Possible draft?

Why are u judging people??? Have u taken your time on getting to know each and one of us...You just call us hippies...well not everyone in here is a "hippy"...sure come here and post what you feel but never judge no one that you dont know...so your sayin being a pacifist is being a coward...many really do beleive in being pascifist and not just make it an excuse to not go to war...geez bro just chill with the judging and everything would alright...

 

R.A.
One of the advantages of this type of communication is that it doesn't allow for the kind of hackwork seen in the media at large. The interupt/divert-interrupt/divert-then edit format that is so common in tabloid journalism (former Inside Edition anchor Bill O'Rielly's show being a prime example.) doesn't really work here.
Other forms of hackwork, such as attacking the speaker and not the content are unfortunately much more pervasive. Me, personally, I won't sink that low. I've given you the benefit of the doubt by saying that you are at least sincere in your convictions. You indulge in name calling. You're not the only one. But if this is a high school level name-calling debate let's call it that and quit the pretense of discussing serious life and death issues.
I didn't get the Donald Rumsfeld bit from Michael Moore. I researched it before the Iraq Invasion started. I do quite a bit of independent research simply because the major corporate news media- NYTimes, AP, CBS, CNN,etc. (Not even mentioning the extremists like FOX NEWS!) do such a bad job of keeping the American people informed. The NY Times, a supposed liberal paper, had Judith Miller put now discredited Iraqi Ahmed Chalabi's allegations of WMDs as the main news story of the day leading up to the war!
Now, Farenheit 911 has just come out and it was fresh in my mind but it was not my entire argument.
I will apoligize for assuming just because your conservative you are too narrow-minded to see it. I was drawing on my experience with many conservative Bush supporters I know who had judged the movie without seeing it,as they do so many things.
Now to your strange definition of cowardice.
Speaking your mind on subjects (such as the predictable results of our foriegn policy) is going to make me and others that think like me unpopular with some people. Actually exercising your right to free speech on touchy subjects (that were, I admit, hard fought for and hard won by both soldiers and citizens. All of us stand on thier shoulders, I admit it!) can carry with it extreme personal cost. The Ludlow Massacre, the Kent State Massacre, the Bonus March Massacre, the 60s civil rights marches, the abolishionists, the 30's labor unrest... all of these contributed to the rights we enjoy today also. Soldiers sacrificed with bloody consequenses, but so did ordinary citizens who believed what was going on was wrong and needed to be changed. People that are involved in the peace movement are following in thier footsteps, attempting to change what is going on right now which is very, very wrong. And some of them face exteme personal cost ( Nuns have been jailed for thier anti-war protest already in this war). If you want to call that cowardly, so be it! If you want to call "black" "white" instead or "up" "down" instead, so be it. I don't agree and I won't ultimately be influenced by high school level close mindedness and name calling!
As to your question, Do the Iraqi's deserve what we have? Freedom? Hospitals? Education?
Of course they do! Not only them, but Nicarguans, Timorese, Domincans, Chileans, Phillipinos, and Haitians do! And there's just one problem with that. Our State Dept. gave the tyrants that deprived those people of those things LOTS of our tax money! Somosa, Suhatro, Trujillo, Pinoche, Marcos and Constant were all as bad as Saddam Hussein and our Pentagon and State Dept. supported them.
And don't take my word for it! (Not that you would.) Research it on your own. If you actually do that, be prepared. You may be uncomfortable with what you find.
If you saw that atrocities, brutal murders, and other crimes against humanity were being committed or sponsored by agencies of your goverment...
would you want to know?
If your research led you to the conclusion that our brutal "foreign policy" makes a mockery of everything those troops believe in and that the U.S. purports to stand for and has, in the process, nearly destroyed the once powerful US economy...
would you do anything about it?
Once again, RA, I don't want or even care about arguing with you personally, but I do sincerely wish for you and others like you to free your minds!

 

Prisoner #6 :

I do understand that our government is not perfect. I do understand that we have evil selfish bastards trying to run this country for their personal benifit. I think what needs to be said and understood right here and right now, is that I am not an "asshole" all the time. My attacks that I made were to certain people in this thread. Those people that I am refering to I quoted. I don't generalize and assume that you all share the same opinions. I do my own research, educate myself, and learn from others. I know of these brutal things you speak of. My own brother has been involved in many horible situations over seas(and I am refering to times before the war on terror). As I said before, I do not condone or support these vile actions, however, I do support what our soldiers are fighting for. I have stated either in here or on another topic that I am all for world peace but that I realize it can never happen. When talking with my father and friends, I have often showed them my true feelings. Meaning that I think in order to realy get this country back on it's feet it needs to be replaced totaly. But even with that, it's still a never ending circle. Let me explain: We try peacfully to change things but fail, we spill blood to change things and succed, we rebuild, we find bad apples, we try peacfully to change things....It is a never ending circle.

