Thursday, June 16, 2005

No timetable for withdrawal

This post will probably be better suited to my DailyKos diary but I am going to post it here.

I was driving home from work today and heard the latest news about the refusal to create a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq. I did a quick search at the National Archives and Records Administration and it looks like US casualties are about equivalent to the Vietnam war in 1965 (including 9 deaths from 1956-1960). In reality, 1965 was about as bad as the entire Iraq war.

I'm increasingly losing patience with so-called liberals (especially of the religious variety) who call for a better run war or want to argue the relative merits of World War II and theoretical pacifism whenever anyone questions the war in Iraq.

If this is 1965, this war still has 8 years left. My stepson turns 14 next month. Recruiting figures are looking bad. One of the local recruiters got caught having sex with girls from the high school who wanted to enlist. If this goes on, I have a hard time thinking there will be any alternative to conscription. I was trained by the National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objecters and the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors to do draft counseling two wars ago. I really hope I never have to use that knowledge.

I will tell you right now, I am not a pacifist. And I will tell you that it is not any Iraqi that I would kill before they take my boy to fight their war. I don't really care if responsible centrists think I am not credible on national defense issues or if responsible liberals think people like me will hurt the Democrats' chances of getting reelected to vote for the next war before they vote against it.

I'm a parent and I take my responsibilities very seriously.

1 Comments:

At 8:38 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am a woman almost 50 yrs old and I remember growing up in the Vietnam era. Many of my friends' big brothers and cousins never made it back. I have a 15 yr old daughter who may be the object of a draft in the next few years if this ridiculous senseless war has not ended by then. I too find it to be my grave duty as a parent to actively find a way to protect my child from being coerced into fighting this right winged bloody oil battle in Iraq.

 

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