Back to School or Back to the Draft Boards

The Bush administration is learning and ugly lesson about going to war when you are not prepared. The lesson they are learning is that you have to utilize more human resources to fix a problem if you start something when you're not ready for it, and in human terms that means that the United States is going to have to reinstitute the draft.

I am completely opposed to the draft myself. I served in the Army voluntarily for four years, and due to the role that I served I can be called back in the military at any time up until age 60 (that's no mistake right up until the time before I retire). Regardless of my own responsibilities, I am completely opposed to a draft or involuntary requirement for any citizen of the United States to serve in the military. You can call it the draft, you call it conscription, you can call it slavery, you call it anything you want, I am opposed to it.

So as many parents prepare to send there recent high school graduates off to college and as many parents prepare to send their children to high school and even junior high, the reality is that the draft is likely to come back and be reinstituted within the next two years. That means that many high school students today will be drafted out of high school to serve in the military. It also means that many college students will be drafted out of college to go serve in the military regardless of their grades.

In the past, college students that failed out of school were sometimes drafted into the military. The reality today is that the military needs smart people just as much as they need people that are having trouble in school. The same type of individual that makes a good student makes a good soldier. At the opposite end of the spectrum, many people that fail out of college need a little discipline in their lives and the military can help.

Regardless, I don't think it's right for the United States to run a draft or require anyone to serve in the military. I would whole heartedly encourage people to serve in the military voluntarily, but we are supposed to be the land of the free and nobody should be forced to do anything even if that means that as a people we choose to lose a war or lose our freedom. I'd hate to see it come to that, but that's really what freedom is all about. Having the ability to make your own choices regardless of the consequences.

So as you prepare to send your children to school this year stocking up their dorm rooms with bunk beds, posters, and cheap furniture consider, you might be sending them off to war next year or the year after that with body armor, a long shot record and duffle bags filled with desert or cold weather gear even.

If you're not paying attention to politics today and you have a problem with sending your children off to war, you better get off your butt and start paying attention and getting involved otherwise the choice will be made for you. You will lose a little bit of freedom and your children will lose a great deal of freedom at best.