Monday, November 20, 2006

Duplicitous Devotees of the Draft

Faced with the unmitigated disaster of America's stupidly instigated -- and now irretrievably lost -- War on Iraq, Republican Senator John McCain wants to parachute more doomed French Legionaires (i.e., GIs) into Dien Bien Phu (i.e., Baghdad) and Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel wants to help him by conscripting more doomed American Legionaires (i.e., Reserves and National Guard) to die needlessly in the already lost battle. As someone accurately summarized on another website: "At this time, neither Iraq nor America has a functional government."

Senator McCain has quite obviously lost what little mind his pathetic pandering for the Presidency has left him; but for Congressman Charles Rangel, I reserve a special, enduring enmity: for he has not lost his mind so much as any semblance of a concern for young American lives lost for no reason whatsoever in needless, quixotic, quagmire quandaries aided and abetted only by an American willingness to offer up unquestioningly a suitable supply of soldiers. Anyway, I thought I would drop the credulous, cretin Congressman a little note on the subject ...

Dear Congressman Rangel,

I do not believe that you have a correct understanding of the Draft, otherwise known by its Orwellian euphemism: Selective Service. The Draft did, does, and always will act as a selective mechanism: just that it tends to set aside for "other priorities" society's select offspring who have "better thngs to do" than forego their career opportunities in life for the unappealing prospect of penurious indentured servitude, probable maiming, and possibly even death. In other words, the Draft exists to select those who will not serve in war, not those who will. You have apparently lived a long and undistinguished life without ever coming to appreciate this fundametnal truth about ingrained American injustice. And you call yourself a "Black man"! Sir, you don't deserve the adjective, let alone the noun. The same goes for Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice.

Almost to a man and woman, the so-called American "elite" -- who have so stupidly blundered into the twin quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan -- found it quite easy and profitable to avoid the Draft during their own brief exposures to the dreaded prospect of military service to the nation they have now so singularly betrayed. Do the names George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill and Hillary Clinton, et al, mean anything to you in this context? Every one of these powerfully placed individuals -- and a legion of their generational cohort as well -- had no problem whatsoever avoiding active military service in America's War on Vietnam while the Draft existed to scoop up working class white kids like me who hadn't the economic resources or political connections to go on living free and independent lives -- because our own deranged government had a "greater" need for our subservience. Even professional pugilists like the Black boxer Cassius Clay (who later became a Muslim and changed his name to Muhammed Ali) got out of the Draft by simply refusing submission to it (an act that would have landed me in prison.) "I ain't got nothin' against no Viet Cong," Ali truthfully said, speaking for an entire nation who -- in fact -- had no reason whatsoever to attack Vietnam and would not have done so had a Draft not existed to force-feed the Lunatic Leviathan, as I like to call President Eisenhower's bloated, schizophrenic, and now-again-completely-berserk "military-industrial complex."

My parents -- whom I loved unreservedly and admired utterly -- came of age during the twin national traumas of the Great Depression and WWII. They had a different level of education (not even getting to finish high school) than the one they insisted that I obtain so as to better my future prospects in life. Due to our differences in experience and education, we never agreed about America's needless War on Vietnam. My mother used to ask: "Who will defend us from our enemies if you don't?" I would reply: "Who will defend me from my own government if you don't?" We never resolved this fundamental conflict between us. Like Rip Van Winkel, you, Congressman Rangel, apparently slept through large interludes of our nation's recent history (such as the entire post-WWII half-century); so that you tend to speak of the American government as my parents did during WWII and not as I did and do during the much more currently applicable American Wars of Needless Agression on Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The Draft only exists (at any given point in time) precisely because the American government wants to conduct an Executive (i.e., Presidential) and not a People's War. To keep the People out of the decision-making process, post-WWII presidents have routinely just plunged the nation into wars of presidential choice under any and all pretexts imaginable (think "Gulf of Tonkin;" think "WMD," etc.); and then, later, with troops deployed and hostilities underway, simply blackmailed Congress and the American people into passively "tolerating" the Lunatic Leviathan's bloody, belligerent bungling. NO MORE! We, the People, have had enough of you blathering bureaucratic boobs threatening us with conscripted, unwilling servitude. "We ain't got nothin' against no Iraqis or Afghans or Koreans, or Iranians." So stop trying to bully and browbeat and guilt-trip and deceive us into fearing "fear" itself -- and all, as my fellow Vietnam Veteran Daniel Ellsberg says: "for oil, Israel, and domestic political purposes" (i.e., votes.)

Penultimately, Congressman Rangel, just memorize this handy little slogan: "We don't have too few soldiers; we have too many wars." Stop spinelessly allowing our presidents -- by appropriating funds (i.e., our money) -- to start their own personal vendetta wars of choice against pathetic little countries that do not threaten us in the least. Stop trembling in terror at the insignificant shadow cast by your own rabid rhetoric. In other words: Stop making a complete and utter -- not to mention dangerous -- fool of yourself.

Finally, Congressman Rangel, you tried to pull this "Draft" scam during the last (Republican) Congress and as I recall you wound up voting against your own bill. Obviously, you haven't the wit or self-awareness to realize how completely duplicitous -- if not ludicrous -- that stupid little stunt made you look. Whatever on earth makes you now think that you have the credibility necessary to pull the same moronic maneuver again? I can only conclude that you consider us, the People, devoid of mnemonic capacity; too stupid to stipulate; dumber than dirt; bored beyond belief; and too distracted by Disneyland to discern the devious demagoguery behind yet another of your tiresomely repetitive calls for a reinstitution of the Draft. Really. You just don't seem to get it. We, the People, will never again support involuntary military conscription; especially in support of government policies promulgated by the uninformed and insincere likes of you. So why don't you just STFU (i.e., Shut The Fuck Up)? We suffer from enough atmospheric pollution already. We don't need any more emanating from your mealy mouth.

Sincerely,

Michael Murry

(a Vietnam Veteran against any more bloody governmental stupidity -- which, I suppose, means against you, Congressman Rangel: the very personification of it.