned veteran who had been injured in Iraq also spoke. We began to become more active in area events. One of our members had an old car that he decorated with various slogans and items. He placed a mannequin on the roof of the car dressed as an injured veteran. “Oscar” as we affectionately called him, always drew comments and cheers when we took the car to parades.

The Frankes also were good to us and allowed us to hand out our flyers at hockey games in February 2006 and February 2007. That venue gave us access to thousands of individuals as they left the arena. Although we might only gain a member or two from those events, every person who joined our group was greatly appreciated. We also began to identify ourselves by wearing caps with our name and slogan “Save Our VA Hospital” and donning t-shirts with the same slogan. We wore these items when we participated in parades and events.

Our focus in all of our efforts was to keep the inpatient issue in front of the public and to put pressure on our representatives. Our particular focus, however, was to pressure Congressman Souder on the issue. Thursday night was the culmination of our efforts.

Congressman Souder’s office had contacted me about a month ago to arrange a meeting between our group and the Congressman. Frankly, I was quite surprised to receive the call, but I was also excited to think that we would have an opportunity to talk to the Congressman about the recent flap over the redacted VA Study done by Booz, Allen & Hamilton (BAH).

I had been a participant in that Study - first in a private morning meeting with about 10 other veterans’ representatives and later attending the public town hall meeting held at the Memorial Coliseum. That day’s activities - November 29, 2006 - had been arranged by local veterans’ groups and BAH. We were told that the report would be done in about six months, which would have been a due date of May 2007. May came and went with no report. The spring turned into summer and summer into fall and still no report.

The call also represented a shift in how the Congressman viewed our group. In our earlier days, we were not exactly the most welcome sight at parades and events where both the Congressman and our group appeared. When we appeared at town hall meetings or smaller local question and answer sessions, we triggered increased tension. But with this contact, we felt the Congressman truly recognized our dedication and efforts over the 3 1/2 years since our organization. He was seeking our continuing help to fight for our VA Hospital inpatient beds.

Congressman Souder at Thursday night’s meeting

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The meeting went very well, and the Congressman spent about two hours talking to us in a small room at Post #82 - the location we chose because it was where our group began. The meeting started at 7:00 p.m., and, when I left at a little after 9:00, the Congressman was still talking to a few remaining individuals. Reports were shown on the local TV stations as well as provided in the local newspapers.

The bottom line to this is that our hospital inpatient beds are still not out of danger. The VA is doing a follow-up study on outpatient care and facilities. The delay may be beneficial, but we do not yet know that, so we cannot let down on our efforts. THE FIGHT IS NOT OVER.

As I drove home from the meeting, I kept thinking about my favorite Margaret Mead saying:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

We started as a small, grass-roots group with no funding.  But what we had was an overwhelming concern for our veterans - past, present, and future - and their care.  We put together a plan of action and kept fighting.  We still meet monthly, and we still make plans to participate in area events.  Now that the weather will be turning nicer, we will be able to get back out to parades and events.  We will not give up this fight, and we ask that you not give up either.

Congressman Souder’s office has scheduled a rally, and here are the particulars:

When: April 7, 2008 (Monday)

Where: World War II Victory Museum, Auburn, Indiana

Time: 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Please help us once again have a successful rally in support of our VA Hospital. Do not take anything for granted. We have many veterans returning from the Middle East who will need our help and support, both in the hospital surrounding and in the community surrounding.

Please make plans to attend this rally and let the VA know we have not forgotten this battle, and we will not give up.

BUSH TO SUPPLY ARMS TO KOSOVO - AND THE ONE-UPMANSHIP BEGINS

George W. Bush has agreed to supply arms to Kosovo - and the game of one-upmanship begins.  Bush sells arms to Kosovo; Russia sells more arms to Serbia. 

Photo Credit:  Wikipedia

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In a memo to the State Department made public by the White House, Bush said: “I hereby find that the furnishing of defense articles and defense services to Kosovo will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace.”  Yee gads!  Bush still lives in his virtual unreality world.  How does one argue that providing more instruments of death promotes “world peace?”  Absolute lunacy.  But then what can you expect from a president who sees himself as the saviour of the world and the purveyor of democracy. 