Allow me to show you the kind of attitude that I am fighting here. HippieLngstckng said this to me:

You see, I don't realy care if someone wants to die for me. All I know is I am willing to fight for freedom, I am willing to fight for another human. I am the guy that steps in the middle of a fight, no matter how big the enemy. If you or someone else doesn't think that fighting for freedom(not just our own) and possably dieing is a just cause then yes I call you a coward. One of my good friends told me recently that if the draft does come around, he would dodge it because he just started a family. I called him a coward yet I still love him. Some things are worth fighting for, others arent. Oil isn't worth fighting for, oppressed people are.

 

Whoa, damn I've been missing out on some looong-ass posts, don't really come to this forum. And hey dude, I'm basically a pacifist as well. I'm just seriously not a war person, I can understand why people go to war although I won't agree with the decision to do so. I just think violent means are never an ultimately good idea, not unless it's a desperate case of life-or-death. People have told me I'd be a more convincing case in a conscientious objector hearing than most people.

Anyway, I don't really think there will be a draft anytime soon, not only because it would be hugely unpopular, but (as I've mentioned in a few other threads) because Bush already has a rather bullshit de facto alternative for a draft - his abuse of the stop-loss orders. The stop-loss orders are what his administration has been exploiting to "recycle" soldiers and "volunteers" and keep them posted in Iraq for long past what their contracts say, and there's no extra pay. It's real bullshit, and Bush will continue to use this method because it gets around the nasty idea of the draft that would piss much more people off.

 

id rather go to jail. i wont go to any war, let alone a war for oil. i hate our government.

 

i havent read everything that has been posted in this forum, but what ive read, RA, you seem rather ignorant and foolish to believe everything you are told by the government. our gov't has lied to its people and are doing so right now. it seems they are succeeding, in your case. i hope that the rumors of draft are also a lie. i would hate to see innocent, peaceful americans to die for a cause they do not believe in. as i said before, i will be the first to put the hand cuffs on my wrist. i wont fight and i wont fight for something i dont believe in, especially! i only hope we have a strong enough following to be able to hold some pretty major protests or be able to persuade our gov't officials that the draft is a bad idea that only brings heartbreak and tears to our country. i hope we have the power to prevent this madness

 

You just discretited everything else you said. If you are going to comment on something, then please, by all means, read everything before you assume you know something.

 

I knew there was some common ground here RA!

Yes, evil selfish bastards attempt to and succeed in running our govt.

Someone in your own family has seen firsthand how fucked up our foriegn policy is!

And you have admitted in front of family and friends (and all who visit this thread) your true feelings that in order to get this country back on its feet it needs to be totally replaced.( I don't agree, I feel that there are only certain sectors that need to be replaced. Those evil selfish bastards aforementioned.)

You even admitted that oil is not worth fighting for but oppressed people are. We can continue this discussion on our history of helping oppressed people some other time.

I don't agree with your assertion that peace fails and bloodshed works. I think the opposite is true. Bloodshed merely creates victims and martyrs on the other side (whatever the other side is). That's how bloody conflicts go on for generation after generation.

Successful peacemakers defeating tyranny include Dr. King, Ghandi, the people who brought down Slobodan Milosevic, the crowd in Moscow who faced down the tanks w/ Boris Yelstin and defeated the Soviet Union. I believe you when you describe yourself as someone who would take on a bully no matter what size. I think that if you were born Russian(Real Russian?!? Boszhe Moi!), and lived in Moscow you might have joined those in the streets and evil selfish bastards attempted to take over thier govt in August 1991. You probably would have been outraged at those who paid lip service to those ideals you and others were willing to fight and die for.

This outrage would be appropriate right here and now directed not at pacifists but at the evil selfish bastards who bribe our legislators, control our airwaves, whose main customer is the U.S. taxpayer, and cheat retirees out of thier life savings.Every single successful peacemaking example I've mentioned began with people outraged at something they knew was wrong and were willing to do something (risk jail or worse) about it. Not the actions of a coward, as a matter of fact far from it.

To all others,
RA seems willing to lay off of the invective(at least for now) and meet us on some common ground. Can we meet him halfway and keep the debate on the Draft and it's inevitable consequences? We are supposed to be pacifists here and turning the other cheek is a virtue to us is it not?

