Charles Rangel wants to reinstate the draft, and in support says that "There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft, and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way."
We all know exactly what race-baiters like Rangel, and Sharpton, and Jackson, and their ilk mean when they say "kids from their communities". They mean white kids, implying that Bush went to war because he didn't care if he was sending a bunch of minority kids into harm's way.
But, the statistics don't bear this out.
Whites are 66.8% of the population, Hispanics 14.5%, Blacks 12.1%, Asians 4.3%.
Location: On an Island in the west coast of New England
Posts: 13,133
RE: Iraq War/Draft/Race
Your figures don't seem right on % of total population. Looking at the deaths it would appear that the whites are getting killed at a higher rate than all others (percentage wise).
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Too busy with fishing to spend much time here.
I'm for the draft for just one reason; if you are going to go to war and truely want to win, you need total mobilization of the population. A couple hundred thousand draftees (and yes, a few more senators sons and daughters would be nice) and there would be no complaining about troops being stretch too thin. Folks complain about lack of troop quality when draftees are used, but we did pretty well with them in the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and Korea.
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"Shoot him again....his soul is still dancing"
I left out Vietnam because we didn't do well in it in general. Furthermore, during the height of Vietam, the training cycle for enlisted troops was significantly reduced. So, troops were not as well trained whether they were drafted or not. Despite that, most nations would be pleased with winning 80 percent of their major wars where draftees are used
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"Shoot him again....his soul is still dancing"
What I really love are these polititians and other people who say we need a draft because it's the poor and middle class kids that are carrying the burden. Well no s**t, It's always the lower and middleclass kids that get stuck doing the dangerous jobs. It these kids that go to work in the coal mines, work construction, etc. Some of these people need to get a grip on reality and realize that kids in these "classes" are faced with these decisions all the time, it's not like they all of the option of going to iraq or sitting in some office making 60,000 a year.
The two sets of percentages reflects a difference in how these different communities feel about joining the military. Nothing particularly revealing in these numbers.
I think the point of Charles Rangel is not one of race but one of socio-economic class. Senators's sons go to Harvard and Yale;the children of the working poor or lower classesjoin the military because other economic opportunities for them are dismal. Because their own children are not at risk, those who voted for the war did not care about the children of the poor. This in Rangel's point. I'm not making any representation on this issue one way or the other. I will point out, however, that plenty of Democrats voted for the war, so it isn't an attack that singles out the Republicans or the Republican administration, in my view.
There was this issue in the Vietnam Conflict, when Martin Luther King ,Jr. said that the government was using black men in the military to die instead of the whites, which I personally think is totally ludicrous. It wasn't the case in the VietNam War, and it isn't the case today.
I think Rangel is just trying to get the black vote in his area, by preaching all that ludicrous Cowcrap to these people, and making them believe it.
He'sbasically saying that there are too many black people in the military, and that we need more whites to take their place. He's just full of idiocy, because there's more whites in the military, and more whites have died in the Iraq Conflict than any other race, excluding the Iraqis.
Iraq War/Draft/Race