A senior official said the authorization followed US recognition of Kosovo’s independence and was part of the normal process of establishing relations with a new government.   Somewhere along the way, what is normal has become warped.  When people argue that providing arms is normal and helps establish peace, they are being disingenuouos.  And it all leads to increasing world tension and a game of one-upmanship that cannot be won.

Photo Credit:  The New York Times

SOMETIMES YOU FEEL LIKE A NUT - BUT NOT IN THE WHITEHOUSE

John McCain makes no secret of the fact that he will keep us mired in the Middle East for decades to come if he assumes the office of the presidency.  While many have talked about the similarities between Vietnam and Iraq, one major difference exists - oil.  Anyone who thinks this foray into nation-building isn’t about oil hasn’t been paying attention to our history with the oil producing countries. 

With oil rising at an almost unbelievable rate, what better course to take than to occupy our own private oil fields in Iraq?  The Bush administration has built the world’s largest embassy in Iraq in order to maintain a presence for an undetermined number of years.  In addition, Bush and Maliki are in the process of negotiating the terms of an agreement which will keep U.S. forces entrenched in Iraq until …. freezes over.  

McCain will simply continue a misguided and disastrous course of action a la George Bush.  Should McCain be elected, Bush will no doubt be smiling broadly as he exits the White House in January 2009.  George Bush, along with his neo-con cohorts, manipulated an American crisis into an invasion of a country which had no connection to 9/11.  But John McCain has no intention of manipulating anything - he blatantly and arrogantly says he will keep us there.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

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We have had close to eight years of a president who is out of touch with reality and who has never let sanity and logic interfere with his quest to conquer Iraq.  The last thing that is needed is another tunnel-visioned president who sees Iraq and Afghanistan as nothing more than future American bases.

KING GEORGE - “WE DON’T NEED A CONSTITUTION AS LONG AS I AM KING”

Apparently Bush has decided, along with his “War Czar” General Douglas Lute, that permanent bases in Iraq don’t require the approval of either house of Congress. Lute said the White House intends to conclude negotiations on an enduring security guarantee with the Maliki government in July. Permanent military bases and residual troop levels will be specified in the final accord.

The following is Lute’s high-minded view of permanency in Iraq:

Q General, will the White House seek any congressional input on this?

GENERAL LUTE: In the course of negotiations like this, it’s not — it is typical that there will be a dialogue between congressional leaders at the negotiating table, which will be run out of the Department of State. We don’t anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress.

Q Is the purpose of avoiding the treaty avoiding congressional input?

GENERAL LUTE: No, as I said, we have about a hundred agreements similar to the one envisioned for the U.S. and Iraq already in place, and the vast majority of those are below the level of a treaty.

Below the level of a treaty? I doubt that the Founding Fathers even had something “below the level of a treaty” in mind when they wrote the Constitution. After all, we were a fledging nation with no real Army or Navy and with little military might. There would have been no reason to even think of agreements with other nations as anything other than treaties.

But never one to be deterred by the Constitution, Bush has again decided to ignore the checks and balances carefully crafted by the Founding Fathers by using semantics. The Bush administration announced the Declaration of Principles for a Long-term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship with Iraq, an agreement to start formal negotiations with Iraq about a long-term security pact between the United States and Iraq.

The Declaration sets a goal of concluding this final agreement by July 31, 2008. The “agreement” will not be called a treaty - as he so imperiously reminds critics that many other agreements do not bear the label “treaty.” His logic is, of course, that if it isn’t called a treaty then there is no need for Congressional input as required by the Constitution. Here’s what the Constitution and the Founding Fathers said about treaties:

Article II, Section 2, Clause 2.

He shall have the Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur….

In order to enter into formal agreements called treaties, the president must get advice and consent from the Senate. If something is not termed a treaty, then the Senate can be bypassed and thus prevented from providing input as the Founding Fathers mandated.

The issue was raised long ago by the New York Times. On April 20, 2003, The New York Times ran a story citing unnamed sources indicating the U.S. military was planning as many as four permanent military bases in Iraq. The next day, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld dismissed the story as “inaccurate and unfortunate.”

