Dinosaur goes to War

by The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
The Last Protesant Dinosaur 'blog, September 23, 2007

I need to find a senator or representative with the guts to sponsor my (cue the CCR) "Send a Senator's Son or Daughter to War" bill. The bill would stipulate that only representatives or senators with a relative serving in the armed forces can vote to approve military action by our troops. Its that simple. You vote for it, you send a son, daughter, spouse, sister, brother or cousin to enlist. If you can't convince your own family to serve than you have no business voting for the war in the first place!

While I am on the topic I would also like to instigate some creative extroverted type to a bit of political theater. Wouldn't it be fun to dress up like an Army recruiter and visit an Ivy League campus. You could set up a card table on the Quad and loudly advertise that you are recruiting a Harvard or Yale brigade to serve our country in Iraq. In the good old days when the rich could connect their self-interest to our national interest the Ivy League would turn out legions of volunteers and non-volunteers (compulsory service) to serve the country. Check out the war memorials at these institutions for proof. I am sure the pseudo-recruiter would get exactly zero enlistment interest - many more George W's than George H.W.'s, and lots of Romney boys. (Remember whenever you say Romney Boys you should say it like Arnold say "Girlie Men.")

Finally, my first "Holy Shit did he really say that award" goes to Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. Dippy Dick says that he supports a small scale immigration bill that will naturalize undocumented youth who graduate from high school because, "IT WILL SOLVE OUR MILITARY RECRUITMENT PROBLEMS." Holy Shit! We welcome your tired, your poor, your masses yearning to be free - come die for us! Why don't we just cut to the chase and use mercenaries. (Oops - too late BLACK WATER) We will need language in the Senator's Son bill to keep folks like Durbin from adopting undocumented children to send to war in their place! By the way, I support the bill too, but for very different reasons. I look forward to the new citizens going to college because now they could get student loans.

Comments

[Tom Shepard]

See http://frankcomment.blogspot.com/2007/05/swiss-military-service.html for a good write-up on Switzerland's military service system. In short: at age 20, every male Swiss citizen goes through 121 days of training; ages 21-32, 3 weeks active duty per year; ages 33-42, 2 weeks every few years; ages 43-50, 13 days total.

If we had such universal compulsory service in the U.S., we'd probably not be involved in so many inadvisable conflicts - and we would probably be much more politically involved than we are now.

As a pacifist, I have some difficulty of conscience making such a proposal - but I believe that the end effect would be much more conducive to the goals of the peace movement. How many wars has Switzerland been involved in during the last 100 years?