How Many Times Does It Have To Be Said: There Isn’t Going To Be A Draft!

22 Sep, 2004 by John Hawkins

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Here’s a little secret I’ve learned from watching left-wingers. When they think they’ve had a major setback or they’re losing, they start acting crazier than normal and slinging dirt.

Wild conspiracy theories get trotted out (See the ‘Karl Rove is behind the CBS forgeries line of wawa’ that Terry McAuliffe suggested), any dirty trick becomes fair game (The CBS memos anyone?), and they start making wild charges — like the claim that Bush is going to bring back the draft.

The Kerry campaign has been doing everything possible to try to convince people that Bush is going to bring back the draft in 2005. John Kerry hinted at it today when he said,

“If George Bush were to be reelected, given the way he has gone about this war and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, is it possible? I can’t tell you.”

But while Kerry isn’t being blunt about it, his surrogates aren’t being so coy.

“America will reinstate the military draft” if Bush is re-elected and continues the Iraq War, Cleland predicted, according to an account of his speech by the Colorado Springs Gazette.

…Former Kerry rival Howard Dean, now traveling the country to drum up support for Kerry and raise money for Democratic candidates, said last week at Brown University in Providence, R.I., “I think that George Bush is certainly going to have a draft if he goes into a second term, and any young person that doesn’t want to go to Iraq might think twice about voting for him.”

Of course, this is pure bupkis, pure fear-mongering — the exact same sort of thing that Democrats accuse Republicans of doing when they actually — unlike Democrats — take terrorism seriously.

I’ve written in depth about this topic before (here & here), but let me break this down for you another way…

— The American people are overwhelmingly against a draft.
— Politicians are going be opposed to a draft because it’s political poison.
— People who support the war on terrorism are going to be opposed to it because it would dramatically undercut support for the war.
— Generals don’t want to spend the money to train a bunch of people who didn’t want to enlist in the first place and who intend to leave as soon as possible.
— The soldiers in the field don’t want to fight beside of draftees who don’t want to be there.

In other words, whether you are talking about the American people, the Bush administration, Conservatives, Republicans, the military, you name it, there are very few people who support a draft and legions who oppose it.

Moreover, may I add that the only bastion of support for the draft that I know of is among anti-war Democrats like Charlie Rangel, Jim McDermott, John Conyers, and John Lewis who support a draft because they think it would turn people AGAINST the war.

All that being said, here’s a helpful hint: anyone who tells you there is going to be a draft is dumb as a brick or a liar who’s trying to mislead you. In either case, if they tell you there’s going to be a draft, you can safely stop paying attention to them.