The national media, mesmerized and enamored by the “shock and awe” tactics of the recently initiated occupation and not willing to criticize a war only a month old, dropped the story after Rumsfeld’s disclaimer. Later that same year, the November 19, 2003, edition of the Jordanian daily al-Arab al-Yawm reported that the U.S. government had plans for six bases. The sources revealed the names of these bases and the planned positions for permanent deployment. They were:

• Al-Habbaniyah Airbase [already an RAF airbase for much of the last century] near the city of al-Fallujah, 65km west of Baghdad;
• Ash-Sha’biyah Airbase in Basra, 600km south of Baghdad;
• ‘Ali ibn Abi Taleb Airbase on the outskirts of the city of an-Nasiriyah, 400km south of Baghdad;
• al-Walid Airbase about 330km north west of Baghdad;
• al-Ghazlani Camp in the city of Mosul, 400km north of Baghdad;
• A permanent deployment of forces in the east of Iraq in what is known as the Hamrin mountain range that extends from Diyala Provice, 60km east of Baghdad, and borders on Iran and extends to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, 260km north of Baghdad.

Five years later, it looks like the story was accurate. Bush and his neocon supporters had a plan all along to go into Iraq and stay. The American public, so hungry for revenge after 9/11, gave the “King” a blank check. His plans are made, and he has utter disdain for our Constitution and its checks and balances. By calling this an informal agreement and not a treaty, he hopes to circumvent Constitutional protections that were structured to guard against just such a dictatorial frame of mind.

However, in an attempt to thwart King George’s most recent power grab, Rep. Barbara Lee recently introduced a bill to prevent Bush from signing any agreement emerging from the Declaration of Principles without consulting Congress. A parallel bill was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Photo Credit: Hillary for President

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Since November 2007, attacks on the Bush-Maliki agreement’s constitutionality have mounted. Bill Delahunt, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, has held a series of hearings on the legality of the Declaration of Principles. During the most recent Delahunt hearing, experts almost universally concluded that the agreement violates the Constitution, since Congress was not consulted in the process of its approval.

Throughout his seven years in office, Bush has undertaken an onslaught against liberties and rights as well as undermined the Constitution.   No matter how much power a president usurps, his reign always comes to an end.  King George’s term is about at an end. With its end, perhaps we can get back to a government based on our Constitution and its checks and balances - a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

KOSOVO TO DECLARE INDEPENDENCE - RISING FROM THE RUINS OF YUGOSLAVIA

Kosovo is on the verge of declaring its independence from Serbia: a momentous occasion, yet most Americans will be too absorbed in the current political scene to pay any attention. Many will be thinking about whether or not Obama lacks substance or whether Clinton represents the politics of old or whether McCain is too old to be president.

Kosovo’s anticipated arrival on the world stage has not been won without sacrifice or criticism. It has been a long struggle - one which required the breakup of Yugoslavia and years of subsequent chaos, violence, and ethnic cleansing. Since 1999, Kosovo, a province of Serbia, has been under U.N. control.

Old Yugoslavia

On January 31, 1946, the new constitution of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, modeled after the Soviet Union’s constitution, established six Socialist Republics, a Socialist Autonomous Province, and a Socialist Autonomous District that were part of SR Serbia. The federal capital was Belgrade. The Republics and provinces were as follows:

1. Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the capital in Sarajevo,
2. Socialist Republic of Croatia, with the capital in Zagreb,
3. Socialist Republic of Macedonia, with the capital in Skopje,
4. Socialist Republic of Montenegro, with the capital in Titograd (now Podgorica),
5. Socialist Republic of Serbia, with the capital in Belgrade, which also contained:
   5a. Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, with the capital in Priština
   5b. Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, with the capital in Novi Sad
6. Socialist Republic of Slovenia, with the capital in Ljubljana.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

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Photo Credit: Wikipedia

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From the end of the second World War until 1980, Yugoslavia remained a federation of the six republics. After Yugoslavian dictator Tito’s death in 1980, some of the republics began to seek more freedom from centralized control, but, at the same time, Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian communist leader, whipped the Serbian people into a nationalistic fervor. Milosevic’s goal was to keep the Serb people together at any cost.

In 1990, after the fall of the Soviet Union, each of the republics held elections. Some of the republics voted for independence and some voted for continued unity with Yugoslavia. The stage was set for death and destruction as the forces that desired independence fought those who wished to remain tied to old Yugoslavia.

The New Nations

Yugoslavia formally ceased to exist on January 15, 1992, when all 12 members of the European Community officially recognized Slovenia and Croatia as independent states. One by one the former Yugoslav republics declared independence with each declaration leading to war and chaos.

