Posted by
Doctor Demex on Wednesday, November 22, 2006 9:17:04 PM
Democratic Congressman Charles B. Rangel of the 15th Congressional District of New York, plans to introduce a bill to reinstate the military draft. He says he's doing this to ensure that we have enough soldiers to defend the country. But make no mistake: His support for the draft is proportional to his opposition to the West's war against global Islamic jihad. Mr. Rangel wants antiwar protests to dominate the evening news and affect public opinion as they did in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Vietnam-era antiwar protests did not stop when the war ended. They stopped before that, when the draft ended. These protests had less to do with whether the United States needed to undertake military operations to carry out its obligations to the free world than they had to do with the narcissistic cowardice of baby boomers who were too spoiled to appreciate how rights and freedoms sometimes had to be defended by violent means. In other words, the Vietnam protests weren't anti-war; they were anti-draft.
Mr. Rangel is trying to tap into the narcissism of new generations to create street theater against President Bush and others who believe that war sometimes IS the answer. There is no other plausible explanation for his motives, for despite his public rhetoric, which might indicate otherwise, Mr. Rangel is not stupid. Like most members of congress who keep getting reelected no matter what they do, however, Mr. Rangel seems to think that his constituents are.