 

i think you are a bit rude and need to learn some manners.
and im not ignorant just because i havent read all of your rude remarks. i still live in america and can still have an opinion, last i checked! so you can shove your bush loving remarks right up your ass for all i care.

~desireé~

 

Allow me to give you an example that perhaps you will understand. You can have the opinion that the civil war was faught over pink roses, however, unless you actualy study what took place, read all the info you can on it, take in every bit of info available, then your opinion is worthless. You are sharing your opinion on a few posts that you have read here(wich you admitted) and avoided the rest(perhaps it was to much reading?). Now, in order for your opinion to be valid, you must read everything that is available and then at that time make an educated guess to form your opinion.

PS, all of my posts aren't rude. If you would read them they are very inteligent and spirited posts. As are a few others on this thread.

 

Hey, Real American, you seem to maybe, just maybe, be making sense! Finally you admit that our government isn't some godly thing that you must follow blindly. Glad to hear it...

Now, what do you say... we talk about the POSSIBLE DRAFT?

Hmm... I really don't think it will happen unless things get VERY bad over there. It is all described right here:

He basically said all I was going to say . I've heard about the "recycling" soldiers policy and it sounds like bullshit to me. Some soldiers are getting pretty pissed off because, obviously, they want to be home with their families, not going over practice routines everyday. Also, a draft would be VERY unpopular, especially if it included women. I could definitely see some fathers getting really pissed off when they find out that their "little girls" died in Iraq when they didn't even want to go there in the first place.

 

Lucifer Sam,

Have you read these bills? S 89 & HR 163 I believe. There is nothing in them that would exempt women, or even pregnant women from military service.

This should be an election year issue.

There is a reason that they won't be called on for a vote until after the election passes. It is known that the public doesn't want to be treated like that and it stands no chance of passage in an election year.

If they were called for a vote now, I believe it would be defeated.

So let's ALL (even RA), go to http://www.house.gov and http://www.senate.gov , look up and read S 89 & HR 163 and then call our representatives and Senators and let them know what we think of a proposal that wouldn't exempt pregnant women from a military draft.

Put pressure to bring these to vote in this election year!

 

I agree there is nothing in the whole thing that leaves out pregnant women or anything and nearly noone believes in this war anymore i just think its dumb

 

If bush gets re-elected, i hope to God he DOES it...Because if he does, there will be the biggest political backlash since the 60's waiting on the front lawn...BRING IT ON.

 

Regarding the draft, while there may be different exemptions it is still the case that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service." A good friend and a polaroid camera should keep you out of the Army, if you want out.

 

You are forgetting the don't ask don't tell policy, they don't care if you are homosexual anymore. They won't ask you, and you can try to tell them, but they wont listen.

 

How nice! Calling someone's opinion worthless...

Actually, the Civil War wasn't just about the slaves; the Union didn't want the South to succeed from the nation, which is why they fought. NOT because freeing the slaves was so important. This is a little known detail, but you know what? It doesn't much matter WHY the war was fought, it is the fact that the war WAS fought. And a lot of people, as I have said before, don't support war, period, end of statement. Am I saying that *I* think the Union should not have fought to free the slaves? No. This was on our own soil, hence the North had every right to fight.

By the way, if you want to go and fight for some people who would set you on fire and roast you in your bed while you are sleeping, you can be my guest. But don't send me. Chances are they would roast my Jewish ass before my feet even touched their soil. I am not the one who is prejudiced either. I don't toast little Arab kids with bombs while they're on their way to school.

By the way, LOL regarding your PS. While some of your posts have been witty and interesting, the fact that you are so insulting in more than half of your posts detracts from your obvious intelligence, which is why I urged you way-back-when to consider revising the way you address people. No one is going to recognize anything relevant you say if you're calling them stupid in the same sentance. If you truly wish to make people think, then be kind in your posts and answers to people... as the saying goes, you catch more flies with honey... and so on and so forth

 

About homosexuality, they do care. Recently a homosexual combat troop was discharged for homosexuality. If a photo is dropped on the desk at the induction center, they probably will pay attention.

 

MikeE, please share where you learned of this. Perhaps a link? Thanks.

 

If it doesn't matter, could you please explain why their policy towards homosexuality is "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"? I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass, but if they didn't care, why would it matter whether or not you are out of the closet?

P.S. - If anyone is too concerned about the draft, you could always pose as a fairy, and let someone take some pictures.... LOL! (No offense to any gays, I have plenty of friends who are gay... One who taught me to remember what apartment he lives in by telling me it is "Apartment F - for 'you-know-what'")