Terrible atrocities were committed by all sides during the Yugoslavian wars. Serbian leaders had fought for an ideal of keeping all Serbs together in a “Greater Serbia”, but failed. In two of the most notable atrocities committed, both in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Serbia besieged Sarajevo, resulting in 12,000 deaths and massacred 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.

The war in Bosnia ended with the Dayton Agreement on December 14, 1995. In all, about 300,000 people were killed and more than 2,000,000 were displaced. In 2003, the name of Yugoslavia was abolished and by 2006, all republics had declared their independence. But within the republic of Serbia lay the autonomous province of Kosovo, waiting for its day of independence.

Kosovo

Kosovo, lying in the southern area of Serbia, is predominantly Albanian and Muslim. Under Tito, Kosovo was granted semi-autonomy in the 1980s but the Kosvars continued to agitate for greater autonomy. When Milosevic assumed leadership of the communist party, he began a drive to subdue Kosovan nationalism. When Milosevic refused to accept an agreement by the European Union to end the conflict, NATO began a bombing campaign. After 78 days of bombing, Milosevic agreed to withdraw his forces from Kosovo, but the violence did not end.

As Albanians returned to their homes, violence among the ethnic groups continued to simmer. Serbs, who had entered during the purging of the Albanian population, were now the ones forced to leave. The hostilities continue to this day, and, with Kosovo on the brink of declaring independence, fears are increasing that this latest and possibly last of the declarations of independence will lead to yet another round of violence.

Earlier Saturday the European Union finally agreed on a security, administrative and legal task force to aid Kosovo once it makes its much anticipated declaration.

Within hours, Kosovo will declare its independence, joining the other players on the world’s stage of autonomous players. And we may see yet another round of violence in the Balkans. As all Americans should remember, independence comes with a price.

WHERE ARE OUR YOUNGINS? IS ACTIVISM TIED TO THE DRAFT?

Conscription is a system to provide manpower to be used in the armed forces. In the United States, conscription was introduced in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The 1863 Enrollment Act permitted draftees to hire paid substitutes to fight in their place. In the United States during more recent times, conscription has simply been called the “draft.”

During the Civil War and again during World War I the draft mechanism was dissolved at the end of hostilities. In 1940, prior to U.S. entry into World War II, the first peacetime draft in our nation’s history was enacted in response to increased world tension with the result that the system was able to fill wartime manpower needs smoothly and rapidly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

At the end of the war, the draft law was allowed to expire, but it was reenacted less than two years later to maintain necessary military manpower levels as a result of the Cold War. From 1948 until 1973, during both peacetime and periods of conflict, men were drafted to fill vacancies in the armed forces which could not be filled through voluntary means.

Induction authority expired in 1973, but the Selective Service System remained in existence in a “standby” posture to support the all-volunteer force in case an emergency should make it necessary for Congress to authorize a resumption of inductions.

Vietnam War draft

Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began slowly and in small numbers in 1964 on various college campuses in the United States. This happened during a time of unprecedented student activism reinforced in numbers by the demographically significant baby boomers, but grew to include a wide and varied cross-section of Americans from all walks of life.

Much of the protest movement was fueled by a system of conscription that provided exemptions and deferments more easily claimed by middle and upper class registrants - and thus inducted disproportionate numbers of poor, working-class, and minority registrants. By the end of 1967, as U.S. troop casualties mounted and the war ground on with no end in sight, public opinion polls showed a majority of Americans were opposed to the war and wanted it to end. In 1967, the continued operation of a seemingly unfair draft system then calling as many as 40,000 men for induction each month fueled a burgeoning draft resistance movement.

But where is that resistance from the youth of today? An undeclared war is being waged in a foreign land, thousands of military personnel are being sent to fight, thousands are dying, and thousands more are being maimed for life.

Yet, the youth of today are strangely silent. Could it be that the primary reason so many college age and young people are not participating is because they do not have a “vested” interest in this war? The Selective Service is still in place for males, but the draft is not. But it is folly to ignore the authority to reinstate the draft at any given moment.

The sole purpose of the Selective Service is to keep track of the number of available young males in case the draft needs to be reinstated. And, as the youth of today sit back comfortably assuming that they are “safe” from forced service to this country, the reality is that our military is stretched thin by our ongoing and misguided efforts in Iraq.

Of course, you will see some younger protesters at the rallies and marches, but take a closer look as you drive by. When I stand on the sidewalk along the Clinton street side of our Courthouse, I look up and down the row of protesters, and I see older individuals - many in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and, yes, even in their 70s.

Many of us protesting and rallying are from the Vietnam War era - we remember those days, and we are willing to stand on sidewalks and street corners in blistering hot weather as well as zero degree temperatures to protest a war that is not only unjust but also one of the greatest blunders ever made by a president.

So our youth, for the most part, turn their heads away from the horrors of Iraq, comfortable in their false sense of security and the notion that they are safe from being snatched into service. They are not yet affected; they are not the ones fighting and dying in an unjust war.

But those thoughts are misguided; the Selective Service hovers in the background with the power to rip complacent bodies into forced military service. A vested interest in this war and any other wars may very well arise only when the individual has the most to lose - his or her own life. What a shame that it takes extrinsic motivation to force the youth to do something that should arise from intrinsic values - caring about their fellow human beings.

Photo Credit: Mike Keefe - InToon.com

 

EDWARDS IS OUT - NOW WHAT?

My choice for president is now out of the race. And, I am not happy with either remaining choice - Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. I am weary of Obama’s claim that he “has been against the war from day one.” Fine, but he wasn’t in office, so to say that he would have voted against the war is a moot point and shouldn’t even be considered. He wasn’t there, so he wasn’t faced with the same choice that others had to make. And besides, in one of his first speeches, he stated he wasn’t against war, he was just against this war. So, one has to wonder which wars - if any - in the future would he support?

Obama has also said repeatedly that while he would have voted against the war in 2002 based on what he knew at the time, he could not be sure that classified intelligence reports made available to senators wouldn’t have changed his mind. Thus, Obama himself acknowledges the possibility that he might have been convinced had he been in the Senate at that time.

Clinton, on the other hand, voted to give authorization to use military force against Iraq. Any attempt to explain her vote away by morphing her justification for her vote into “I thought the inspectors were going back in” is ludicrous. S.J. Res 46 is titled: A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. Now how can that be any clearer?

Both Obama and Clinton have voted in favor of bills which continue to support funding for the troops. However, in a switch, the May 2007 vote found both senators waiting until the last minute to vote “no” on the funding bill. Obama voted first, followed a few minutes later by Clinton. As far as I am concerned, neither one has shown much leadership on the issue of getting us “unstuck” from the quicksand of Iraq.

Photo Credit: Select 2008

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Much as people make fun of Dennis Kucinich, he has consistently stood by his convictions from day one and not only voted against authorization to use military force but also voted against increased funding for the war.

So, I am in a quandary right now. Neither Clinton nor Obama has been consistent on Iraq and that is a tremendous disappointment to me. As the weeks go by, I will need to research more and more into the positions held by each. I may not make up my mind until I walk into the voting booth on May 5, 2008.

JOHN McCAIN - INSANITY AT ITS WORST

John McCain is really coming across as a war-monger. In a video caught, apparently, by a camera phone, he jokingly sings “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Iran” to the tune of the old Beach Boys hit, “Barbara Ann.” Chuckling as he takes the microphone, he cheerfully converts the words of the Beach Boys’ hit to accommodate his future Middle East strategy.

How grown up, and just think, there are thousands of voters out there ready to throw their support behind him. If you want more war and more conflicts, then you want John McCain in the White House. Personally, I think he is insane. He may be a Vietnam veteran and hero, but he has certainly lost his grip on reality.

How can anyone who went through what he went through want to be a part of a continuing boondoggle in Iraq and then ramp it up to include Iran? And, if that isn’t convincing, he told a crowd in New Hampshire on January 4, 2008, that he is fine with staying in Iraq for 100 years.

So, all you McCainites out there, if you want war, war, war, and death, death, death, vote for John McCain; he doesn’t sound like he will let you down. Sort of reminds me of the Johnson - Goldwater contest back in 1964. The fear was that if Goldwater was elected, he would lead us into nuclear war. The famous ad below was one of the most effective ads ever in a campaign.

Either senility has surely set in or his advisers couldn’t get to him before he opened his mouth. If McCain gets elected, there will be no light at the end of the tunnel because he will never let a tunnel be built.